brink

Barcelona move 11 points clear of Real Madrid in the La Liga title race with five games to play.

Fermin Lopez and Marcus Rashford’s goals took Barcelona to the brink of the La Liga title with a 2-0 win at Getafe.

The defending champions moved 11 points clear of second-place Real Madrid, who drew at Real Betis on Friday to dent their hopes of finishing the season with a trophy.

Hansi Flick’s side can win their second consecutive Spanish title if they overcome Osasuna next weekend and Real Madrid fail to beat Espanyol.

“It’s not done, we have five more games, and we’re only focused on the next one,” Flick told reporters.

“We will celebrate when it’s time, but not now.”

Barcelona were without vital injured wingers Lamine Yamal and Raphinha, but still did enough to see off Jose Bordalas’s tricky side, sixth, in the Madrid suburbs.

“We were aware of what was going to happen here, we were going to have few chances, and I think we played well, competing well defensively and putting away the chances we had,” Lopez told Movistar.

“We know we’ve got a big advantage [in the title race], but even so, we can’t relax, I know it’s a cliche, but it’s the truth.”

Getafe set out to disrupt Barcelona’s rhythm with small fouls, and Barca struggled to create many clear opportunities.

Flick opted for Swedish winger Roony Bardghji in place of Yamal and chose Lopez on the left over Rashford.

Dani Olmo made the first with a neat dribble, speeding into Getafe territory, but pulled his shot wide of the far post.

Eventually, the hosts made the breakthrough just before half-time when Pedri played in Lopez.

Wearing a protective mask after hurting his face in a collision with Atletico Madrid goalkeeper Juan Musso during Barcelona’s Champions League quarterfinal elimination last week, Lopez stayed calm to slot home.

The midfielder imitated Yamal’s usual “304” celebration in tribute to the injured teenage star.

“The truth is he’s really important for us, it’s a shame that he can’t play any more, but the important thing is that he recovers well and is ready for the World Cup,” added Lopez.

With Getafe needing to come out of their shell to find an equaliser, Barca had more opportunities after the break.

David Soria saved from Olmo after he met Jules Kounde’s cross, and then the French defender headed a Joao Cancelo ball narrowly off-target.

Martin Satriano threatened for the hosts before Rashford, on loan from Manchester United, secured Barcelona’s triumph.

Robert Lewandowski sent the England international charging through on goal, and he slipped a low effort past Soria to help Barca put one hand on the trophy.

“Marcus, in the second half, he came on and used the space they gave us,” said Flick.

“I’m happy that we scored this goal for the team and also for him.”

Getafe goalkeeper Soria acknowledged Barca were clinical enough to clinch victory.

“They were very efficient, you give away two chances, and they score them both,” he said.

“It’s a shame to have gone in behind at half-time because it puts you in a difficult spot.”

Kings coach D.J. Smith gave his team the day off Friday, but he sent his players home with a message: if they don’t show up for work Sunday, they’ll have the rest of the spring and summer off, too.

Players don’t like to call any game a “must-win” because of the pressure it brings, but there’s no other way to look at Sunday’s game for the Kings. After losing the first three games of their best-of-seven playoff series with the Colorado Avalanche, the Kings are one loss away from being eliminating in the first round for a fifth consecutive season.

“Must-win game,” agreed defenseman Drew Doughty, who hasn’t played on a winning team in a playoff series since the Kings last won the Stanley Cup in 2014. “Everyone’s going to give everything and we’ve got to win that one. And then hopefully go back to Denver.”

The most recent loss came Thursday when the Avs scored two fluky goals on pucks that bounced in off the skates of Kings players and put another one into an empty net in a 4-2 victory that pushed the Kings to the brink of elimination once again.

“You don’t like the result,” Smith said. “And it’s tough to swallow.”

For Colorado, the best team in the NHL during the regular season, it hasn’t been the most stylish of postseasons. But after a pair of hard-fought 2-1 wins at home, the Avs have a chance to sweep a playoff series for the first time since 2022, when they won their last Stanley Cup.

“All the games have been tight. We’re right there,” forward Quinton Byfield said. “Each guy, including myself, we just have to give a little bit more.

“We’re doing the right things, we just have to dig in a little bit more.”

It’s hard to say how. The Kings’ power play has been good, scoring a goal in each of the three games, and their penalty kill even better, shutting out the top-scoring team in the NHL on nine tries with a man advantage.

The Kings have been physical and fast and goaltender Anton Forsberg has been brilliant in his first career playoff series, making 90 saves in the three games. Yet none of that has paid off with a win.

“Sometimes you play real well for stretches and you don’t get the results. And then you’ll win a game you don’t deserve to win,” Smith said. “Maybe we didn’t stay with it long enough.”

“Those games are over with,” a frustrated Byfield added. “You can’t look back at those games. It’s just on to the next one, that’s our focus.”

Doughty said the Kings need to wear down the Avalanche, something they clearly couldn’t do in the two games played in Denver’s mile-high altitude. They might have a better chance Sunday at sea level.

“I don’t think we’re creating enough Grade A chances,” he said. “They’re statistically one of the best teams in the neutral zone. So for us to beat them, we’ve got to wear them down in the D zone, make them tired and score goals that way. We haven’t done that enough.”

Every team has its kryptonite and the for the Kings that appears to be the first round of the playoffs. Over the past dozen seasons, the team has gone 9-27 in the postseason, taking a series to a seventh game just once in six tries. Along the way they’ve changed general mangers twice, changed head coaches five times and even changed their opponents, facing the Avs this year after losing four straight series to the Edmonton Oilers.

None of that has changed the results.

Smith, in fact, is an interim coach, having taken over for Jim Hiller with 23 games left in the regular season. He figures to be coaching for his future Sunday since a playoff sweep won’t look good at his resume.

“There’s no quit in there,” Smith said of the Kings’ locker room. “We’ll get reset with practice [Saturday] and I think you’re going to see our best effort.

“Now we’ve got to make a few changes and see if we can spark something.”

If that works, the Kings will be heading back to Denver. If it doesn’t, they’ll be heading home for another long summer.

Mukalla, Yemen – Mohammed Salem heads out every morning for his job as a teacher at a government-run school. But once his shift is finished at that school, he then goes to a private school, where he also teaches. After a brief stop home for lunch, Mohammed is off to his third job, in a hotel, where he works the rest of the day.

“If I had any spare time for a fourth job, I would take it,” Mohammed, a teacher with 31 years of experience, said. He spoke to Al Jazeera outside his flat in a large housing complex in the eastern suburbs of Yemen’s southeastern port city of Mukalla.

He has been forced into taking on the extra jobs because of Yemen’s dire economic situation, and specifically the Yemeni riyal’s slide against the US dollar in recent years.

“I return home at night completely burned out,” he said. “Teachers are devastated and have no time to take care of their students. During classes, they are preoccupied with the next job they will take after school.”

Despite working from morning until night, the father of six says he earns less than half of what he made a decade ago, down from the equivalent of $320 a month to $130.

For more than a decade, Yemen has been mired in a bloody conflict between the Iran-backed Houthis and the Saudi-backed government, a war that has killed thousands, displaced millions and affected nearly every sector, including education.

The conflict has devastated the country’s main sources of revenue, including oil exports, customs and taxes, as rival factions wage an economic battle alongside fighting on the front lines.

The Houthis, who control Yemen’s densely populated central and northern highlands, including the capital Sanaa, have not paid public sector salaries since late 2016, when the internationally recognised government relocated the central bank from Sanaa to the southern city of Aden.

The Yemeni government, which controls Aden and the south, has also failed to raise public sector wages or pay them regularly, citing dwindling revenues after Houthi attacks on oil export terminals in southern Yemen.

Thousands of Yemeni teachers have voiced frustration over stagnant and delayed pay, saying their salaries have not improved since the war began. When they are paid, it is often late, and the wages have lost much of their value as the Yemeni riyal has plunged from approximately 215 to the dollar before the war started, to about 2,900 to the dollar in mid-2025. The Yemeni riyal is currently valued at about 1,560 to the dollar in government-controlled areas.

Faced with meagre and irregular incomes, teachers like Mohammed have adopted harsh survival strategies to keep their families afloat. His family has been forced to skip meals, cut out protein-rich foods such as meat, fish and dairy, and move to the outskirts of the city in search of cheaper rent.

He also asked one of his children to forgo university and instead join the military, where, he said, soldiers earn about 1,000 Saudi riyals ($265) a month.

“If we have money, we buy fish. When there is nothing, we eat rice, potatoes and onions. We do not look for meat, and we can only get it during Eid through donations from the mosque or charities,” Mohammed said.

During holidays and weekends, he lets his children sleep until the afternoon so they do not wake up asking for breakfast.

And when one of his children falls ill, he first treats them at home with natural remedies, such as herbs and garlic, only taking severe cases to hospital to avoid unaffordable medical bills. “I only take them to the hospital when they are extremely sick,” he said.

Generation at risk

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in its Yemen Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026 released on March 29, the country’s education sector continues to be hit by a catastrophic, multilayered crisis.

An estimated 6.6 million school-aged children have been deprived of their right to education, while 2,375 schools have been damaged or destroyed. Teachers have also been severely affected, with about 193,668, nearly two-thirds of the national total, receiving no salaries.

In the al-Wadi district of Marib province, Ali al-Samae, who has been teaching since 2001, said his salary of about 90,000 Yemeni riyals barely covers his own expenses.

The financial strain has forced him to leave his family of seven in his home city of Taiz.

“Instead of focusing on preparing lessons and using modern teaching methods, our entire focus is on how to earn enough money to support our families,” he said. “Before the war, my salary was equivalent to 1,200 Saudi riyals [$320]. Now it is about 200 Saudi riyals [$52],” al-Samae told Al Jazeera.

To survive, he has taken on extra jobs, while his family has been forced to skip meals and cut out meat and chicken. He now visits them only once a year, often arriving empty-handed after spending most of his salary on transportation.

“We now live just to survive, rather than to teach. In the past, salaries covered our basic needs, but now they are not enough; even milk has become a luxury. Life has become very difficult.”

Part-time teachers say they are worse off than their full-time counterparts, as the government has neither raised their salaries nor added them to the official payroll.

Hana al-Rubaki, a part-time teacher in Mukalla, and the sole breadwinner for her mother and three sisters, told Al Jazeera that her salary barely covers expenses for 10 days.

Despite eight years of service, she earns the same as newly hired contract teachers. “There is no job security, despite my eight years of service. There is no difference between me and a contractor hired last year; everyone receives the same salary,” she said. “After taxes, my salary is just 70,000 Yemeni riyals [$44] a month. With the high cost of living, it feels more like a token allowance than a real salary.”

She added that delayed payments further worsen her situation. “Delayed salaries disrupt our daily lives and leave me struggling to meet even my most basic needs. While some teachers can find additional work to support their families, it is incredibly difficult for us female teachers to do the same.”

Protests and patchwork solutions

To highlight their plight and pressure the government to improve salaries, teachers across government-controlled areas have staged sit-ins, taken to the streets in protest and gone on strikes, disrupting education for months.

The cash-strapped government, which is mired in internal divisions and spends much of the year operating from abroad, has largely left the issue to provincial authorities.

Some governors have responded by approving modest incentives. In Hadramout, a raise of 25,000 Yemeni riyals ($16) a month was approved, while in other areas they have ranged between 30,000 Yemeni riyals ($19) in others and up to 50,000 Yemeni riyals ($32).

“The incentives provided by local authorities vary from one province to another, depending on each governor’s priorities and capacity to support teachers in their region,” Abdullah al-Khanbashi, head of the teachers’ union in Hadramout, told Al Jazeera, adding that protests would continue until teachers receive better and regular pay.

“Teachers are showing up in torn clothing, and sometimes their students have more money in their pockets than they do. Some families have broken apart, while others have been evicted from their homes because they could not pay the rent. Other teachers have children suffering from malnutrition because they cannot afford to feed them,” he said.

In Marib, Abdullah al-Bazeli, head of the teachers’ union in the province, said local farmers have stepped in to help teachers remain in classrooms by giving them some of their produce.

“Farmers support teachers, especially those coming from outside the province, by giving them tomatoes, potatoes and other vegetables for free,” al-Bazeli said.

He also called for teachers’ salaries to be raised to the level of ministers. “A teacher’s salary should be equal to that of a minister. Teachers educate generations, while ministers often fail to make a meaningful impact. Some teachers have begun to die from hunger,” he told Al Jazeera.

In Houthi-controlled areas, teachers have rarely taken to the streets to protest the suspension of their salaries, as authorities suppress dissent and blame the Yemeni government and the Saudi-led coalition for imposing a “blockade” that they say has hindered their ability to pay public sector wages.

Acknowledging the problem of low salaries, the Yemeni government says dwindling and disrupted revenues during the war have prevented it from increasing public sector pay. “The main reason is weak financial resources resulting from the war and recurring instability, which have undermined institutions and revenue streams,” Tareq Salem al-Akbari, who served as Yemen’s education minister from 2020 to 2026, told Al Jazeera.

Teachers interviewed by Al Jazeera say they are running out of patience with the repeated promises that their salaries will be improved, warning that they may abandon the profession altogether if they find better-paying jobs that could spare them from hunger or begging in public.

“The idea of leaving teaching is always on my mind, but I have not found an alternative job,” Mohammed Salem said. “I feel pity, and sometimes cry, when I see a teacher begging in mosques or calling from a hospital, asking for help to pay for a child’s medical treatment.”

Beirut, Lebanon – It is four weeks into the United States-Israeli war on Iran, and millions of civilians are suffering in Lebanon, now facing a second large-scale Israeli attack on their country in less than two years.

About a quarter of Lebanon’s population has been displaced after Israel’s mass forced evacuation orders from the country’s south and Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh.

Many of the displaced are extremely frustrated and fatigued. And even those who are not displaced are feeling the pressure, with deadly Israeli attacks continuing, petrol prices increasing, business in general slowing down, and little sign that the conflict will end any time soon.

Samiha, a Palestinian teacher who had been living near Tyre, in southern Lebanon, but recently relocated to Beirut, said the experience was “not good at all”. However, with the previous Israeli campaign in Lebanon not long ago, her family came into this round more prepared.

“It’s not the first time for us. Now we know more about where to go.” Still, she maintained, “we don’t know how long this will last and if there is a solution”.

Foreigners most vulnerable

Israel intensified its war on Lebanon again on March 2, after Hezbollah responded to Israeli attacks for the first time in more than a year.

Hezbollah – a close ally of Iran – claimed the attack was retaliation for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assassination two days earlier. A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah had ostensibly been in effect since November 27, 2024, despite the United Nations counting more than 10,000 Israeli ceasefire violations in that period, and hundreds of Lebanese deaths.

After Hezbollah’s reply, Israel intensified its attacks on the south and declared its intention to occupy southern Lebanon. Israel also issued forced evacuation orders for areas of southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs, and a few villages in the eastern Bekaa Valley, leading to a massive displacement crisis of at least 1.2 million people, according to the Lebanese government. Now, Israel has also stated its intent to occupy southern Lebanon and set up a so-called security zone, while destroying more villages along the southern border.

The crisis has hit people who live in Lebanon severely, particularly the country’s most vulnerable people.

“The most vulnerable cases that we’re coming upon are happening, either migrant workers, either Syrians, foreign bodies, basically,” Rena Ayoubi, a volunteer who has organised aid near Beirut’s waterfront, Biel, told Al Jazeera.

She said other people who have suffered deeply in this period include: people with chronic diseases, cancer patients on dialysis, people who cannot access insulin, and displaced people who don’t have access to a fridge to store their medicine.

‘Different in scale and speed’

A series of catastrophes is unfolding, with women, children and those suffering with psychological issues suffering the most, according to a variety of sources, including aid workers, volunteers and UN workers. The humanitarian crisis in 2024 was severe, they said, but 2026 is on a whole different level.

“Now is significantly different in the scale and speed and number of people impacted,” Anandita Philipose, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA)’s representative in Lebanon, told Al Jazeera. “The mass evacuation orders are new. The scale of displacement is new. The fact that civilian infrastructure was targeted is new.”

Many women, in particular, have been displaced not only from their homes but from their healthcare networks, including offices or support systems that will help them through pregnancies.

“Pregnant women do not stop giving birth in the middle of conflict, and women don’t stop having periods in the middle of conflicts,” Philipose said.

Israel’s latest war on Lebanon has so far killed 1,094 people and wounded another 3,119 in Lebanon, according to the country’s Ministry of Public Health. Among the dead are 81 women and 121 children, in just over three weeks.

“Children have yet again been caught up in this escalation, Heidi Diedrich, national director of World Vision in Lebanon, told Al Jazeera. “Children are deeply affected by the violence regardless of their protected status as civilians under international humanitarian law, and regardless of their rights as children. We are deeply concerned that this escalation will continue to impact children in Lebanon for weeks or even months to come.”

Never-ending trauma

At an office building in Beirut, two volunteers sit behind desks waiting for phones to ring. The volunteers are closely monitored by clinical psychologists. On the other end are people calling in for help, many in some of their darkest moments.

This is the office for the National Lifeline in Lebanon (1564) for Emotional Support and Suicide Prevention Hotline, a collaboration between the National Mental Health Programme and Embrace, a nonprofit focused on mental health. 1564 is the phone number that people who require psychological support can dial.

“We’ve been in the worst situation for the past two years,” Jad Chamoun, operations manager at the National Lifeline 1564, told Al Jazeera from the Lifeline centre in Beirut.

“Even when there was a ceasefire, people were still living under the conditions, they were still displaced.”

Even before March 2, about 64,000 people in Lebanon were displaced, according to the International Organization for Migration. According to a March 2025 report from Lebanon’s National Mental Health Programme, three in five people in the country “currently screen positive for depression, anxiety, or PTSD”. And that was before the current intensification.

“The living conditions we’re in is a continuous trauma, because it’s never ending,” Chamoun said. Lebanon went through one of the world’s worst economic crises in 2019, which continues today. In the following years, people in Lebanon experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, the Beirut explosion, mass emigration, and now two Israeli large-scale military campaigns in short succession.

Amid the current violence, the number of calls has increased substantially, Chamoun said, from about 30 a day during 2024’s Israeli attacks to almost 50 a day now. But, he added, that the peak for calls tends to be a few months after the end of a conflict or crisis. Currently, people are in survival mode.

The cascading series of disasters and brutal Israeli aggression has left many in Lebanon near, or well past, their breaking points. Many are falling through the cracks. Volunteers and professionals at efforts like this one are doing what they can to catch as many people as they can.

“We try to sit with them in the darkness, which is what’s heavy around us. We try to share with them this pain,” Chamoun said. “And this is what’s been the heaviest nowadays.”

HOUSTON — Kyle Teel, Sam Antonacci and Jac Caglianone homered as Italy built a big lead and held on to stun the United States 8-6 Tuesday night in the World Baseball Classic.

The U.S. is done with pool play at Houston’s Daikin Park and needs the Italians to beat Mexico Wednesday night to be guaranteed a spot in the quarterfinals. If Mexico beats Italy, the three teams will be knotted at 3-1 and the winners will be determined by a tiebreaker, with the team that allowed the most runs eliminated.

Italy starter Michael Lorenzen allowed two hits in 4 2/3 scoreless innings to keep the Americans off balance.

Pete Crow-Armstrong homered twice and drove in four runs, and Gunnar Henderson added a solo shot for the U.S., but the rally came up short when Greg Weissert struck out Aaron Judge with a runner on to end it.

Crow-Armstrong’s second homer, a shot to the second deck in right field, cut the lead to 8-6 with one out in the ninth. Bobby Witt Jr. singled and Henderson struck out before Judge whiffed to start the Italian celebration.

The U.S. was down by 8-1 with two out in the seventh when Crow-Armstrong hit a majestic three-run homer to right field.

Kyle Schwarber and Will Smith hit back-to-back singles with two out in the eighth before Roman Anthony’s RBI single on a line drive to left field. But Ron Marinaccio retired pinch-hitter Bryce Harper on a fly ball to end the inning.

Teel’s home run to the Crawford boxes in left field gave Italy an early lead with two out in the third. McLean then plunked Caglianone before Antonacci’s homer to the bullpen in right-center made it 3-0.

Caglianone’s two-run shot off Ryan Yarbrough pushed the lead to 5-0 with no outs in the fourth.

The Italians added a run on an error, another on a sacrifice fly and a third on a wild pitch by Brad Keller to push the lead to 8-0 in a sloppy sixth by the U.S.

The U.S. finally got on the board with Henderson’s homer in the sixth.