Mexico, Eswatini-Taiwan, CAR
Today's three stories you should know
Mexico
Eight journalists were murdered or disappeared in Mexico last year, a media rights group has said, also naming it the worst country in Latin America for censorship. "In 2025, Mexico recorded one disappearance and seven murders of journalists, once again topping the regional list," the UK-based Article 19 group said in a report, comparing the tally to four journalists murdered in 2024. Fifty-three journalists were physically attacked, the report said, surpassing 10 in Honduras and nine in Guatemala. In February, the Committee to Protect Journalists named Mexico the most dangerous country for journalists in 2025 outside of Gaza, Yemen, and Sudan, which are all active conflict zones.
More from Reuters here.
Eswatini-Taiwan
China has hit out at the government of Eswatini for hosting a visit from Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te. In an usually strongly worded rebuke, Beijing said Eswatini's leaders were "kept and fed" by Taiwan. Lai was initially supposed to travel to the country, one of Taiwan’s 12 remaining diplomatic partners, last month but the government said China had pressured three nations to deny him passage through their airspace. China views self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway region and has not ruled out the use of military force to take it. The two regularly accuse each other of engaging in “dollar diplomacy” to win allies.
More from AP here.
CAR
The Central African Republic’s (CAR) top opposition figure, Anicet Georges Dologuélé, has been prevented from leaving the country amid an extraordinary row over whether he has lost his citizenship. Dologuélé, a former prime minister, was a joint Central African and French national but renounced his French citizenship last year to run for president in line with constitutional rules. Months later, a court invalidated his Central African citizenship. “It was at the airport that I learned I was forbidden from leaving the country after being declared stateless in my own country,” he told a news conference in the capital Bangui after being barred from a flight to an African Union meeting in Ethiopia.
More from Africa News here.