crisis

Italian cricket is in crisis days after the country’s T20 World Cup debut, as it emerged that a senior national governing body official has been investigated over a sexual assault allegation.

Federazione Cricket Italiana (FCRI) women’s cricket co-ordinator Prabath Ekneligoda, 57, was the subject of a criminal investigation relating to a claim he inappropriately touched a member of the Azzurri women’s national team.

Multiple members of the Italy board are said to have resigned over this case and other governance issues, BBC Sport has been told.

The sexual assault allegation was made to police in Rome in March last year by a player who has represented the national team.

The player, whose identity is protected for legal reasons, alleged that the sexual assault occurred during a massage on a knee injury at a training session, and she had been scared to report the incident because she feared it would cost her a spot in the team.

An investigation was concluded by a Rome prosecutor in November 2025 and Ekneligoda was interviewed by police the following month.

A decision is now set to be made on whether there is sufficient evidence to bring it to trial. Ekneligoda’s lawyer said his client denies the allegations, that there are ulterior motives to the allegations, and that a witness supports his version of events.

FCRI said in a statement to BBC Sport it “noted proceedings are currently under way before the federal prosecutor’s office” and will “co-operate with the relevant authorities”.

“The Italian Cricket Federation reiterates that its conduct is guided by principles of fairness, transparency and the protection of its registered members, as well as by the ethical and civic standards that underpin the sporting system,” added the statement.

“The federation therefore defers to the competent judicial authorities for any determinations arising from the matter.”

Ekneligoda, who is originally from Sri Lanka, was suspended from his role with the FCRI in November but has remained a visible presence on the Italian cricket scene.

He is the partner of FCRI president Maria Lorena Haz Paz and accompanied her to India for the men’s T20 World Cup.

BBC Sport has seen evidence that Ekneligoda attended Italy’s matches wearing official accreditation and was permitted to sit with the rest of the FCRI party.

Ekneligoda was also seen at various events laid on for Italy’s cricket delegation, including a reception at the Italian consulate in Kolkata for officials, players and coaching staff.

The FCRI, its president Haz Paz, and safeguarding officers, had full knowledge of the seriousness of the claims made against Ekneligoda before the World Cup.

Last weekend, Il Messaggero, external and Corriere della Sera, external reported the allegations in the Italian media for the first time.

As of Monday, Ekneligoda was still listed as the women’s cricket coordinator on the FCRI website.

Sources have told BBC Sport that some members of the FCRI’s board have resigned over the matter, and other governance issues, which has placed Haz Paz’s position under greater scrutiny.

Senior officials in Italian cricket fear potential reputational damage, and the possibility of legal cases, will hamper opportunities to capitalise on their debut T20 World Cup appearance and grow the game further in the country.

Haz Paz was appointed president of the Italian cricket federation in February 2025 until 2028.

Italy’s debut at the T20 World Cup, and the stories of some of their players, had captured the imagination of the cricket world.

The Azzurri failed to make the Super 8 stage but beat Nepal in Mumbai and gave England a scare in Kolkata in their Group C fixtures.

Environment group says FBI is visiting climate activists’ homes as Trump administration rolls back pollution protections.

Environmental group Extinction Rebellion has said that climate change activists associated with the group are being investigated by the Trump administration, which is also openly working to roll back environmental protections in the United States.

The group’s New York chapter said that at least seven of its activists have been visited by FBI agents since Trump’s second term began last year, including one person who had two special agents from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force come to their home on February 6.

The Department of Justice also opened an investigation into the environmental group Climate Defiance earlier this month in response to what Extinction Rebellion said was a “viral peaceful protest”.

“Trump is weaponising the DOJ to attack peaceful protesters in order to appease a multi-trillion dollar fossil fuel industry that got him elected,” Extinction Rebellion’s New York chapter said in a statement shared on Instagram.

“We can only assume that they are feeling threatened by our movement,” the statement added.

Known as XR, the activist group garnered media attention worldwide through disruption, hitting roads, airports and other public transport networks with direct action protests against climate change in major cities.

The environmental group’s global website says it is a “decentralised, international and politically non-partisan movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly” on the climate emergency.

Activist Greta Thunberg has previously attended actions organised by the group.

‘The single largest deregulatory action in American history’

According to the natural resource monitoring group Global Witness, fossil fuel companies, including Chevron and Exxon, donated $19m to President Donald Trump’s inaugural fund last year, representing 7.8 percent of the total amount raised. A number of fossil fuel companies also donated to Trump’s re-election campaign.

Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”, has taken several steps to fulfil his campaign promise to “drill, baby, drill” as president, including expanding oil extraction in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Trump administration also recently revoked a 2009 government declaration known as the “endangerment finding”, which has been used as the legal basis for regulating pollution under the Clean Air Act, which was originally adopted in 1963.

Trump, who described the endangerment finding as “one of the greatest scams in history”, has claimed that repealing it was “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far”.

The move has prompted alarm from environmental and health groups, more than a dozen of which filed a lawsuit on Wednesday over the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to withdraw the endangerment finding, saying removing it will lead to “more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths”.

In the past two days, the U.S. Air Force has sent six of its 16 E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) radar planes to bases in Europe. Two of those jets are now headed to the Middle East, and the others will likely follow, as a massive buildup of U.S. airpower continues ahead of potential strikes on Iran. The deployment of nearly 40 percent of all Air Force E-3s underscores how critical the aircraft remain, but also the challenges of meeting intense operational demands with a rapidly aging and shrunken-down fleet. It also further calls into question a puzzling Pentagon move to axe the purchase of replacement E-7 Wedgetail jets, which Congress has now reversed.

Readers can first get caught up on the full scope of the U.S. buildup around the Middle East in our recent reporting here.

As of yesterday, a pair of E-3s had arrived at RAF Mildenhall in the United Kingdom after traveling from their home station at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. Four more AWACS jets from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma had also touched down at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Online flight tracking data shows that the E-3s at Mildenhall have now departed and are headed toward the Middle East. There is widespread expectation that those aircraft, as well as the ones at Ramstein, will eventually make their way to Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

As noted, the U.S. Air Force currently has just 16 E-3s remaining in its inventory, roughly half the size of what it was just a few years ago. Six aircraft represent 37.5 percent of the total fleet. However, not all Sentry radar planes are available for operational tasking at any one time. For example, the average mission-capable rate for the E-3 fleet during the 2024 Fiscal Year was 55.68 percent, according to a story last year from Air & Space Forces Magazine. At the time of writing, this appears to be the most recent readiness data the Air Force has released for the E-3s. As such, the six forward-deployed AWACS jets represent an even larger percentage of the aircraft that can actually be sent out on real-world missions. This includes providing radar coverage for alert scrambles of fighter jets defending the homeland. This happens in some circumstances in the lower 48 states, but it is standard practice in Alaska, where there are usually a couple of E-3s typically stationed, with one on alert to launch in support of the fighters, which happens regularly. This is something we will come back to later on.

As TWZ has already noted, the deployment of E-3s to the Middle East is one of the clearest indicators that the final pieces for a major air campaign against Iran are falling into place. We made a similar observation about the appearance of AWACS aircraft flying close to the Venezuelan coast last December in the lead-up to the operation to capture that country’s dictatorial leader, Nicolas Maduro.

The E-3 is best known as a flying radar station, with its array contained inside a spinning dome mounted on top of the rear of the fuselage. From its perch, the Sentry can track hostile and friendly air and naval movements across a broad area of the battlespace. Its look-down radar capability offers particular advantages for spotting and tracking lower flying threats, including drones and cruise missiles. Kamikaze drones, as well as cruise and ballistic missiles, would be a central feature in any Iranian retaliatory attacks on American assets on land and at sea in the Middle East.

However, each Sentry, which typically flies with 13 to 19 mission specialists onboard in addition to a four-person flight crew, is much more than just its radar. It has other passive sensors and an advanced communications suite. Its combined capabilities make it a key battle management node during operations, and not just in the aerial domain.

E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning & Control System. Take-Off, Landing, Interior Shots

“The radar and computer subsystems on the E-3 Sentry can gather and present broad and detailed battlefield information. This includes position and tracking information on enemy aircraft and ships, and location and status of friendly aircraft and naval vessels. The information can be sent to major command and control centers in rear areas or aboard ships,” according to the Air Force. “In support of air-to-ground operations, the Sentry can provide direct information needed for interdiction, reconnaissance, airlift and close-air support for friendly ground forces. It can also provide information for commanders of air operations to gain and maintain control of the air battle.”

Altgoether, E-3 crews run the air battle, and also serve as a key battle management node during operations outside of the aerial domain. These command and control functions would be key in any future offensive operations against Iran, as well as for defending against any retaliation.

At the same time, the Air Force has been open for years now about the increasing challenges involved in operating and sustaining the E-3 fleet. The last new production Sentry aircraft were delivered in 1992, and were also some of the last derivatives of the Boeing 707 airliner to ever be produced. Air Force E-3s have received substantial upgrades since then, but the underlying aircraft are still aging and are increasingly difficult to support. Between 2023 and 2024, the Sentry fleet notably shrank from 31 aircraft down to its present size, in part to try to help improve overall readiness. The fact that U.S. E-3s are powered by long-out-of-production low-bypass Pratt & Whitney TF33 turbofans has been cited as a particular issue.

“The first thing I would offer is there’s already – whether there’s 31 airplanes or 16 airplanes – there’s a gap today,” now-retired Gen. Mark Kelly, then head of Air Combat Command, told TWZ and other outlets at the Air & Space Forces Association’s main annual conference in 2022. “There’s a reason why there’s exactly zero airlines on planet earth that fly the 707 with TF-33 engines.”

“The last airline was Saha Airlines in Iran,” Kelly added at that time. “We basically have 31 airplanes in hospice care, the most expensive care there is. And we need to get into the maternity business and out of hospices.”

As already noted, the remaining E-3 fleet has continued to struggle with readiness issues amid consistently high demand. These issues have been compounded by resistance over the years to acquiring a direct replacement. When the Air Force finally did decide to supplant at least a portion of the Sentry fleet with newer and more capable E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft, that effort turned into a protracted saga.

The Air Force officially started down the road of acquiring E-7s in 2022, but the program became mired in delays and cost overruns. Last year, the Pentagon revealed its intention to axe the Wedgetail purchases in favor of an interim solution involving buying more of the U.S. Navy’s E-2 Hawkeye airborne early warning and control planes. That, in turn, would serve as a bridge to a longer-term Air Force goal of pushing most, if not all, airborne target tracking sensor layer tasks into space. Questions about the survivability of the E-7 were also cited as having contributed to the decision.

Questions were immediately raised about the new plan, especially about the viability of the E-2, a lower and slower flying aircraft designed around carrier-based operations, to meet Air Force needs, as TWZ has explored in the past. The service has also said that it does not expect new space-based capabilities to be operational before, at best, the early 2030s. Traditional airborne early warning and control aircraft are expected to continue playing important roles even after that milestone is reached.

“I have been concerned. We have E-3 capability up north, of course, but we were all counting on the E-7 Wedgetail coming our way. We’re kind of limping along up north right now, which is unfortunate. And the budget proposes terminating the program,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, had said during a June 2025 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, where the E-7 cancellation plans first emerged publicly. “Again, the E-3 fleet [is] barely operational now, and I understand the intent to shift towards the space-based – you call it the ‘air moving target indicators’ – but my concern is that you’ve got a situation where you’re not going to be able to use more duct tape to hold things together until you put this system in place. And, so, how we maintain that level of operational readiness and coverage, I’m not sure how you make it.”

Congress has since taken action to save the E-7, but the program may now be even more delayed as a result of the impasse over the past year. Legislators have also taken steps to block any further E-3 retirements, at least through the end of Fiscal Year 2026.

Still, the truncated E-3 fleet clearly remains under immense strain. Sen. Murkowski’s comments last Summer also remain particularly relevant in light of the fact that two of the six E-3s recently sent across the Atlantic came from Elmendorf in Alaska. Recent tracking data suggests that there may only be one Sentry at Elmendorf now to meet operational needs in and around the High North, a part of the world that has only grown in strategic significance in recent years.

There is also a question now about the availability of E-3 coverage should a crisis break out somewhere in the Indo-Pacific. If a major contingency were to emerge in the region tomorrow, the Air Force would be faced with a situation compounded not just by low availability rates and high demand elsewhere globally, but also the so-called ‘tyranny of distance.’ The sheer expanse of the Pacific, much of which is water, presents additional requirements when it comes to total coverage area and sortie generation rates to maintain a steady flow of aircraft on station around designated operating areas. Just getting to those areas and back could take many hours. Any future conflict in the region could occur over a massive total area, as well, which would be problematic for such a tiny fleet. All this is exacerbated by the age of the airframes and copious amount of maintenance to keep them flying in the best of conditions, let alone when deployed to the Pacific.

As a point of comparison, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which would be fighting from its home turf during a major conflict in the Pacific, has made significant investments in a diverse and still growing array of airborne early warning and control aircraft. The Chinese see a force-multiplying need for these aircraft, and for large numbers of them to be able to cover a lot of territory at once, as you can read more about in this past TWZ feature.

Moving capabilities into space is an admirable goal, and has many advantages in theory, but the capabilities are not available now. Further, while some of the sensing can be distributed to other platforms and leveraged via advanced networking, there still is a place for an integrated and powerful airborne early warning and control solution, at least till the ‘all-seeing’ space layer is actually in place. Saving money now by leaving such a glaring gap, especially in the current security environment globally, appears bizarrely short-sighted.

It does remain to be seen whether or not the United States ultimately launches a new major air campaign against Iran. U.S. and Iranian officials have now met twice to try to reach some type of diplomatic agreement, with the focus largely on the latter country’s nuclear ambitions. At the same time, the ongoing build-up in U.S. airpower around the Middle East, and not just limited to the E-3s, aligns with recent reports that assets are being positioned at least for possiblity of a sustained, weeks-long operation.

“The boss [President Trump] is getting fed up,” an unnamed Trump adviser said, according to a report today from Axios. “Some people around him warn him against going to war with Iran, but I think there is 90% chance we see kinetic action in the next few weeks.”

“One thing about the negotiation I will say this morning is, in some ways it went well. They agreed to meet afterwards,” Vice President J.D. Vance said during an interview on Fox News yesterday following the second round of negotiations. “But in other ways it was very clear that the President has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.”

VP VANCE on negotiations with Iran: “One thing about the negotiation I will say this morning is, in some ways it went well. They agreed to meet afterwards, but in other ways it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to… pic.twitter.com/AbgH9t3lY0

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 17, 2026

For its part, Iran has continued to threaten major retaliation in response to any new U.S. strikes.

Regardless, as mentioned, the deployment of the six E-3s is one of the strongest signs that the last pieces needed for a new major operation against Iran are increasingly in position. All of this puts a particular spotlight on the critical capabilities that the AWACS aircraft provide, but also the new strain that has been put on such a highly in-demand, but shrinking fleet, as well as the puzzling decision to slow-roll or entirely eliminate their replacement.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Corrie fans joked ‘someone is getting fired’ after the groundbreaking flashforward episode was uploaded to YouTube on Friday, giving away vital details ahead of tonight’s show

Bosses at Coronation Street were left reeling after accidentally leaking tonight’s flashforward episode days before the top secret show was due to air.

Fans were stunned after finding out which five characters are in the firing line early, with one set to be murdered in April. This morning, Corrie put out the names of those at risk of a grisly death as the identities of the ITV soap’s stars who could meet their end were announced.

Groomer Megan Walsh, manipulative Theo Silverton and family-wrecker Carl Webster could soon be getting their comeuppance with quirky landlady Maggie Driscoll and suspicious newcomer Jodie Ramsey also picked as possible murder victims. But some viewers found out days ago.

The programme, which is set to air tonight, was briefly uploaded on the YouTube on Friday before being hauled offline. It didn’t go unnoticed as one fan took to X to write: “Someone at Corrie leaking Mondays episode on a Friday afternoon oh dear someone’s getting fired.”

The groundbreaking episode begins with a police interview taking place on April 23. A a shocked and Betsy Swain is seen telling detectives about finding the dead body of someone she knows.

Dressed in wedding clothes, the cop’s daughter explains that she had been at the marriage of her mum Lisa Swain to Carla Connor, but was heading into town when she made the shocking discovery. As the episode returns to the present day we begin to see how the behaviour of the five characters could lead to their possible death two months later.

Twisted teacher Megan is caught up in a web of lies as she continues to groom impressionable teen Will Driscoll. Doing anything to protect her family, Maggie gives a fake alibi for Will to stop him being charged with the Christmas Day attack on Daniel Osbourne.

Carl has burnt all his bridges when he let Debbie take the blame for the Corriedale accident which saw Billy Mayhew perish. Since finding out Debbie is actually his mum and not his sister, Carl has pressed the self-destruct button and as he continues to goad both family and neighbours – he would have no shortage of people looking to settle a score.

Theo’s coercive control over Todd has reached new lows and with their wedding looming, will Todd finally confide in his friends about what has been going on before it is too late?

Despite initial reservations, the Platts have welcomed Shona’s estranged sister Jodie Ramsey into their home. But Jodie has been keeping secrets from them, and it seems she has got mixed up with some pretty shady characters in her past. Will trouble follow Jodie to Weatherfield, or could she upset people closer to home with her behaviour?

As the episode comes to a close we flash forward again to April 23 and the five characters are on the cobbles as Lisa and Carla’s wedding fireworks light up the night sky.

As the lights flicker a battered and bruised Carl, frantic Jodie, a menacing Maggie, a bloody-nosed Megan and a furtive Theo stare into the darkness. In the final moments the terrified scream of Betsy Swain fills the air – but which Weatherfield resident will be the murder victim?

Coronation Street airs weeknights at 8:30pm on ITV1 and ITV X.

Cable seen by Al Jazeera says the US ‘strongly objects’ to the island nation seeking support for ICJ’s landmark climate ruling.

The United States is urging governments to pressure Vanuatu to withdraw a United Nations draft resolution supporting a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that countries have a legal obligation to act on climate change.

A US State Department cable seen by Al Jazeera on Saturday says that the Trump administration “strongly objects” to the proposed resolution being circulated by the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu in support of last year’s ruling by the ICJ – the UN’s top court.

The Associated Press news agency, which also reported on the cable, said that it was circulated to all US embassies and consulates this week, shortly after Vanuatu announced it was putting forward the draft UN resolution for consideration.

“We are strongly urging Vanuatu to immediately withdraw its draft resolution and cease attempting to wield the Court’s Advisory Opinion as a basis for creating an avenue to pursue any misguided claims of international legal obligations,” a copy of the cable seen by Al Jazeera states.

The ICJ’s 15 judges considered tens of thousands of pages of written submissions and two weeks of oral arguments during the court’s biggest-ever case, before delivering their verdict last year that states have a legal obligation to act on the “existential threat” of climate change.

The ICJ case took place after Vanuatu won the support of 132 countries in the UN General Assembly, which can request opinions from The Hague-based court.

It also came as the Trump administration has sought to undo US action on climate change, both at home and at the UN.

The US cable claims that Vanuatu’s proposed UN resolution in support of the ICJ opinion was based on “speculative climate models to fabricate purported legal obligations that seek to assign blame and encourage baseless claims”.

Louis Charbonneau, Human Rights Watch’s director at the UN, urged support for Vanuatu’s draft resolution on Friday, saying “governments should live up to their obligation” to protect human rights around the world by protecting the environment.

“Responsible governments shouldn’t allow themselves to be bullied by those that reject the global scientific consensus and continue to support reliance on harmful fossil fuels,” he said.

Vanuatu’s UN Ambassador Odo Tevi, who said his country wants a vote on the resolution by the end of March, has stressed that it would ensure that the clarity in the ICJ ruling “strengthens global climate action and multilateral cooperation”.

An article in Vanuatu’s Daily Post newspaper said that the draft resolution has been endorsed by countries including Barbados, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Jamaica, Kenya, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, the Netherlands, Palau, the Philippines, Singapore and Sierra Leone.

Many of these countries are already experiencing the worsening effects of climate change, including increasingly severe storms.

Trump, who has promised to “drill, baby drill” for oil in his second term, has withdrawn the US from UN climate bodies, including the UN’s top climate change treaty body, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Trump has also threatened to impose sanctions on diplomats who voted for a levy on polluting shipping fuels at the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

A fire at a key fuel refinery in the capital comes amid Cuba’s mounting fuel emergency due to US-imposed restrictions.

A fire broke out at a key fuel processing plant in the Cuban capital Havana, threatening to exacerbate an energy crisis as the country struggles under an oil blockade imposed by the United States.

A large plume of smoke was seen rising above Havana Bay from the Nico Lopez refinery on Friday, drawing the attention of the capital’s residents before fading as fire crews fought to bring the situation under control.

Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines said the fire, which erupted in a warehouse at the refinery, was eventually extinguished and that “the cause is under investigation”. There were no injuries and the fire did not spread to nearby areas, the ministry said in a post on social media.

“The workday at the Nico Lopez Refinery continues with complete normalcy,” the ministry said.

The location of the fire was close to where two oil tankers were moored in Havana’s harbour.

Cuba, which has been in a severe economic crisis for years, relied heavily on oil imports from Venezuela, which have been cut off since the abduction of the country’s leader Nicolas Maduro by United States forces last month.

US President Donald Trump has also threatened Cuba’s government and passed a recent executive order allowing for trade tariffs on any country that supplies oil to the island.

The country has seen widespread power outages due to the lack of fuel. Bus and train services have been cut, some hotels have closed, schools and universities have been restricted, and public sector workers are on a four-day work week. Staffing at hospitals was also cut back.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week of a humanitarian “collapse” in Cuba if its energy needs go unmet.

On Thursday, two Mexican navy vessels carrying more than 800 tonnes of humanitarian aid arrived in Havana, underscoring the nation’s growing need for humanitarian assistance amid the tightening US stranglehold on fuel.

Experts in maritime transport tracking told the AFP news agency that no foreign fuel or oil tankers have arrived in Cuba in weeks.

Cuba can only produce about one-third of its total fuel requirements.

Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos de Cossio accused the US of carrying out “massive punishment” against the Cuban people in a post on social media Friday.

Cuba requires imports of fuel and “the US is applying threats [and] coercive measures against any country that provides it”, the deputy minister said.

“Lack of fuel harms transportation, medical services, schooling, energy, production of food, the standard of living,” he said.

“Massive punishment is a crime,” he added.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has said her government seeks to “open the doors for dialogue to develop” between Cuba and the US and has criticised Washington’s oil restrictions as “unfair”.

Gezani is forecast to return to cyclone status when it strikes southern Mozambique on Friday evening.

Nearly 40 people have been killed and more than 12,000 others displaced after Cyclone Gezani slammed into Madagascar’s second-largest city earlier this week, as Mozambique braced for the storm’s arrival.

Updating its tolls as assessments progressed, Madagascar’s National Office for Risk and Disaster Management (BNGRC) said on Thursday it had recorded 38 deaths, while six people remained missing and at least 374 were injured.

Gezani made landfall on Tuesday at the Indian Ocean island nation Madagascar’s eastern coastal city, Toamasina, bringing winds that reached 250km/h (155mph).

Madagascar’s new leader, Colonel Michael Randrianirina, has declared a national disaster and called for “international solidarity”, saying the cyclone had “ravaged up to 75 percent of Toamasina and surrounds”.

Images from the AFP news agency showed the battered city of 500,000 people littered with trees felled by strong winds and roofs blown off buildings.

Residents dug through piles of debris, planks and corrugated metal to repair their makeshift homes.

More than 18,000 homes were destroyed in the cyclone, according to the BNGRC, with at least 50,000 damaged or flooded. Authorities say many of the deaths were caused by building collapses, as many give inadequate shelter from strong storms.

The main road linking the city to the capital, Antananarivo, was cut off in several places, “blocking humanitarian convoys”, it said, while telecommunications were unstable.

The storm also caused major destruction in the Atsinanana region surrounding Toamasina, the disaster authority said, adding that assessments were still under way.

France announced the dispatch of food aid and rescue teams from its Reunion Island, about 1,000km (600 miles) away.

Thousands of people had been forced to leave their homes, said the United Nations’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), describing “widespread destruction and disruption”.

The cyclone’s landfall was likely one of the strongest recorded in the region during the satellite era, rivalling Geralda in February 1994, it said. That storm killed at least 200 people and affected half a million more.

Gezani weakened after landfall but continued to sweep across the island as a tropical storm until late on Wednesday.

It was forecast to return to cyclone status as it reaches the Mozambique Channel, according to the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre La Reunion (CMRS), and could from Friday evening strike southern Mozambique.

Mozambican authorities issued warnings on Thursday about the approaching storm, saying it could cause violent winds and rough seas of 10-metre waves and urging people to leave the area of expected impact.

Both Madagascar and Mozambique are vulnerable to destructive storms that blow in off the Indian Ocean. Just last month, the northwestern part of Madagascar was hit by Cyclone Fytia, killing at least 14 people.

Mozambique has already faced devastating flooding from seasonal rainfall, with nearly 140 lives lost since October 1, according to the country’s National Disasters Management Institute.

Russia will operate only return flights from Cuba as ‘evacuation’ of Russian citizens visiting the Caribbean island gets under way.

Russia is preparing to evacuate its citizens who are visiting Cuba, Moscow’s aviation authorities said, after a United States-imposed oil blockade on the island nation has choked off supplies of jet fuel.

“Due to the difficulties with refuelling aircraft in Cuba, Rossiya Airlines and Nordwind Airlines have been forced to adjust their flight schedules to airports in the country,” Russia’s federal aviation regulator Rosaviatsia said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Rossiya Airlines will operate a number of return flights only – from Havana and Varadero to Moscow – to ensure the evacuation of Russian tourists currently in Cuba,” the regulator said.

About 5,000 Russian tourists may be on the island, Russia’s Association of Tour Operators said earlier this week.

Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development separately called on citizens not to travel to Cuba amid its worst fuel crisis in years, caused by the US choking off supplies of oil from Venezuela following the US military’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January.

Russia’s TASS news agency said the Russian embassy in Havana is in contact with national carrier Aeroflot and Cuban aviation authorities to “ensure our citizens return home safely”.

Aeroflot has announced repatriation flights for Russians, TASS said, reporting also that the embassy in Havana told Russian media outlet Izvestia that Moscow plans to send humanitarian aid shipments of oil and petroleum products to Cuba.

Humanitarian ‘collapse’ in Cuba

A traditional ally of Havana, Moscow has accused Washington of attempting to “suffocate” the Caribbean island nation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Moscow was discussing “possible solutions” to provide Havana with “whatever assistance” it needs.

More than 130,000 Russians visited Cuba in 2025, according to reports, the third-largest group of visitors to the island after Canadians and Cubans living abroad.

Air Canada and the Canadian airlines Air Transat and WestJet have also cut flights to Cuba due to the fuel shortages.

While Cuba has been in a severe economic crisis for years, largely caused by longstanding US sanctions due to Washington’s antipathy towards Havana’s socialist leadership, the situation has become dire since the return of President Donald Trump to the White House.

Trump has directly threatened Cuba’s government and passed a recent executive order allowing for the imposition of trade tariffs on countries that supply oil to Cuba.

Cuba, which can produce just a third of its total fuel requirements, has seen widespread power outages due to the lack of fuel. Bus and train services have been cut, some hotels have closed, schools and universities have been restricted, and public sector workers are on a four-day work week.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week of a humanitarian “collapse” in Cuba if its energy needs go unmet.

New York City, United States – For 14 years, BC Dodge built a career telling other people’s stories as a marketing and communications professional in the nonprofit sector in the Washington, DC area in the United States. But in late 2024, that stable career hit a speed bump.

He was laid off from his job amid a round of restructuring. The news landed without warning. One day he had a job, and the next he was sitting at home, staring at the numbers, trying to figure out how to keep paying the mortgage and putting food on the table.

He is married, and his partner is a teacher, but the math did not work. One salary might cover things for a little while, but not long enough to maintain long-term stability.

So he started applying for new work immediately. Over three months, he submitted 350 job applications. He got six interviews.

After months of searching, something moved.

He advanced in the hiring process for a Washington, DC–based nonprofit, making it far enough to sit across from senior leadership. It felt like he finally caught a break.

Then the ground shifted again. As Dodge was interviewing for a new job, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, was advising the administration of US President Donald Trump on how to shrink the federal government, and that meant cutting funding to agencies that provide contracts and funds to swaths of nonprofit organisations around the country. The effects rippled outward, and Dodge was caught in the crosshairs.

Contracts were cancelled and funding streams dried up. Nonprofits that depend on government support had to pull back and scale down ambitions — those very same nonprofits from whom Dodge sought employment.

“I got a call from HR saying they weren’t going to hire for the position, and that all hiring was on hold. I couldn’t argue with them, because I’d been hearing the same thing from organisations I’d spoken to since I started applying. ‘We were relying on federal funds, and now they’re gone,’” Dodge said.

Then it was back to the drawing board. He began searching yet again, but this time with a cloud of uncertainty looming over the entire industry he works in. Dodge finally took what he could get — part-time work in his field. The pay was well below what he had been earning before, but he accepted it anyway. Some income, he reasoned, was better than none.

The result is underemployment. Underemployment can manifest in several ways, often when workers are seeking full-time work but can only find part-time positions, or when the jobs they work do not fully utilise their skills and training. It is generally associated with industries like restaurants or retail, but it also reaches into fields with fewer resources and shrinking opportunities, including the nonprofit sector, where jobs are increasingly precarious and full-time stability is harder to find because of the wave of government funding cuts in 2025.

The upshot is lower incomes for underemployed workers, sometimes below the cost of living or even pushing them into the ranks of the working poor.

Underemployment has been on the rise, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which has tracked the rate of underemployment since 1978. Today, 8 percent of the US population is underemployed, up 0.5 percent from 2024 and it is up 1.1 percent from 2023.

At the same time, many in the US are seeing their expenses increase.

The impact of tariffs has hit low-to-middle-income earners harder than others. Analysis from the Yale Budget Lab found that lower-income households are paying a higher percentage of their post-tax income on goods subject to tariffs as opposed to higher-income households, all while costs for necessities like healthcare are increasing.

Earlier this year, Congressional leaders failed to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. Premiums increased by an average of 144 percent, according to analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“Some people have lost their jobs and found new ones that pay less, but others have kept their jobs, but their healthcare premiums have increased. Their electric bills have also gone up. Their salaries no longer cover basic living costs,” Jillian Hishaw, a personal bankruptcy lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina, said.

She said that because of increased costs like these and a stalling job market, she is seeing an increase in inquiries about personal bankruptcy filings in efforts by potential clients not to lose their homes to foreclosure.

“In one day last week, 85 foreclosures were filed in Mecklenburg County [where Charlotte is located]. Foreclosures happen daily, but 85 in a single day is unusually high. Two years ago, the daily average was 10 to 20, but now filings are approaching triple digits each day,” Hishaw said.

Shrinking options

The surging economic pressures hit workers across various sectors, including financial and administrative services. An Ohio-based accountant who did not want his name to be published, has worked a patchwork of accounting and administrative jobs over the past few years. In March, he was laid off from a research organisation in central Ohio.

After months of searching, he found new work, but not as an accountant, and the pay falls far short of covering his cost of living.

“I’m working as a sales coordinator, which I really don’t want to be doing, but it was the only thing I could land with how bad things are. It’s not enough to live on,” he said.

The labour market is under strain. Layoffs reached more than 1.1 million in 2025, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, while job creation failed to keep pace, with just 584,000 jobs added. As a result, more workers are settling for underpaid or part-time work that does not meet basic living expenses, including Dodge and the accountant.

Michele Evermore, senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance, says that economic uncertainty driven by tariffs and developments in artificial intelligence has put businesses across a wide set of sectors essentially on pause — maintaining the status quo or scaling back.

“People who are already at the margins are getting kicked out entirely, and that’s placing pressure on everyone who is clinging to a job,” Evermore told Al Jazeera.

In January, one of the key measures of underemployment, the number of people who work part-time for economic reasons, such as an inability to find full-time work or had their hours reduced, hit 4.9 million. It was a 453,000 decline from the month before, but is up 410,000 from this time last year, according to the January jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday.

Long-term unemployment jumped 386,000 from this time a year ago to 1.8 million, although it remains unchanged compared with the previous month.

The nonprofit sector has been hit particularly hard in the last year, losing 28,729 jobs in 2025, up sharply from 5,640 losses the year before, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Like the Ohio accountant, Dodge has been searching for new opportunities since he lost his full-time role a year and a half ago. He has applied for 460 jobs and only landed a handful of interviews.

Working weekends, washing dishes

The market is only getting tighter. US employers cut more than 108,000 jobs in January, while employers only announced intentions to hire 5,300 new roles for the month, the lowest on record since Challenger, Gray & Christmas started tracking that in 2009.

“Employers aren’t wanting to make any big investments right now, including increasing salaries to their workforce,” Evermore, who served as a policy adviser in the US Labor Department during the administration of former US President Joe Biden, added.

In December, labour market turnover remained stagnant. Amid economic uncertainty and a slowdown in new job growth, many Americans are hanging on to the jobs they already have. Job openings fell to 6.5 million, down 386,000 from the previous month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labour Turnover Survey (JOLTS).

Hiring and separations, which include layoffs and firings, were unchanged. That followed November’s report, which similarly showed little movement in both new hiring and the number of workers leaving their jobs.

Combined, that means that for the underemployed, finding a new role, either part-time to augment their existing income, or to replace it altogether, is increasingly difficult for people like the accountant.

“I’m also working weekends at a friend’s cafe, washing dishes, and I’m still applying and interviewing for other opportunities. But it’s the same story, no offers. At the same time, I’m debating whether to switch professions or even go back to school, even though I already have a master’s degree,” he said.

That shared distress has also created an unlikely sense of camaraderie among those struggling to get by, even as the outlook remains bleak.

Dodge finds it in late-night scrolls through Reddit, watching strangers narrate versions of the same stalled search.

“I doomscroll a lot,” he said, “getting depressed about the state of politics and the global economy, and taking some solace in knowing I’m not the only one struggling to find viable employment after 12, 13, 14, even 15 months.”

For now, that recognition of others stuck in the same place, hitting the same walls, is enough to keep him moving forward, submitting applications and waiting for a response that might not even come.

Humanitarian operations have been impeded by attacks, looting and restrictions on movement.

Ajok Ding Duot crouches on the dusty floor of a displacement camp in South Sudan’s Lakes state, cracking nuts open one by one.

She and her family of 10 arrived here about two weeks ago, fleeing intensifying fighting between government and opposition forces in neighbouring Jonglei state.

While they have found temporary shelter, Duot said there was hardly anything to eat at the camp. To survive, they rely on these nuts and wild fruits.

“We don’t know anything about what the government is doing. They’re fighting, but we don’t know what the problem is,” she told Al Jazeera.

“We’re in darkness. It’s only ever the humanitarian organisations who help.”

South Sudan has seen renewed fighting in recent weeks between government soldiers and fighters loyal to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-in-Opposition (SPLA-IO).

The United Nations says an estimated 280,000 people have been displaced by the fighting and air attacks since late December, including more than 235,000 across Jonglei alone.

The UN’s children agency UNICEF also warned last week that more than 450,000 children are at risk of acute malnutrition due to mass displacement and the halting of critical medical services in Jonglei.

Nearly 10 million people need life-saving humanitarian assistance across South Sudan, a country still reeling from a ruinous civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people and displaced millions between 2013 and 2018.

Humanitarian operations, however, have been crippled by attacks and looting, with observers saying both sides in the conflict have prevented assistance from reaching areas where they believe civilians support their opponents.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) suspended its activities last week in Baliet county, in Upper Nile state, following repeated attacks on a convoy carrying humanitarian assistance.

The WFP said the suspension would remain in place until the safety of its staff could be guaranteed and authorities take immediate action to recover the stolen supplies.

Separately, medical humanitarian NGO Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said last week a hospital in Jonglei was hit by a government air attack, marking the 10th attack in 12 months on an MSF-run medical facility in the country.

In addition, the MSF health facility in Pieri, also in Jonglei, was looted by unknown assailants, forcing staff to flee. The organisation said the violence had left some 250,000 people without healthcare, as the NGO had been the only medical provider in the area.

MSF said the targeted attacks on its facilities have forced the closure of two hospitals in the Greater Upper Nile and the suspension of general healthcare activities in Jonglei, Upper Nile and Central Equatoria states.

On Sunday, UN chief Antonio Guterres “strongly” condemned the escalating violence in the country and warned that civilians continue to bear the brunt of the conflict.

In a statement, the secretary-general called on all parties “to immediately and decisively halt all military operations, de-escalate tensions through dialogue, uphold international law, protect civilians, and ensure safe and sustained humanitarian access and the security of aid workers and United Nations peacekeeping personnel and their assets”.

The Chadian government has launched the 2026 National Humanitarian Response Plan (NHRP) and the Refugee Response Plan (RRP) to coordinate assistance for vulnerable people uprooted by war. Amid a growing refugee crisis, including the arrival of 7,000 new Sudanese refugees at the eastern Oure Cassoni camp, the Chadian authorities established these schemes to tackle the humanitarian crisis overwhelming the country.

At an event held on Feb. 5, in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital city, the coordinator of the initiatives, Francois Batalingaya, commended humanitarian actors for their “constant engagement, which is essential for support to populations confronted by multiple crises”. He stressed the importance of mobilisation at both national and international levels, recognising the contributions of government, technical, financial, and humanitarian partners.

According to Batalingaya, the humanitarian plan is based on an analysis of four major drivers of crisis: conflicts and displacement, food and nutritional insecurity, sanitary emergencies, and climatic shocks. He revealed that 4.5 million people in Chad need assistance, with 3.4 million identified as priority targets, requiring nearly US$1 billion in financing.

He acknowledged persistent challenges, including financial deficits, insecurity, administrative constraints, and the need for stronger national appropriations and leadership. “Faced with these stakes, we must reinforce collective action and increase advocacy in order to avoid certain populations going without assistance,” he said.

The Minister of Social Action, National Solidarity and Humanitarian Affairs, Zara Mahamat Issa, described the launch of the NHRP and RRP as “a key moment for strategic planning and an exercise in accountability towards vulnerable populations.” She noted Chad’s continued solidarity in hosting refugees despite regional security crises, climate change, forced displacement, and socio-economic fragility.

“The government reaffirms its engagement to place the protection of vulnerable populations at the heart of its public action, considering humanitarian response as a factor of stability, social cohesion and sustainable development,” Zara said. She noted that transparency, accountability, and localisation of assistance are priorities, and called for better coordination amid limited resources.

During Batalingaya’s visit to the Oure Cassoni refugee camp, where more than 7,000 Sudanese refugees had recently arrived, he highlighted issues around the humanitarian crisis in Chad. He described the visit as “an immersion into an increasing humanitarian crisis which necessitates immediate responses.”

Testimonies from refugees, community leaders, and aid partners revealed feelings of uncertainty, exhaustion, and a shortage of basic necessities in the refugee camps. “Behind each of these problems are the suspended lives of children lacking access to education and families deprived of shelter,” stated a local humanitarian worker.

The refugees urgently need water, sanitation, healthcare, nutrition, food security, shelter, household items, protection, and education. “Oure Cassoni is an alarm signal. Without rapid and reinforced mobilisation, humanitarian needs would continue to overwhelm response capacities. The urgency is real, and inaction is no longer an option,” Batalingaya warned.

Loneliness is a growing epidemic worldwide, but in Japan, it has become particularly severe as the pressures of modern life increasingly isolate individuals from their communities.

A Place for You is a mental health hotline where dedicated volunteers provide critical support to thousands in need every day. Two people who are struggling to find meaning in their lives turn to the online chat service as they seek connection. As they become aware of their need for human bonds, they embark on a journey of healing and renewal.

Dear Tomorrow is a documentary film by Kaspar Astrup Schroder.

Volker Turk appeals for $400m after cuts to operations in 17 countries.

The human rights chief of the United Nations says his office has been pushed into “survival mode” as he appealed for $400m to cover its funding needs this year.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said on Thursday that budget cuts last year reduced operations in 17 countries, including Colombia, Myanmar and Chad.

Turk warned the cuts are undermining global human rights monitoring as he outlined his agency’s funding needs after the United States and other major Western donors last year reduced their humanitarian spending and support for UN-linked agencies.

“These cuts and reductions untie perpetrators’ hands everywhere, leaving them to do whatever they please,” he told diplomats at his office’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. “With crises mounting, we cannot afford a human rights system in crisis.”

While the US government under former President Joe Biden was the top single donor to Turk’s agency in voluntary contributions at $36m in 2024, the current administration under President Donald Trump halted its contributions in 2025.

“I am thankful to our 113 funding partners, including governments, private and multilateral donors, for their vital contributions,” Turk said. “But we are currently in survival mode, delivering under strain.”

Trump has repeatedly said the UN has potential but has failed to live up to it. During his time in office, the US has withdrawn from UN bodies such as the World Health Organization and UNESCO and cut funding to dozens of other agencies.

Last month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in a letter sent to all UN member nations that the world body faces “imminent financial collapse” unless its financial rules are overhauled or all 193 member nations pay their dues.

Last year, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights had appealed for $500m in voluntary contributions but received $257m. It received $191m through the regular budget, about $55m less than initially approved, The Associated Press news agency reported.

Laura Farnsworth Dogu is not, at first glance, your typical Trump appointee.

A career diplomat with postings under the Obama and Biden administrations, she represents a branch of government President Trump has cut back and long vilified.

Yet her selection for Trump’s top envoy to Venezuela signals a rare strategic choice, leveraging her experience with authoritarian regimes at a moment when Washington is recalibrating its approach to Caracas after the overthrow of Nicolás Maduro.

“There are not very many cases in this administration where they have relied on a career diplomat,” says Elliott Abrams, who served as Trump’s special representative for Venezuela in 2019. “This is actually an anomaly.”

Abrams suggests the appointment of Dogu — who met with the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, in Caracas on Monday — could reflect a desire for a seasoned expert to manage day-to-day diplomacy as the administration embarks on one of its most complex foreign policy undertakings.

“What he really needs is a professional to oversee the embassy and do the traditional diplomatic things while all policy is made in Washington,” Abrams said, referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Dogu, 62, arrived in Venezuela on Saturday to reopen the U.S. Embassy. She is recognized in Central America for her methodical, approachable style and deep understanding of Latin America’s political and cultural dynamics. However, her direct and outspoken approach has also led to controversy, with enraged officials in Honduras once wanting to declare her persona non grata.

Her new position as chargé d’affaires augments a career that includes senior roles in hostage recovery for the FBI and as ambassador to Nicaragua and Honduras during periods characterized by social and political volatility.

Before taking on her new position, she served as the foreign policy advisor to Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the leader of the operation that targeted Maduro. Her office did not respond to a request for interview.

Her experience navigating authoritarian governments and fragmented opposition movements makes her a pragmatic choice for a volatile post-Maduro transition. In a Senate hearing on Jan. 28, Rubio stressed the post’s importance for restoring a limited U.S. mission to gather intelligence and engage with Venezuelan stakeholders.

Dogu will be tasked with navigating Venezuela’s fractured opposition, which includes leaders inside the country, exiles abroad and figures struggling for influence in a potential transition. Abrams, the veteran diplomat, said engaging opposition actors, such as Maria Corina Machado, is a core diplomatic responsibility, particularly in a country the United States does not recognize as having a legitimate government. At the same time, maintaining relations with the turbulent, divided government will be her responsibility as well.

Abrams also cautioned that Washington priorities will define Dogu’s mission, and those priorities might not always align neatly with democratic objectives.

“The question is how the administration defines the interests of the United States,” Abrams said. “Does it include a free and democratic Venezuela? I don’t think we really know the answer yet.”

A family ethos of public service

A Texas resident and the daughter of a career Navy officer, Dogu often traces her commitment to public service to her upbringing in a military family. That ethos shaped her diplomatic career and has been a defining thread across generations, with both of her sons also serving in the military.

She has received multiple State Department honors, speaks Spanish, Turkish and Arabic and served in Mexico, El Salvador, Egypt, Turkey and Morocco.

Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela have been suspended since 2019. She takes over from John McNamara, who had served as chargé d’affaires since February 2025 and traveled to Venezuela in January to discuss the potential reopening of the embassy.

According to a statement, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil Pinto, indicated that the two governments will hold discussions to establish a “roadmap on matters of bilateral interest” and resolve disagreements through mutual respect and diplomatic dialogue.

Dogu is no stranger to Venezuelan issues. During a 2024 news conference, while serving as ambassador to Honduras, she publicly criticized the participation of sanctioned Venezuelan officials in Honduran government events.

“It’s surprising for me to see [Honduran] government officials sitting with members of a cartel based in Venezuela,” Dogu said at the time, referring to a meeting between the government of President Xiomara Castro and Venezuela’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López.

The United States has accused Padrino López of involvement in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine, and there is a $15-million reward for information resulting in his arrest or conviction.

Years earlier, Dogu had offered a blunt assessment of Venezuela’s economic collapse. Speaking in 2019 at Indiana University’s Latin American Studies program, she described Venezuela as “a very wealthy country, [with] huge oil supplies, but they’ve managed to drive their economy into the ground,” the Indiana Gazette reported.

Crisis and confrontations

Nominated by President Obama to serve as ambassador to Nicaragua in 2015, she said at her confirmation hearing that Obama had “rightly maintained” that “no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by another.” She added: “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.”

Dogu left her Nicaragua post in October 2018 amid nationwide protests and a severe government crackdown that resulted in at least 355 deaths, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. At the time, Dogu said she learned from authorities that paramilitary groups had targeted her for death.

In 2019, she linked the unrest in Nicaragua to the Cold War, citing an “unfortunate negative synergy” among Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela. “We never left the Cold War in Latin America,” she said.

Nicaraguan opposition figures, many now exiled, remember Dogu as an accessible diplomat. Former presidential candidate Juan Sebastián Chamorro called her a “methodical and approachable official” who upheld State Department policy and democratic principles.

Lesther Alemán, then a student leader who frequently interacted with Dogu during the 2018 protests, described her as publicly blunt but privately empathetic. Alemán emphasized Dogu’s ability to engage “all sides of the coin,” making her effective with both the “authoritarian governments and with the opposition.”

Alemán said Dogu initially had a good relationship with the Nicaraguan government, including a personal friendship with then-first lady and current co-President Rosario Murillo. However, that relationship soured after Dogu publicly supported opposition groups during the political crisis.

Her experience in Honduras proved more contentious. After Dogu made her statements regarding Venezuela, Rasel Tomé, vice president of the National Congress and a senior figure in the governing Liberty and Refoundation Party, urged lawmakers to declare her “persona non grata.”

Tomé justified this request by accusing her of making “interventionist statements” directed at the government.

Criticism continued after Dogu’s departure from Honduras in 2025. An opinion column published by the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras argued that her relationship with the country had been marked by distrust.

“Although Ambassador Laura Dogu makes an effort to say goodbye amicably,” the piece read, “we all know that the relationship between her and Honduras was not sincere because it was disrespectful; it was not trustworthy because it was interventionist.”

This week, the U.S. Embassy posted online an upbeat video of showing Dogu entering the mission, meeting with Venezuelans and outlining plans for what she calls a “friendly, stable, prosperous and democratic” Venezuela. “Our presence marks a new chapter,” she says, “and I’m ready to get to work.”

Mojica Loaisiga is a special correspondent writing for The Times under the auspices of the International Center for Journalists.

We’re talking to educators with decades of experience and seeing why nobody is reading books any more. Is it fair to blame everything on technology? Are parents being present enough with their children, and what does that mean for our collective future?

Presenter: Stefanie Dekker

Guests:
Beth Gaskill – Founder of Big City Readers

Keisha Siriboe – Literacy advocate

Margaret Kunji – Former educator

SAN FRANCISCO — Katie Porter’s still standing, which is saying something.

The last time a significant number of people tuned into California‘s low-frequency race for governor was in October, when Porter’s political obituary was being written in bold type.

Immediately after a snappish and off-putting TV interview, Porter showed up in a years-old video profanely reaming a staff member for — the humanity! — straying into the video frame during her meeting with a Biden Cabinet member.

Not a good look for a candidate already facing questions about her temperament and emotional regulation. (Hang on, gentle reader, we’ll get to that whole gendered double-standard thing in a moment.)

The former Orange County congresswoman had played to the worst stereotypes and that was that. Her campaign was supposedly kaput.

But, lo, these several months later, Porter remains positioned exactly where she’d been before, as one of the handful of top contenders in a race that remains stubbornly formless and utterly wide open.

Did she ever think of exiting the contest, as some urged, and others plainly hoped to see? (The surfacing of that surly 2021 video, with the timing and intentionality of a one-two punch, was clearly not a coincidence.)

No, she said, not for a moment.

“Anyone who thinks that you can just push over Katie Porter has never tried to do it,” she said.

Porter apologized and expressed remorse for her tetchy behavior. She promised to do better.

“You definitely learn from your mistakes,” the Democrat said this week over a cup of chai in San Francisco’s Financial District. “I really have and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how do I show Californians who I am and that I really care about people who work for me. I need to earn back their trust and that’s what campaigns are literally about.”

She makes no excuse for acting churlish and wouldn’t bite when asked about that double standard — though she did allow as how Democratic leader John Burton, who died not long before people got busy digging Porter’s grave, was celebrated for his gruff manner and lavish detonation of f-bombs.

“It was a reminder,” she said, pivoting to the governor’s race, “that there have been other politicians who come on hot, come on strong and fight for what’s right and righteous and California has embraced them.”

Voters, she said, “want someone who will not back down.”

Porter warmed to the subject.

“If you are never gonna hurt anyone’s feelings, you are never gonna take [JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive] Jamie Dimon to task for not thinking about how his workers can’t afford to make ends meet. If you want everyone to love you, you are never gonna say to a big pharma CEO, ‘You didn’t make this cancer drug anymore. You just got richer, right?’ That is a feistiness that I’m proud of.”

At the same, Porter suggested, she wants to show there’s more to her persona than the whiteboard-wielding avenger that turned her into a viral sensation. The inquisitorial stance was, she said, her role as a congressional overseer charged with holding people accountable. Being governor is different. More collaborative. Less confrontational.

Her campaign approach has been to “call everyone, go everywhere” — even places Porter may not be welcomed — to listen and learn, build relationships and show “my ability to craft a compromise, my ability to learn and to change my mind.”

“All of that is really hard to convey,” she said, “in those whiteboard moments.”

The rap on this year’s pack of gubernatorial hopefuls is they’re a collective bore, as though the lack of A-list sizzle and failure to throw off sparks is some kind of mortal sin.

Porter doesn’t buy that.

“When we say boring, I think what we’re really saying is ‘I’m not 100% sure how all this is going to work out.’ People are waiting for some thing to happen, some coronation of our next governor. We’re not gonna have that.”

Gavin Newsom, she noted, was a high-profile former San Francisco mayor who spent eight years as lieutenant governor before winning the state’s top job. His predecessor was the dynastic Jerry Brown.

None of those running this time have that political pedigree, or the Sacramento backgrounds of Newsom or Brown, which, Porter suggested, is not a bad thing.

“I actually think this race has the potential to be really, really exciting for California,” she said. “… I think everyone in this race comes in with a little bit of a fresh energy, and I think that’s really good and healthy.”

Crowding into the conversation was, inevitably, Donald Trump, the sun around which today’s entire political universe turns.

Of course, Porter said, as governor she would stand up to the president. His administration’s actions in Minneapolis have been awful. His stalling on disaster relief for California is grotesque.

But, she said, Trump didn’t cause last year’s firestorm. He didn’t make housing in California obscenely expensive for the last many decades.

“When my children say ‘I don’t know if I want to go to college in California because we don’t have enough dorm housing,’ Trump has done plenty of horrible attacks on higher ed,” Porter said. “But that’s a homegrown problem that we need to tackle.”

Indeed, she’s “very leery of anyone who does not acknowledge that we had problems and policy challenges long before Donald Trump ever raised his orange head on the political horizon.”

Although California needs “someone who’s going to [buffer] us against Trump,” Porter said, “you can’t make that an excuse for why you are not tackling these policy changes that need to be.”

She hadn’t finished her tea, but it was time to go. Porter gathered her things.

She’d just spoken at an Urban League forum in San Francisco and was heading across the Bay Bridge to address union workers in Oakland.

The June 2 primary is some ways off. But Porter remains in the fight.

US president says he still has confidence in Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem amid calls for her resignation.

US President Donald Trump said his administration intends to “de-escalate” the spiralling crisis in the state of Minnesota after federal agents killed two United States citizens, including intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, who was shot by two Border Patrol officers over the weekend.

“I don’t think it’s a pullback. It’s a little bit of a change,” President Trump told Fox News on Tuesday.

“We’re going to de-escalate a little bit,” Trump said, referring to a sweeping federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis that has led to weeks of protests, the killing of Pretti and Renee Good, and a standoff between state and federal officials.

Top Trump officials, including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, are under fire from Democrats and a growing number of Republicans over how they responded to Pretti’s shooting.

Pretti was filming Border Patrol officers with his phone when he was shot and killed on Saturday.

He was also a licensed gun owner with a permit to carry a weapon in public, which he was wearing at the time of the shooting and which appears to have been confiscated by officers before he was killed.

Trump told Fox News that he still had confidence in Noem despite calls for her resignation.

Noem, who oversees both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), responded to the killing by accusing Pretti of engaging in “domestic terrorism” and suggested the ICU nurse had brandished his weapon at Border Patrol agents during an altercation.

Noem’s remarks preceded any investigation findings and broke with the longstanding protocols of how US officials discuss a civilian shooting by law enforcement. Her characterisation of events also conflicted with preliminary video evidence showing that Pretti did not take out his weapon at any time while he was tackled and later shot and killed by officers.

A CBP official informed Congress on Tuesday that two federal officers fired shots during the killing of Pretti.

According to a notice sent to Congress, officers tried to take Pretti into custody and he resisted, leading to a struggle. During the struggle, a Border Patrol agent yelled, “He’s got a gun!” multiple times, the official said in the notice, according to The Associated Press news agency.

A Border Patrol officer and a CBP officer each fired Glock pistols, the notice said.

Investigators from CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility conducted the analysis based on a review of body-worn camera footage and agency documentation, the notice said. US law requires the agency to inform relevant congressional committees about deaths in CBP custody within 72 hours.

WASHINGTON — The crisis touched off by President Trump’s demand to take ownership of Greenland appears over, at least for now. But the United States and its European allies still face a larger long-term challenge: Can their shaky marriage be saved?

At 75 years old, NATO has survived storms before, from squabbles over trade to estrangement over wars in Vietnam and Iraq. France, jealous of its independence, even pulled its armed forces out of NATO for 43 years.

But diplomats and foreign policy scholars warn that the current division in the alliance may be worse, because Trump’s threats on Greenland convinced many Europeans that the United States has become an unreliable and perhaps even dangerous ally.

The roots of the crisis lie in the president’s frequently expressed disdain for alliances in general and NATO in particular.

Long before Trump arrived in the White House, presidents from both parties complained that many NATO countries weren’t pulling their weight in military spending.

But earlier presidents still considered the alliance an essential asset to U.S. foreign policy and the cornerstone of a system that prevented war in Europe for most of a century.

Trump has never seemed to share that view. Even after he succeeded in persuading NATO members to increase their defense spending, he continued to deride most allies as freeloaders.

Until last year, he refused to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to help defend other NATO countries, the core principle of the alliance. And he reserved the right to walk away from any agreement, military or commercial, whenever it suited his purpose.

In the two-week standoff over Greenland, he threatened to seize the island from NATO member Denmark by force, an action that would have violated the NATO treaty.

When Britain, Germany and other countries sent troops to Greenland, he threatened to hit them with new tariffs, which would have violated a trade deal Trump made only last year.

Both threats touched off fury in Europe, where governments had spent most of the past year making concessions to Trump on both military spending and tariffs. When Trump backed down, the lesson some leaders drew was that pushing back worked better than playing nice.

“We do prefer respect to bullies,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.

“Being a happy vassal is one thing. Being a miserable slave is something else,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said.

The long-term danger for the United States, scholars said, is that Europeans might choose to look elsewhere for military and economic partners.

“They just don’t trust us,” said Richard N. Haass, a former top State Department official in the George W. Bush administration.

“A post-American world is fast emerging, one brought about in large part by the United States taking the lead in dismantling the international order that this country built,” he wrote last week.

Some European leaders, including Macron, have argued that they need to disentangle from the United States, build military forces that can defend against Russia, and seek more reliable trade partners, potentially including India and China.

But decoupling from the United States would not be easy, fast or cheap. Europe and Canada still depend on the United States for many of their defense needs and as a major market for exports.

Almost all NATO countries have pledged to increase defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product, but they aren’t scheduled to reach that goal until 2035.

Meanwhile, they face the current danger of an expansionist Russia on their eastern frontier.

Not surprisingly for a group of 30 countries, Europe’s NATO members aren’t united on the question. Macron has argued for more autonomy, but others have called for caution.

“Despite all the frustration and anger of recent months, let us not be too quick to write off the transatlantic partnership,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said at Davos.

“I think we are actually in the process of creating a stronger NATO,” said Finnish President Alexander Stubb. “As long as we keep doing that, slowly and surely we’ll be just fine.”

They argue, in effect, that the best strategy is to muddle through — which is what NATO and Europe have done in most earlier crises.

The strongest argument for that course may be the uncertainty and disorder that would follow a rapid erosion — or worse, dissolution — of an alliance that has helped keep its members safe for most of a century.

The costs of that outcome, historian Robert Kagan warned recently, would be borne by Americans as well as Europeans.

If the United States continues to weaken its commitments to NATO and other alliances, he wrote in the Atlantic, “The U.S. will have no reliable friends or allies, and will have to depend entirely on its own strength to survive and prosper. This will require more military spending, not less. … If Americans thought defending the liberal world order was too expensive, wait until they start paying for what comes next.”