Bangladesh’s BNP poised for landslide win in national elections

February 13, 2026

Bangladesh's BNP heading for 'sweeping' election win — Counting in the Bangladesh showed the BNP heading for an overall majority

A New Morning in Bangladesh: Hopes, Hymns and the Heavy Footsteps of History

Before dawn in a quiet neighbourhood of Dhaka, shopkeepers rolled up corrugated shutters, tea-stall owners lit small stoves and the call to prayer threaded through the narrow lanes. Yet the city you think you know felt different — more taut, more watchful. Armoured vehicles glinted under sodium streetlights and uniformed patrols walked the pavements with a kind of ceremonial calm. For many, today was the day the country would try to breathe again.

This was not the first time Bangladeshi voters had gone to the polls. But these elections — the first since the convulsive uprising of 2024 that toppled the long-ruling party and sent shockwaves across South Asia — carried the weight of a nation asking itself whether it could remake its politics without sliding back into the old order.

Television Projections and the Numbers That Mattered

By evening, private broadcasters were painting a clear picture: the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, aligned with Tarique Rahman, looked set for a sweeping parliamentary majority. Jamuna and Somoy TV were projecting roughly 197 seats for the BNP — well past the 150-seat mark that signals an outright majority in the 300-seat parliament. An Islamist-led coalition, fronted by Jamaat-e-Islami, was shown with about 63 seats, a dramatic rise from previous elections but short of the dominant position it had sought.

These totals are broadcasters’ projections, not the Election Commission’s final word. Counting continued across 299 of the 300 constituencies where voting took place; one seat had complications on the day. A further 50 seats reserved for women will be filled from party lists, a mechanism designed to boost female representation in a country of roughly 170 million people.

“We’ve crossed every barometer in our internal counting,” said a senior election official for the BNP, speaking in a reverent, cautious tone. “But we have told the public to thank God in prayer rather than take to the streets.”

On the Ground: Voices, Sights and Small Acts of Courage

At a primary school that served as a polling station in the suburb of Mirpur, an elderly woman named Fatima Ali clutched her ballot and smiled with a mixture of exhaustion and relief. “I stood in line with my neighbour at sunrise,” she said. “This country has given me years of hardship and years of joy. I want my children to live in a place where different opinions are accepted.”

Nearby, a rickshaw driver wiped his hands on his lungi and offered a different calculus. “Security was heavy, and that makes people nervous,” he said. “But at least my family can sleep tonight knowing no one is burning tyres in the street.”

Campaigning had not been without blood. Police records from the run-up show five people killed and more than 600 injured in political clashes — figures that underline a bitterly polarized landscape. UN human rights experts warned before the vote of “growing intolerance, threats and attacks” and flagged a “tsunami of disinformation” that had swamped social media with competing narratives and conspiracy.

The Interim Steward and the Shadow of Exile

Since August 2024, Muhammad Yunus — the Nobel Peace Prize laureate famed for his microfinance work — has served as interim leader after the ouster of Sheikh Hasina. Yunus, who has advanced a sweeping democratic reform charter, urged restraint and unity as results began to arrive.

“We may disagree on the path,” he told a small press gathering after voting, “but we must never allow disagreement to become an excuse for violence.” With that, he pledged to hand over power to a legitimately elected government, emphasizing stability over spectacle.

Sheikh Hasina, meanwhile, condemned the election from hiding in India after being sentenced in absentia on charges related to crimes against humanity — a sentence she and her supporters call politically motivated. Her party, the Awami League, was barred from contesting these polls, a decision that continues to generate debate both inside Bangladesh and among international observers.

What Was on the Ballot — Beyond Candidates

Voters were not only choosing MPs. On the same day, Bangladeshis were asked to vote in a referendum on a sweeping constitutional reform charter drafted by Yunus’ interim government. If enacted, the package would impose prime ministerial term limits, create a new upper house of parliament, strengthen presidential powers and enshrine greater judicial independence.

Television outlets projected that the charter received broad support from the electorate, though the Election Commission had yet to publish official tallies at the time of writing. The reforms are pitched as a fix for a political system Yunus described as “broken and vulnerable to dominance by one party.” Supporters say the changes will build checks and balances; critics fear they could be used to concentrate power in new ways.

Reflections from Experts and Everyday People

“This election is a hinge moment,” said a political scientist at a Dhaka university. “If the new parliament respects pluralism and the charter’s safeguards actually work, Bangladesh could reset its democracy. If not, the cycle of exclusion and protest will continue.”

A teacher in Chittagong added, “We want governance that delivers water, roads and schools more than slogans. The challenge is whether politicos can move from rhetoric to concrete reform.”

There is also the matter of inclusion. The 50 reserved seats for women signal progress, but many activists say that party lists often favour insiders over grassroots leaders. “Representation must be meaningful,” said a women’s rights advocate. “So far, the mechanism is a start, not the finish line.”

What Happens Next — Questions for Bangladesh and the World

What happens now will depend on far more than seat tallies. Will the incoming government welcome dissent? Will it engage with opposition voices that feel excluded? Can reforms be implemented transparently, or will they be hollow gestures? These are not just local questions; they echo across a world where democratic institutions are continually tested.

For ordinary Bangladeshis, daily life presses on regardless of political grandstanding. Vendors still sell samosas outside polling stations. Fishermen on the Meghna will cast nets tomorrow, as they have for generations. In living rooms and tea stalls, conversations will turn to governance — how schools are run, how hospitals are stocked, how the future for children will be secured.

“People are tired of being told to choose between two certainties,” said an independent journalist who covered the campaign. “They want accountability. They want an end to impunity. They want to be heard.”

Stay With the Story

This election is not an ending; it’s a pulse-point along a long, uncertain path. Will the new power holders lean into reform or revert to old habits? Will international observers and domestic watchdogs keep pressure on institutions that are supposed to be neutral?

As you read this, perhaps from another country, consider this: what responsibilities do global citizens have when democracy is fragile elsewhere? How do we balance respect for sovereignty with the urgency of human rights and inclusive governance? The people of Bangladesh have taken a dramatic step today. The rest of us would do well to listen, learn, and watch closely.

Russia and Ukraine Set to Meet in Geneva for Talks Next Week

hanad

February 13, 2026

Russia, Ukraine to hold talks in Geneva next week — Damaged cars at the site of a Russian attack in Odesa amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Geneva Again: Diplomacy at the Edge of the Frontline

There is a peculiar hush that falls over Geneva in February—an elegant city used to hosting summits about climate, banking and human rights now preparing to hold, once more, the fate of a faraway battlefield in its ornate conference rooms.

On 17–18 February, Russia and Ukraine will sit at the same table in a US-brokered meeting, officials from both capitals announced. It is another attempt to find a path out of a war that has scarred landscapes, families and international alliances for four long years. The details are familiar: hotly disputed territory, bruised egos, and a roster of red lines that neither side has been willing to cross.

Why Geneva? Why Now?

Geneva’s role as neutral ground has long been as much about optics as it is about logistics. “This city offers a certain gravitas and a space removed from the immediate pressure of the battlefield,” says Anna Weiss, a veteran conflict mediator who has clocked years in Swiss conference rooms. “But the venue doesn’t change the fact that these negotiations are played out against a backdrop of anguish and anger that no lipstick of diplomacy easily hides.”

The talks are being held in a trilateral format—Russia, the United States and Ukraine—after earlier attempts mediated by the US in Abu Dhabi. Those earlier rounds yielded little in the way of tangible progress. Both sides called them “productive,” but rhetoric and reality diverged: Moscow and Kyiv remain locked in a standoff over territory and political concessions, each accusing the other of negotiating in bad faith.

Lines in the Snow: The Core Disagreements

At the heart of the impasse is territory—who controls what, and under what conditions. Russia has insisted on sweeping concessions: withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from swaths of the Donetsk region and formal recognition of gains made since 2014 and 2022, including the annexation of Crimea. Ukraine, for its part, has rejected any unilateral pull-back as capitulation. The Kyiv delegation insists that any pause in fighting must be accompanied by ironclad security guarantees from Western partners to prevent a renewed offensive.

Russia currently occupies roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and areas seized during the conflict.
Estimates suggest the human cost has been devastating—hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and tens of thousands of civilians killed—making this the deadliest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

“You cannot separate territory from dignity,” a Ukrainian security adviser said quietly in a phone interview. “Ask any mother who has lost a son—which line matters to her? The maps mean lives.”

Delegations and the Personalities in the Room

Moscow will send Vladimir Medinsky to head its delegation, an appointment that signals a shift in tone. Medinsky, a former culture minister known for his hardline positions, led talks in Turkey that failed to bridge the divide. Ukraine confirmed that a delegation is preparing to travel to Geneva, while US officials, publicly and privately, have stressed urgency.

“The president has made it clear: the United States will press for a meaningful cessation of hostilities,” said an American diplomat on condition of anonymity. “But pressure doesn’t replace trust, and trust is the rarest currency in these talks.”

Voices from the Ground

Diplomacy on paper looks very different from the stored grief and stubborn normalcy in towns near the line of contact. In a small town on the edge of Donetsk, an elderly woman who refused to give her name sat outside a grocery and expertly peeled an apple.

“We have learned to live with sirens,” she said. “We wake slowly now—waiting for the sound, not for the day. If they return with papers and promises, I will listen. But I will not leave the house for words.”

A young volunteer medic from a village near Kharkiv told a reporter, “We’ve had ceasefires before. They hold for days, sometimes weeks. The problem is not drawing lines on a map; it is ensuring there is someone to stop killing when the lines are redrawn.”

Experts Weigh In

Analysts warn that any short-term pause without a durable security framework risks repeating past failures. Dr. Laila Mirza, a scholar of post-conflict reconstruction, argues that guarantees must go beyond diplomatic platitudes.

“Security guarantees mean verifiable troop withdrawals, independent monitors with real teeth, and economic lifelines for affected communities,” she says. “Otherwise, you create a frozen conflict that festers—worse than open fighting because it corrodes hope.”

Historic Echoes and Global Stakes

This is not just a regional negotiation. The contours of these talks touch on international law, alliance politics and the very norms that have underpinned the post-1945 order. A successful agreement could recalibrate relations between an ascendant Russia and a wary West. A failure could harden rival blocs and embolden other revisionist actors.

“What happens in Geneva sends a signal to capitals across the world: whether military force can be rewarded, whether borders can be redrawn by guns,” says Michael Durant, a former NATO analyst. “If the talks produce a stable ceasefire and a credible path to restoring sovereignty, that’s a win for diplomacy. If they don’t, it normalizes a dangerous precedent.”

What Could a Deal Look Like?

There is no single blueprint. But informed observers sketch a few likely components:

Phased troop withdrawals verified by international observers.
Security guarantees—possibly multilateral and temporary—to deter renewed offensives.

Roadmaps for the return of displaced people and economic reconstruction funds tied to verification.
Negotiated status arrangements for contested regions that respect human rights and self-determination norms.

Each of these has pitfalls. Any arrangement that is seen as etching in territorial changes risks delegitimizing the process in the eyes of many Ukrainians. Conversely, failing to address Russia’s security concerns could doom any accord to the scrapheap.

Beyond Geneva: The Human Arithmetic

Why should distant readers care? Because behind every line on a map are refrigerators emptied of photographs, cemeteries that increase by one every week, and economies shackled to the ebb and flow of violence. The ripple effects extend to global grain markets, energy prices and refugee flows that touch millions beyond Eastern Europe.

“We keep talking about strategy and statecraft,” said a volunteer teacher from a town outside Mariupol. “But people here are waiting to sing again in schoolyards, not for treaties to fill textbooks. How will your leaders tell their children about this—proudly or with shame?”

Can Geneva Deliver?

Geneva will offer a stage and mediators will provide the choreography. But the actors must bring something new: flexibility, internal consensus, and a willingness to trade maximalist rhetoric for pragmatic guarantees. The world will watch, but those who know the cost best—the families in makeshift cemeteries, the bus drivers turned resupply volunteers, the grandparents keeping their grandchildren safe—will be the real judges.

Will the talks in Geneva be the opening of a genuine path to peace, or merely another interlude before the guns begin again? The answer rests not only on the words spoken in conference rooms but on whether those words are backed by actions people on the ground can trust. As you read this, consider: What would you ask of leaders trying to end a war that has already taken so much?

When delegates take their seats on 17 February, they will carry with them more than negotiators’ briefs. They will carry the unsent letters, the burned photographs, the sleeping children—human details that no clause, however carefully worded, can erase. The question for Geneva is whether diplomacy can meet those human realities where they are, and not simply redraw the maps of power.

Investigation Probes Alleged Discriminatory Emergency Response to Los Angeles Wildfires

hanad

February 13, 2026

Probe into possible discriminatory response to LA fires — Wildfires in the city of Altadena killed 19 people in January 2025

Smoke Over Altadena: A Community Waited — and the Alarms Came Too Late

When the first tongues of flame licked over the ridgeline outside Altadena in January 2025, they moved with a dispassionate speed that felt almost personal. Ash fell like gray snow on porches. Neighbors who had shared barbecues and potlucks for decades suddenly found themselves strangers to each other’s fate: one block evacuated, another left to its own devices.

By the time the last ember cooled, 31 people had died across Los Angeles, 19 of them in Altadena. Most of those victims were concentrated on the west side of town — a neighborhood with deep roots in the city’s African American community. That painful imbalance is now the subject of a formal probe launched by California’s attorney general.

“Did Race Decide Who Got the Warning?” — An Investigation Begins

“My office will investigate whether race, age or disability played a role in how emergency warnings were issued in west Altadena,” Attorney General Rob Bonta announced, his voice measured but unforgiving. “Preliminary reports suggest residents in the historically Black neighborhood received evacuation alerts hours after other parts of Altadena were warned.”

Those delays, if proven, may have been a decisive factor in the death toll. Residents and community leaders have whispered it for months: a pattern in which warnings, resources and attention arrived with different urgency depending on zip code. Now, the state will follow the paper trails, the emergency logs, the radio dispatches, and the phone records.

On the Ground: Stories of Waiting, Running, and Loss

Walk through west Altadena today and you hear the same things: the smell of scorched chaparral, the clang of a community trying to rebuild, and the flat, tired repetition of lines like “We asked, but no one came.”

“We saw the smoke first,” said Marion Cole, who has lived on Mariposa Avenue for 28 years. “My husband called 911. We waited for a code red. We waited for an alert. The east side — they were told to go. We sat on our porch until the sky went orange and the sirens were still on the other side of the canyon.”

Volunteers set up card tables at the church parking lot, dishing coffee and listening. A barber, whose shop escaped but whose friend’s home didn’t, boiled down the moment with a single, aching line: “We trusted the system. The system didn’t trust us back.”

Who Gets the Text?

Emergency alerts are supposed to be automatic — county sirens, text blasts, door-to-door notices in some neighborhoods. But in the chaos of multiple simultaneous fires, the sequence of who received a “go now” and who received nothing at all has become a central question.

“We need to examine decision-making: who prioritized areas, why certain alert vectors were used, and whether language or disability access played a role,” said an emergency management expert at a California public university. “These are not just bureaucratic questions. They are life-and-death.”

Hydrants Without Water, Reservoirs Left Empty

In Pacific Palisades — an enclave of wide streets and ocean views — residents watched firefighters struggle against two separate indignities: hydrants that sputtered and then failed, and a municipal reservoir that lay inexplicably empty as flames closed in.

“We ran out of water,” a career firefighter who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal told me. “You can train for wind and slope and structure, but you cannot fight a fire when your hoses are dry.”

These failures have fueled a broader narrative of mismanagement. Questions about infrastructure upkeep — from pipelines to storage tanks — are now tangled with claims that staff shortages and budget choices left the city vulnerable.

Budget Cuts, Political Heat

Mayor Karen Bass has faced intense criticism for approving budget reductions to local fire services in the months before the infernos. Critics say those cuts, even if modest on paper, translated into slower response times and fewer resources at a moment that demanded everything.

“This is not a partisan issue; it’s a preparedness issue,” said a community organizer who helped coordinate relief in Altadena. “People are angry because this felt preventable.”

Supporters of the mayor say budgetary decisions are complex and that staffing and equipment alone can’t guard against this new era of megafires. But the optics of empty hydrants and a drained reservoir — images that traveled fast on social media — have hardened public sentiment into suspicion.

More Than Fire: A Story About Inequality

Wildfires rarely exist in a vacuum. They are born of climate trends — hotter, drier weather and earlier spring melts — and they are shaped by human decisions about land use, infrastructure, and emergency systems.

California’s fire seasons have lengthened dramatically over recent decades. Experts point to a combination of warming temperatures, bark beetle infestations, and decades of forest management practices as drivers. The result: fires that are faster, larger, and less predictable.

But the difference in who gets warned and who doesn’t often tracks lines drawn by history: wealth and whiteness on one side, underinvestment and marginalization on the other. The Altadena inquiry asks whether that history translated into policy choices during the moment of crisis.

Questions the Inquiry Will Ask

Were standard alert procedures applied uniformly across all Altadena neighborhoods?
Did digital and non-digital communication channels fail specific populations more than others?
Were resource allocations — staffing, water supplies, on-scene command — distributed equitably?

Why This Matters Beyond One City

Look beyond Los Angeles and you see echoes: from Mediterranean Europe to Australia, communities are grappling with fires that reveal fractures in social safety nets. The Altadena story is local, yes, but it also points to a global problem: when climate shocks arrive, existing inequalities can turn natural disasters into human catastrophes.

“We talk about resilience as bricks and barriers, but real resilience is about networks — who gets help, who is listened to, who gets a warning at 3 a.m.,” said a social scientist who studies disaster equity. “If you ignore social geography, you will lose lives.”

Rebuilding Trust, Not Just Houses

In neighborhoods where generations have lived, rebuilding is as much about relationships as it is about stucco and roofing. People want answers. They want to know that someone analyzed what went wrong and changed the systems that failed them.

“We need transparency,” said Pastor Lillian Harper, who turned her basement into a temporary shelter last winter. “Not platitudes. Not headlines. Real accountability and a plan so our grandchildren don’t face the same neglect.”

What You Can Do — and What We Should Ask Ourselves

As the investigation unfolds, the rest of us — readers, citizens, policymakers — should ask: How do our warnings reach the most vulnerable? Where are our hydrants and reservoirs being tested? Who in our communities sits on the margins of emergency planning?

We can push for simple, pragmatic reforms: multilingual alerts, regular water-system audits, community liaisons embedded in fire response protocols, and funding models that prioritize equity as much as efficiency.

But there is a deeper question: when disaster reveals the seams beneath our civic fabric, do we sew them back stronger — or simply patch the tear until the next storm?

The attorney general’s investigation will take time, and facts will emerge that reshape our understanding of those terrible January nights. For now, as Altadena counts its dead and replants its trees, the community is asking for something beyond any immediate fix: recognition, accountability, and a promise that when the next warning must be issued, no one will be left waiting on the wrong side of an alert.

Three killed as powerful storm batters regions of France and Spain

hanad

February 13, 2026

Three dead after storm hits France and Spain — A car is destroyed after a tree fell on it during Storm Nils in France

The morning after Nils: wind-whipped streets and lives rearranged

When dawn peeled back the night, the south of France looked like a place that had been rearranged by a careless hand. Branches the size of trunks lay strewn across boulevards. Shuttered cafes that the night before hummed with after-dinner conversation now sat under a sky the color of pewter. In Perpignan, a wheel of a street market lay half-buried in mud. In La Réole, emergency crews ferried a bewildered woman from her flooded home. Across the border in Spain, Barcelona’s glass and steel shoulders bore the scuffs of wind-driven debris. And in Portugal, a viaduct sagged, its foundations undermined by swollen waters.

The storm, given the name Nils by French forecasters, tore through the western Mediterranean corridor with an intensity officials described as “unusually strong.” By Tuesday morning authorities had confirmed three fatalities and dozens of injuries across France and Spain, while thousands of households remained in the dark. The scale of the disruption read like a weather map crossed with a ledger: uprooted trees, collapsed roofs, washed-out roads, cancelled flights and ferries, and trains that never began their runs.

On the ground: stories that make statistics real

France — toppled trees, a ladder, a fatal strike

In southwestern France, where plane trees line avenues and vineyards spill like patchwork across hills, the violence of the storm surprised many.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said one Perpignan resident, still shaking hours after a tree had nearly crushed his car. “Two seconds more and it would have.”

Local authorities reported that a truck driver was killed when a tree smashed through his windscreen. The following day, emergency services confirmed a second death: a person who fell from a ladder while working in their garden amid the chaos. Images from towns like La Réole showed streets ankle-deep in water and volunteers helping to haul flood-weary possessions onto higher ground.

Electric crews from Enedis — France’s main distributor — described a marathon effort to reconnect homes. “Enedis has restored service to 50% of the 900,000 customers who were without electricity,” the company reported. Some 3,000 workers had been mobilised to clear fallen lines and repair damaged substations, but high water and blocked roads slowed the fight to bring lights back on.

Spain — walls, roofs and lives shaken

Across the Pyrenees, in northern Spain and around Barcelona, the storm left a similar wake of destruction and dismay. A roof over an industrial warehouse collapsed under the onslaught of wind and rain; a woman working inside was killed. Dozens more were reported injured as masonry came down and drivers were trapped in flooded underpasses.

“The noise was like a train passing through the building,” said an employee at an industrial estate near Barcelona, speaking as she clutched a blanket around her shoulders. “We ran without thinking. The roof gave way in an instant.”

Public transport ground to a halt in many places. Flights were cancelled, ships were held in harbors, and long-distance trains were delayed or rerouted. For commuters and travelers, the storm meant sudden, intrusive disruption — a reminder of how tightly our modern lives depend on thin threads of infrastructure.

Portugal — a bridge that did not hold

In Portugal the violence of water was the dominant story. Flooding undermined a viaduct, causing partial collapse and prompting immediate investigations into structural safety. Though there were no widespread reports of fatalities there, the images of buckled concrete and mud-smothered fields made clear how quickly routine routes can become dangerous.

The ledger: numbers that matter

Here are the immediate figures that help frame the human stories in a wider context:

Confirmed fatalities: 3 (across France and Spain)
Households without power at peak: approximately 900,000 in France
Enedis crews mobilised: around 3,000 workers
Power restored by morning after storm: about 50% of affected customers
Number of injuries reported in Spain: dozens (official counts ongoing)

Numbers are blunt instruments, but they point to a larger truth: this was more than a local squall. It reached into everyday life, into commerce, schools and hospital routines, and raised questions about readiness and resilience.

Why storms like Nils feel different

Ask meteorologists and they’ll tell you storms are not new. What has changed, they say, is the frequency and the footprint. “We’re seeing more intense downpours concentrated over shorter timeframes,” an atmospheric scientist who studies Mediterranean weather patterns explained. “That puts pressure on drainage, on river basins, and ultimately on communities that were built for a different climate reality.”

For locals, the problem is immediate and practical. Old drainage systems were never designed for torrents that fill streets within minutes. When rivers swell beyond their beds, the weakest points — low bridges, neglected culverts, and older bridges — are the first to fail.

And then there is the human factor: people who resist leaving their homes, businesses reluctant to close for fear of lost revenue, and infrastructure that is expensive and slow to upgrade. “We cannot simply move all essential services underground or build new power lines overnight,” said a municipal engineer in Bordeaux. “The challenge is prioritising where to invest so we reduce the next disaster’s toll.”

Voices from the aftermath

Emergency volunteers, firefighter crews, municipal workers and everyday neighbors have been the unglamorous backbone of the response. One volunteer in La Réole, a retired carpenter named Jean, put it this way: “When you see your neighbor’s furniture floating past your gate, you cannot stand by. We bring boats, sandbags, and coffee. It is what people do.”

Health services are stretched, and hospitals in affected areas have been operating under contingency plans. Schools in flooded towns closed their doors, leaving parents scrambling for childcare while they coordinate repairs and insurance claims.

Insurance companies will tally the cost in the weeks ahead; economists will watch for ripple effects on local economies. But for now, the human accounts are what linger: the smell of wet paper and wood in a salvaged home, the children who turned a puddle into a football pitch despite the gloom, the small businesses that opened a day later with a broom and a smile.

Looking ahead: questions for our warming world

What does a storm like Nils ask of us? How do we shore up our towns and cities, our power networks and our transport arteries against a future where the weather surprises us more often and harder?

These are not just engineering questions. They are questions about how we live together: where to place housing, how to support vulnerable neighborhoods, how quickly to modernise aging grids and drainage systems, and who pays when catastrophe arrives.

Will this week be remembered as an unfortunate anomaly, or as another data point in a trend that nudges public policy toward bolder investments and stricter planning? The answer will depend partly on political will, partly on budgets, and partly on whether communities themselves can build layers of local resilience.

What you can do now

For readers wondering how to help or prepare, here are a few practical steps that matter in any flood- or wind-prone region:

Keep an emergency kit: flashlights, batteries, water, medications and important documents in a waterproof pouch.
Know your local evacuation routes and the thresholds for alerts in your area.
Secure outdoor furniture and clear gutters; small actions can reduce damage in a sudden storm.
Check whether your home insurance covers flood or wind damage and what the claims process requires.

As recovery begins, we will hear many more stories: of resilience, of frustration with delayed repairs, and of quiet acts of kindness. In the end, storms like Nils test more than infrastructure — they test the bonds between neighbours, the responsiveness of institutions, and our collective capacity to learn and adapt. What will we choose to learn?

Denmark’s PM to discuss Greenland with Rubio during Munich meeting

hanad

February 13, 2026

Denmark PM to hold Greenland talks with Rubio in Munich — Marco Rubio disembarks from his plane at Munich Airport

At the Munich Crossroads: A Quiet Storm Around Greenland

When Mette Frederiksen stepped off the plain-cloth car at the Munich Security Conference, the winter light felt brittle and bright against her wool coat. Cameras swirled, diplomats gathered like birds on a wire, and somewhere between espresso kiosks and corridor briefings the word “Greenland” hummed like a misfired fuse.

“We will speak with our American partners about Greenland,” Frederiksen told reporters, her voice even but edged with a diplomat’s impatience. “It is not a bargaining chip; it is a people and a place.” Her team confirmed she planned meetings with U.S. officials on the sidelines of the talks — part routine, part damage control, and part strategic planning.

The scene in Munich this year feels less like a polished summit and more like a junction where old alliances and new anxieties collide. The Arctic — long the province of scientists, indigenous communities, and cautious militaries — has become a map of competing interests: melting ice, newly accessible mineral wealth, shorter shipping lanes, and an intensifying choreography between capitals from Washington to Beijing.

Why Greenland Matters — Beyond Headlines

Greenland is not a simple plot in a geopolitical chess game. It is an island of sweeping fjords, tiny towns painted in bright enamel, a population roughly the size of a small town (about 56,000 residents), and an ecological clock that ticks faster than the rest of the planet. But it also sits on a set of reserves — rare earth elements, zinc, uranium and other critical minerals — that the world increasingly prizes.

Ask a Greenlandic fisherman in Nuuk about the global interest and you will hear a different cadence. “We never asked to be famous,” said Annika Kleist, who runs a guesthouse and certifies whale-watch tours in the harbor. “People talk about minerals and ice, but our life is fjords, dogs, coffee and long winters. We need respect and real partnership, not auction signs.”

Strategically, Greenland is a sentinel in the North Atlantic. As ice retreats and new sea routes open, the island’s airfields and maritime approaches become far more than local infrastructure — they are nodes in a network of power that reaches from NATO command centers to Asian markets. That explains why the U.S. — which in recent months has signaled an interest in expanding its influence in the region — is pressing for a stronger role.

Conversations in Munich: Tension, Diplomacy, and the Art of Reassurance

On the ground in Munich, Frederiksen’s agenda is twofold: to reassure her Greenlandic citizens and to hold a line with allies. The Danish prime minister’s message echoes through the halls: Europe must do more to safeguard its own interests. “We cannot rely on a single partner to guarantee our security,” she said in a hallway interview, invoking a steady refrain heard across capitals since 2022 — the need for greater European defense capacity.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is leading the American delegation, framed his presence differently. “We are here to ensure open seas and secure supply chains,” he said before boarding his plane. “Allies must pull their weight for the security of the north and for the prosperity of our economies.” The language is familiar: burden-sharing, deterrence, and the push to modernize defenses in a geopolitical era that many experts now call multipolar.

Yet beneath the official statements there is unease. The so-called “Greenland moment” — a period of pointed U.S. interest in increased control or influence over the island — rattled trust. Even if the most confrontational proposals have been shelved, the fissures remain. European publics, particularly in Germany and the Nordic countries, are asking if the security umbrella is permanent or conditional.

Military Moves and Arctic Missions

Denmark has not been passive. Copenhagen participates in a NATO Arctic mission and has committed F-35 fighters and other assets to patrol northern airspace. A U.S.-Denmark-Greenland working group has been convened to air strategic concerns, though officials publicly acknowledge that many discussions will remain classified. The point is clear: the Arctic is no longer peripheral.

As one NATO official put it quietly in Munich, “We are updating old maps. The ocean and the ice now carry consequences for Europe’s safety and global trade. That changes how you posture and where you put your aircraft.”

Voices from Home: Greenlanders Weigh In

Back in Nuuk, the conversation is more intimate and complicated. “We want investment, not imperial gestures,” said Aron Petersen, a schoolteacher who skis in summer and boats in winter. “Who decides what happens to our land? That should be our community, our council, not a distant negotiation between capitals.”

Indigenous leaders have long warned against decisions made without their consent. In 2009 Greenland gained more autonomy from Denmark, and aspirations for greater self-determination are woven into daily life. Coffee shops, municipal meetings, and even funerals echo with the same refrain: the people of Greenland wish to be central, not an afterthought.

There is humor, too. In a Nuuk market, an old hunter laughed when asked about foreign interest: “If outsiders want our rocks, let them come with good bread. But they must remember the sea decides, not paperwork.” It was half joke, half proverb — a reminder of how local culture measures incoming forces.

Lines on a Global Map — What This Means for the Rest of Us

Munich is never just a European story. The questions raised there ripple across oceans: How do alliances survive when political winds shift? What happens to international norms when strategic assets are in precarious, depopulated places? And how will warming seas redraw trade routes and military calculations?

For analysts like Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution, the stakes are about unity. “A fragmented transatlantic alliance weakens deterrence and opens space for rivals to play divide-and-rule,” he said at a panel this week. “Europe needs to buy defense capacity and political autonomy; otherwise the strategic void will be filled by others.”

Readers might ask themselves: do we understand the Arctic as merely a resource frontier or as home to resilient communities whose lives will shape, and be shaped by, global decisions? The answer matters.

Looking Forward: Possibilities and Pitfalls

As talks continue in Munich and follow-up meetings are scheduled, the choreography will shift. Expect proposals for joint Arctic stewardship, investments in Greenlandic infrastructure, and renewed calls for European defense spending — but also negotiation pains. The United States, keen on securing supply chains and forward basing, will press. Denmark will insist on sovereignty and consultation. Greenlanders will demand a seat at the table.

There is no single script for what comes next. But if the Munich conversations teach us anything, it is this: geopolitics often arrives not as a sudden invasion but as a series of small decisions, corridor talks and working groups that together reshape lives thousands of miles away.

So what will we choose as a global community — competition or cooperation, extraction or partnership? The answer will not be written in Munich alone. It will be written in Nuuk’s town halls, in Danish parliament sessions, and in the quiet choices of miners, fishermen, politicians, and diplomats. And perhaps most importantly, it will be written by the people of Greenland themselves.

EU leaders urge swift action to compete with US and China

hanad

February 13, 2026

Time to act to compete with US and China, say EU leaders — Alden Biesen Castle in Belgium, the venue for the EU summit

A castle, 27 leaders and a continent at a crossroads

On an overcast morning in Limburg, the stone of Alden Biesen Castle seemed to drink in the drama of the day. Flags fluttered ionlessly; security vans threaded the lanes like dark beetles. Inside the ornate rooms where knights once plotted and feasts were held, the 27 leaders of the European Union gathered not for ceremony but for survival—at least that was how many here described it.

“This isn’t a photo opportunity,” one diplomat whispered to me as ministers shuffled through the echoing corridors. “It’s a test of whether Europe can still choose the future it wants, or whether it will be shaped by others.”

The summit’s short agenda reads like a map of anxieties: keep energy bills from strangling industry, mend and deepen the internal market so goods and services flow like blood, and mobilize investment at a scale that can counter the economic pull of the United States and China. The rhetoric is familiar. The stakes feel new.

Energy: the practical and existential problem

Walk past the castle gates and you meet the local realities—steel towns where furnaces once roared, family-run chemical plants whose chimneys are now quiet more often than owners would like. “Energy is not an abstract,” said Pieter, a third-generation steelworker from the Liège region. “It’s the lights in our factory, the jobs for my neighbours. When the bills climb, everything else starts to wobble.”

He’s not alone in that alarm. EU industry faces electricity prices that are, by several measures, more than double what similar companies pay in the United States and China. Those cost gaps are not theoretical: higher input bills mean lower margins, fewer investments, and the very real risk that entire supply chains relocate beyond Europe’s borders.

“If we want factories here in ten years,” said a European industrialist I spoke with in a hastily arranged meeting room, “we must fix the energy market—price it, transmit it, and plan it together.” His tone carried the blunt calculation of someone watching months of investment decisions hinge on kilowatt-hours.

What’s really broken

At the heart of the debate are two linked problems. First, energy pricing and grid integration remain fragmented across member states—patchwork rules, capacity constraints, and divergent subsidy schemes create winners and losers. Second, the green transition itself, while necessary, increases short-term costs unless managed collectively: renewable deployments need infrastructure, batteries, and new market rules.

“We cannot ask companies to shoulder the transition by themselves,” said an EU energy adviser. “The only sustainable route is a unified, functioning energy market that reduces price spikes and directs investment where it’s most needed.”

Old divisions, new urgencies: debt, trade and ‘Made in Europe’

France arrived at the castle with a manifesto in its pocket: more shared borrowing for large-scale investment and a “Made in Europe” approach that would channel public procurement towards products with robust European content. The ambition is clear—bigger projects, strategic autonomy, less dependence on foreign supply chains.

Germany, meanwhile, counsels caution. Its officials argue that piling on common debt risks long-term fiscal fragility and that the real lever is boosting productivity—ramping up R&D, streamlining regulations, and securing trade deals that open markets rather than locking them down.

“We keep circling the same choices,” said a senior German official. “Do we build with borrowed money, or do we go after structural reforms? Both are valid, but we first need clarity on results and responsibilities.”

Across the table, proponents of closer fiscal integration argue that half-measures won’t be enough when competitors are mobilizing entire financial systems to back industry. “Investment at this scale requires pooling risk,” a French economic adviser told me. “It’s not ideological; it’s practical.”

Voices from the wider economy

A small software entrepreneur in Berlin, Yasmin, worries about access to capital. “If interest rates are high and grant programs are small, we won’t scale here,” she said, balancing a croissant on a paper plate. “Talent is global. If the money isn’t here, the people and ideas will follow it.”

Meanwhile, in a corner of Flanders outside the summit, a ceramics factory owner named Luc—who runs a business that has supplied cookware to three generations of Belgian kitchens—sounded like someone bargaining for time. “We want to decarbonize, but not overnight,” he said. “We need a bridge—financial support, predictable pricing—so we can invest without losing our business.”

Consensus? Or a new form of selective cooperation?

There is a frankness in the castle halls that masks long-standing fault lines. Some leaders insist that an EU-wide push is possible; others say the club is too diverse to move at one speed. One proposal gaining currency is not unanimity but flexibility: if all 27 cannot agree, a coalition of willing member states would move ahead together.

“We have options besides paralysis,” noted a small-state leader. “Enhanced cooperation allows a subset to pilot reforms that others can join later if they wish. It’s a way to break deadlocks.”

But that path raises its own questions: will selective action create a Europe of different speeds where richer states accelerate and poorer ones lag—further fragmenting the single market it aims to save?

Looking beyond rhetoric: deadlines and the weight of time

Many in Alden Biesen were explicit: talk is cheap and time is not. A handful of leaders suggested a June summit as a moment to convert debate into binding decisions or, failing consensus, to trigger the mechanism of reinforced cooperation. “We cannot afford another year of motion without movement,” a Baltic president told me while scribbling notes.

Experts invited to the summit warned of a slow, collective decline if reforms are postponed. “This is not a spectacle,” said a former central banker who traveled to the castle to brief delegates. “It’s about creating the conditions for prosperity—stable energy, deep markets, and affordable capital. Delay is a tax on our future.”

Why this matters to the global reader

It’s tempting to treat European politics as parochial, but what plays out in Alden Biesen ripples beyond canals and vineyards. Europe commands large export markets, controls vital science and technology clusters, and is a partner—or competitor—in supply chains stretching across oceans. Its fortunes will shape investment flows, emissions trajectories, and geopolitical balances.

So ask yourself: do you want global industry to be diversified, resilient, and governed by shared rules? Or do you prefer a world where critical capacity is concentrated in a few economic blocs, subject to strategic pressures? The answer matters for consumers, workers, and policymakers alike.

After the castle doors close

The summit may conclude with modest declarations, perhaps a roadmap or a promise to return. Or it may mark the opening of a more serious push—collective borrowing, a revamped energy market, and targeted industrial policies. Either way, the scene at Alden Biesen feels less like a single meeting than like a crossroads moment.

As Pieter the steelworker put it before he left to start his shift: “We’re not asking for miracles. We’re asking for a plan that keeps our lights on and our kids working.”

And as readers around the world watch, the choice Europe makes will be about more than balance sheets—it will be about what kind of continent it wants to be: an inward-looking museum of past glories, or a living, adaptable economy ready to compete and collaborate on a turbulent global stage. Which path would you choose for the future?

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