North Korea’s Naegohyang soccer team has defeated South Korea’s Suwon 2-1, securing their place in the final and making them the country’s first athletes in more than seven years to compete on southern soil.
Amnesty International’s 2025 report on the global use of the death penalty finds that executions have surged to their highest recorded number in over 40 years, driven largely by the expanded use of political executions in Iran to “create a climate of fear and intimidation in the society and deter dissent.” Amnesty recorded 2,707 executions in 2025. But the data excludes China, believed to be the world’s top executioner, because its government does not release any public data on executions. While the majority of countries around the world have banned the use of the death penalty, Raha Bahreini, who contributed to the report, says the 17 countries that carried out executions last year “keep insisting on the use of the death penalty as a tool of control and repression.”
In the latest escalation of the decadeslong U.S. pressure campaign against Cuba’s communist government, the Trump administration is expected to unseal an indictment against Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president of Cuba, later today. The charges stem from the 1996 shootdown of four pilots with Brothers to the Rescue, the U.S.-based anti-Castro organization formed by Cuban exiles and dissidents. Peter Kornbluh, a Cuba specialist at the National Security Archive, says that the indictment will send “a clear warning” to Cuban leaders and provide justification for a possible future attempt to capture or assassinate Castro. “Military options are on the table and coming soon,” says Kornbluh. “It is absolutely clear that the U.S. military is preparing contingency operations in case Trump’s impatience runs out because Cuba has not met his imperial demands fast enough.”
In Havana, we speak to journalist Ed Augustin, who calls the Trump administration’s strict fuel blockade of Cuba, in place since the beginning of 2026, “the collective punishment of a population, particularly targeting poor communities, pregnant women, children and the elderly.” Augustin shares stories of hardship faced by everyday Cubans who are increasingly forced to go without electricity, drinking water and medical care.
Riyadh entertainment district Qiddiya will use Google Cloud’s data and AI products to monitor construction, visitor patterns, and real-time operations.
French startup Pasqal helped Aramco launch the computer, part of a broader push in the Gulf to use technology to squeeze more efficiency from oil and gas operations.