Zelensky: Diplomacy Achieves More When Backed by Justice and Strength

February 17, 2026

Zelensky: Diplomacy more effective with justice, strength — Ukraine has endured four years of war since the Russian invasion in February 2022

Geneva’s uneasy calm: diplomacy, winter, and a war that refuses to warm

Geneva in winter is a peculiar kind of serenity: the lake mirrors the Alps like a polished plate, the streets smell faintly of roasting chestnuts and diesel, and the city’s famously neutral hotels hum with hushed negotiations. On this particular morning, a low-slung jet cut through that quiet and parked at the airport, its passengers stepping into a conference loop that has defined, in fits and starts, Europe’s most dangerous dispute in a generation.

Trilateral talks between Ukrainian, Russian and US delegations were due to begin here, and the mood was a blend of brittle hope and weary realism. “Diplomacy works only when it is backed by justice and by strength,” a Ukrainian spokesperson told me—his eyes tired, his hands steady—summarizing a sentiment that has become a mantra in Kyiv. “You can’t bargain with impunity.”

What’s on the table — and what’s not

The items being ferried between the negotiators are not just maps and memoranda; they are lived realities: cities hollowed by shelling, families who no longer recognize their neighborhoods, grids that fail when thermometers plunge below -20°C. Russia seeks a withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from swathes of the Donetsk region; Kyiv rejects any unilateral pullback without ironclad guarantees that a ceasefire will not be a prelude to renewed offensives.

Behind each point on the agenda lies a brutal arithmetic. Russian forces currently hold roughly one-fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory—an area that includes Crimea, annexed in 2014, and other pockets captured in the years since 2022. Outside observers estimate that the conflict has produced tens of thousands of civilian deaths and hundreds of thousands of military casualties across both sides. The exact toll is contested, but the human scale is undeniable: whole towns reduced to outlines, whole families reduced to lists of names.

Key sticking points

Territorial withdrawal: Moscow has demanded concessions Kyiv calls tantamount to surrender.
Security guarantees: Kyiv insists any ceasefire must include western-backed protections against a renewed invasion.
Sanctions and pressure: Ukraine and its partners argue that economic penalties remain one of the few levers to deter further escalation.

“You can’t paper over occupation with promises,” said Olena, a schoolteacher from Sumy who now volunteers in a bombed-out shelter. “If there are no guarantees, why would anyone believe them? We gave up land before—what stops them from taking more?”

Energy as theatre: winter, blackouts, and strategic strikes

The rhetoric at the table is matched by action on the ground. Recent Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have produced what Kyiv calls the worst energy crisis of the war: hundreds of thousands of homes plunged into cold and dark as temperatures dipped toward -20°C. Hospitals have run on generators, schools have consolidated classes into warmer rooms, and neighbors have become each other’s heaters—sharing hot tea, hot food, and something like hope.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has used drones to strike at elements of Russia’s oil and gas sector—targeted blows designed to choke funding streams that analysts say help sustain Moscow’s military effort. “These are not acts of vengeance,” said an independent energy analyst in Europe. “They’re tactical attempts to alter the calculus—if you can make it more costly to wage war, you change incentives.”

Numbers that matter

Territory occupied by Russia: roughly 20% of Ukraine’s land area (including Crimea).
Estimated human cost: tens of thousands of civilian deaths and hundreds of thousands of military casualties (estimates vary; counting remains contested).
Households affected by energy outages: hundreds of thousands during peak bellicose strikes, with numbers rising in harsh weather.

Voices from the front and the homefront

In a recreation centre-turned-shelter near Dnipro, a woman named Kateryna held a thermos of tea as if it were an heirloom. “We stitch our children into warm clothes at night,” she said, looking at a photograph of a grandson whose face was still a memory on a cracked wall. “We joke, because if you stop joking you will only cry.”

At Geneva’s Palais des Nations, a Russian delegate—formal, clipped—told reporters: “Negotiations are a path. We are committed to discussing practical steps.” An American mediator, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned that “the room is small and every concession is heavy.”

“It’s winter in the north and war in the south,” said Mikhail, an academic who has watched peace talks for decades. “Geneva is a sensible place to talk, not because it magically makes agreements, but because its neutrality forces hard conversations.”

Beyond the table: why this matters to a global audience

If you live in a country far from Kyiv or Donetsk, you might ask: why should this particular negotiation keep you awake? Because wars don’t stay confined to borders. They reshape energy markets, reroute grain ships, fuel refugee flows, and test the resilience of international law. They also pose a philosophical question: when does the price of peace become a price of surrender?

Consider the supply chain disruptions that ripple into supermarket aisles from Europe to Africa; consider the spike in energy prices that can push households in distant countries into precarity. Consider, too, the precedent set when a powerful state is allowed, or not allowed, to secure gains by force.

Questions for the reader

What is the threshold between pragmatic compromise and moral capitulation?
How should democratic societies balance the urgency of peace with the demands of justice?
What role should neutral forums—cities like Geneva—play in resolving conflicts in an age of polarized global politics?

What to watch next

Diplomacy is often slow; it is also fragile. Expect days of terse communiqués, phased agreements that test trust, and shadow talks where the real bargaining happens. Watch for three signals that would indicate progress: clear, independently verifiable security guarantees; a workable framework for phased withdrawal that protects civilians; and a credible enforcement mechanism that discourages future aggression.

“We will not trade our dignity for a headline,” said an adviser to Kyiv, a phrase that lingered in the corridors after a long session. “But there are ways to end a war that preserve honor and prevent future bloodshed.”

Closing thoughts

Geneva will give us theatre and perhaps traction. But peace is not delivered in conference rooms alone; it is stitched, slowly, into the fabric of daily life—repaired power lines, reopened schools, reconciled communities. For now, the world watches a careful dance of demands and concessions beneath the Alps, while in Ukraine people clutch hot mugs and each other against the cold.

How would you balance justice and peace if you were holding the pen that signs ceasefire terms? The answer may be different for every reader, but the question—urgent, human, necessary—stays the same.

Jesse Jackson, U.S. Civil Rights Trailblazer, Passes Away at 84

hanad

February 17, 2026

US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson dies aged 84 — Jesse Jackson pictured in Chicago in 2024

A Giant Has Passed: Remembering Reverend Jesse Jackson

There are mornings when a city wakes to a familiar sound—the clatter of buses, the hum of a bakery, a radio voice that has become part of the domestic furniture. This morning Chicago woke differently. Word moved through neighborhoods like a ripple: Reverend Jesse Jackson had died, age 84, surrounded by his family. The short family statement—stark, tender—called him a “servant leader” who “elevated the voices of the voiceless.” For many, that was simply true; for others, the man was a complex, sometimes controversial fixture of American life. All of it mattered.

“He shared himself with the world and the world became our family,” his wife Jacqueline and their children wrote. “Honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.” Those words hang over Jackson’s life like a banner—an invitation, a demand, a benediction.

From Jim Crow South to Chicago Pulpits

Jesse Louis Jackson was born on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, into a world that the Jim Crow laws had mapped in sharp, unforgiving lines. His mother was 16; his father, 33 and living next door. He was adopted by his mother’s later husband, and his early life was stitched with the small humiliations and big dangers of being Black in the segregated South.

There is a childhood picture that explains something of the man: a lanky teenager, a football scholarship that would open one door and close another, walking past a “Whites Only” sign toward activism. At North Carolina A&T, at the University of Illinois briefly, at Chicago Theological Seminary where he was ordained in 1968, Jackson learned to make moral conviction sing. He was arrested attempting to enter a whites-only public library in South Carolina and, in doing so, joined a long catalogue of personal risks civil rights leaders took to change a nation’s habits.

The Drummer in King’s Band

Jackson was more than a foot soldier; he became a lieutenant to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., often traveling with him, learning the pulse of protest and the grammar of moral argument. He was on the floor below King at the Lorraine Motel on the day King was assassinated in 1968—an image that has haunted Jackson’s public life ever since. He later claimed to have cradled King and been the last to hear his words. Others disputed that account. The moment crystallizes the messy intimacy of movements: grief, myth, memory, tangle together.

Organizing, Oratory, and the Rise to National Prominence

Chicago became Jackson’s chosen ground. He turned a local pulpit into a national platform—founding Operation PUSH in the early 1970s, later the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984, and finally merging those efforts into the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in 1996. Through those organizations he pushed corporations, politicians and the public to reckon with inequality—not just racial but economic and gendered, and later LGBTQ rights as well.

He had a voice that could both soothe and sting. In the 1980s his oratory drew crowds and headlines. His presidential campaigns—1984 and 1988—were more than vanity quests. In 1984 he won roughly 3.3 million votes in Democratic nominating contests (about 18% of those cast), a surprising figure that announced Black political power on a new scale. In 1988 he was more polished, more prepared: he won 11 primaries and caucuses and amassed nearly 6.8 million votes—about 29% in the nominating contests—pushing the Democratic Party to listen, to reconsider its base, its language, its future.

“America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one colour, one cloth,” he told delegates at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. “Hold your head high, stick your chest out… Don’t you surrender.” That kind of line—simple, biblical, electrifying—made him a bridge to the people who needed a bridge and a lightning rod for those who feared change.

Personal Diplomacy on the Global Stage

Jackson’s activism was not confined to speeches and ballot boxes. He became, remarkably, an unofficial diplomat. He negotiated the release of prisoners from Syria, Cuba, Serbia and Iraq. In 1984 he secured the freedom of U.S. naval aviator Robert Goodman Jr. from Syria; in the early 1990s he met Saddam Hussein to press for the release of hostages after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. These missions earned him invitations to the White House and a reputation as someone who could move across borders where governments could not—or would not—act.

“He did what governments sometimes could not do: he humanized bargaining,” said a longtime colleague. “He put a face to a negotiation.”

Triumphs, Controversies, and Human Frailty

To call Jackson’s life a straight narrative of triumph would be to flatten it. He weathered controversies: crude remarks that cost political momentum in 1984; personal scandals that troubled his movement; the ignominious fall of his son Jesse Jackson Jr., who resigned from Congress and later served time after a fraud conviction. Leaders, like humans, are not monoliths. They are public and private, heroic and flawed.

Still, awards arrived. President Bill Clinton gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000. He hosted a weekly CNN show from 1992 to 2000. He continued to lean into public life well into old age—speaking out against police killings in 2020 and reminding the nation that a guilty verdict in the murder of George Floyd might be relief, “but not a time for celebration.”

Later Years: Parkinson’s and Passing the Torch

In 2017, at 76, Jackson announced a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis after years of symptoms. Globally, an estimated 10 million people live with Parkinson’s, according to WHO figures, and his disclosure humanized a common-but-misunderstood ailment. He stepped down as president of Rainbow/PUSH in 2023 after more than five decades in leadership, leaving a movement to a new generation.

“He asked us to keep going,” said a young organizer in South Side Chicago. “He told us to keep our feet on the ground and our eyes on the prize.”

What He Leaves Behind

When leaders die, we tend to tally achievements and transgressions like ledger entries. Jackson’s ledger is long: millions registered to vote, millions more inspired to run for office, civil rights organizations that persisted for decades, the kind of rhetorical fire that could raise a crowd and sometimes raise tempers. He never held elected office, yet he bent the arc of politics around him.

His life forces questions: How do movements sustain themselves when their charismatic architects age and fall ill? How do societies distinguish between the public utility of a life and the personal mistakes that accompany it? How do we honor the gains made while honestly appraising the harms?

If you have ever felt excluded by a system, Jackson’s voice—flinty and consoling—reminds you that exclusion is not inevitable. If you have ever wondered whether a single voice can alter a conversation, Jackson’s life argues yes. He made bridges where bridges were scarce; he made noise where silence prevailed.

Close the Loop: A Call

There will be memorials and eulogies and heated reassessments. There will also be the quieter things: community meetings, voter registration drives, a young organizer quoting “Don’t you surrender” into a cellphone camera. That, perhaps, would be the truest honor.

So what will you do with the inheritance of Jesse Jackson’s years? Will you register a neighbor to vote, speak up at a PTA, lobby that councilperson, mentor a teenager? He would ask you to act—not for the cameras, not for the plaques, but to narrow the gap between promise and practice.

“He gave us faith that faith will not disappoint,” a friend said. “Now, we have to finish the work.”

At least 14 killed in Pakistan amid surge of violent attacks

hanad

February 17, 2026

At least 14 killed in spate of attacks in Pakistan — Two bomb attacks and a gunfight between police and militants in northwest Pakistan killed at least 11 security personnel and three civilians

Smoke Over the Frontier: A Night of Explosions, Loss, and Questions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

The night came in like a thief—quiet at first, the sky a cold blue over the ridged silhouette of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa—and then it exploded with a violence the region has learned, over decades, to fear.

In the tribal district of Bajaur and the town of Bannu, two bombs and a pitched gunfight left a stunned community counting bodies and tending the wounded. At least 11 security personnel and three civilians, including a child, were killed; 25 more were injured. Residents rushed to hospitals and mosques, where plastic sheeting and blood-streaked clothing mixed with the heady smell of rotting tea and incense—everyday life for a place that has had to learn how to grieve in public.

What happened

In Bajaur, a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle into the boundary wall of a seminary late in the evening, security sources told me. Eight policemen and Frontier Corps personnel inside the religious college were killed on impact; roofs on nearby houses collapsed from the blast, and a child was among those killed.

“We could hear the walls shake,” said Hamid Gul, a neighbor who rushed to the scene. “When I ran in, there were books, shoes, and blood everywhere. A boy—maybe ten—was under the rubble. We tried to lift the stone ourselves.”

In Bannu, a device hidden in a rickshaw detonated near Miryan police station, killing two civilians and wounding 17. The third scene unfolded in Shangla district, where a search operation turned into a firefight; three policemen and three militants were killed. The provincial police said those militants were involved in targeting Chinese nationals.

Faces, names, and the human calculus

Names are still being confirmed; funerals are being arranged amidst curfews and checkpoints. The dead are not just tallies on a security brief—each loss is a thread in a family tapestry suddenly unraveled.

“He was my only son,” said Mariam Khan, a widow whose husband served in the Frontier Corps. “He sent me a photograph this morning. He said, ‘Don’t worry, Amma, the day is long and I will come home.’ I laugh and cry in the same hour.”

Across the hospital wards, doctors and nurses—overworked and under-resourced—worked by flashlight and the glow of mobile phones. The corridor was thick with the sounds of relatives calling out names, the metallic clatter of stretchers, the crackle of two-way radios coordinating to move the wounded to bigger facilities.

Why Chinese nationals are a target

Over the past decade, Chinese investment—most visibly through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—has reshaped Pakistan’s infrastructure and its geopolitical alliances. Tens of billions of dollars in roads, power plants, and ports have flowed into the country. But wealth and security are rarely distributed evenly, and resentment can fester where jobs are scarce, where land is disputed, or where people feel sidelined.

“Attacks on Chinese workers are both symbolic and strategic,” said Dr. Sara Qureshi, a security analyst in Islamabad. “They send a message to Beijing about the limits of protection and to local governments about contested governance. Militants want to undermine the economic base that bolsters the state.”

In March last year, five Chinese nationals working on a dam project were killed when a suicide attacker targeted their vehicle on the Karakoram Highway. That incident remains seared into the public memory of communities along the northern routes—an illustration of how fragile security can be when strategic projects run through rugged and restive terrain.

Numbers that matter

At least 14 people were killed across three incidents in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
At least 25 people were wounded.
Earlier this month, a suicide blast at a Shiite mosque in Islamabad killed 31 people and wounded 169—claimed by the Islamic State group.
Chinese investment in Pakistan through CPEC has amounted to tens of billions of dollars in projects; protection of personnel remains a central security priority.

Beyond the headlines: lives and landscapes

If you drive the winding roads from Peshawar toward the northern districts, the landscape changes like a film strip—the noise of trucks gives way to goats on the road, the tar turns to gravel, and then the jagged teeth of the mountains rise like a challenge. Small bazaars cluster where the roads narrow: tea stalls with chipped teacups, men hunched over chessboards, shopkeepers keeping one eye on their phones, another on the road that feeds their livelihood.

“We have learned to live with fear,” said Latif Ahmed, a tea vendor in Bannu. “But we will not leave. This is our home; we have nowhere else to go. The children have to go to school, the wheat must be sowed, the taxes paid.”

The wider context

Pakistan’s struggle with militant violence is not a single story but many: sectarian conflicts, insurgencies seeking to carve out power in neglected regions, and the overlapping shadow of groups like ISIS seeking to exploit fractures. The fall of Kabul in 2021 and the shifting dynamics in Afghanistan changed cross-border security calculations, even if direct causal links are complex and contested.

Analysts warn that failing to protect civilian life and critical infrastructure could deepen local grievances and provide fertile ground for recruitment—or push investments elsewhere. “Security is not merely about boots on the ground,” Dr. Qureshi adds. “It’s about governance, economic inclusion, and credible, accountable institutions.”

What now? Questions for policy and for readers

Who bears responsibility when a school, a seminary, or a mosque turns into a target? How do governments balance the urgent need to protect foreign investment and diplomats with the equally urgent need to protect their own citizens? And for ordinary people—shopkeepers, mothers, young students—how do they stitch together a life in the shadow of periodic explosions?

“We will demand justice,” said a local councilor, Rashid Khan. “But justice must not be more blood. We need jobs, schools, and a sense that the state is present—not just in the form of walls and checkpoints, but in hospitals that work, teachers who come, and courts that function.”

That plea is more than local politics. It speaks to a global theme: as money moves across borders and strategic interests override local concerns, there is often a human cost that can be easy to ignore from afar. The trauma of a night like this—of names read out at dawn and children asking where their fathers are—reverberates through families and communities for generations.

A call to witness

As you read this from wherever you are—a city apartment, a rural garden, a crowded newsroom—consider how we measure security and progress. Is the true index the length of a motorway or the number of funerals avoided?

“We need more than words,” Mariam said, folding her hands over a photograph. “We need people to come and understand, to care enough to change things.”

For now, Bajaur and Bannu will bury their dead, bandage their wounds, and light candles. The morning after the blast, a young man swept the steps of a mosque, his face still smudged with soot, and began the slow work of repair. It is an act of defiance; of ordinary courage.

Will policy change fast enough to stop the next act of violence? Only time—and the choices of many—will tell. For the families who lost loved ones last night, time has already become an unhealing wound. For the rest of us, there is a choice: to watch and forget, or to look closer and demand better.

Godfather legend Robert Duvall passes away at 95

hanad

February 17, 2026

Godfather star Robert Duvall dies aged 95 — Robert Duvall has died at the age of 95, his wife has said

Robert Duvall: A Quiet Giant of the Screen, Gone at 95

When Robert Duvall walked into a scene, he rarely announced himself. He arrived. A slouch, a half-smile, a voice that sounded like it had been sanded by a thousand weathered lines of dialogue—he had the uncanny ability to make the smallest gesture feel like revelation. On the morning the news broke that he had died at 95, tributes flowed like the slow, steady applause reserved for those whose work outlives them.

“He left the room exactly as he occupied life—calm, full of curiosity, and with a deep and abiding kindness,” his wife Luciana said in a statement shared with the world. “Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love.” It was an ending that felt true to the man many had come to know not only on screen but across farms, dance floors, and foreign stages.

From Annapolis to the World Stage

Born and raised amid the clipped flags and brass of Annapolis, Maryland, the son of a navy admiral and an amateur actress learned early how performance and discipline could coexist. After a stint in the Army and acting school in New York—where he roomed with a then-unknown Dustin Hoffman and struck up lifelong friendships with other struggling actors—Duvall moved from small television parts to a screen presence that critics and audiences could not ignore.

His first notable film appearance was an uncredited, haunting turn as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, a small but memorable presence that hinted at a lifetime of complex, layered performances to come. Over the next six decades he would appear in nearly 100 films, amassing seven Academy Award nominations and winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his soul-baring portrayal of a washed-up country singer in Tender Mercies.

Roles That Carved an American Myth

If Hollywood loves archetypes, Duvall loved remolding them. He could be the smooth consigliere—Tom Hagen—who negotiates between gods and gangsters in The Godfather, and then, in the next breath, a surf-obsessed lieutenant who watches the sunrise after napalm and declares, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” That line, immortalized in Apocalypse Now, only scratches the surface. It’s the cadence, the way he holds a cigarette, a look at a subordinate or lover, that made his figures feel lived-in and dangerous or tender in equal measure.

“He didn’t act his roles so much as he inhabited them,” says Dr. Maria Alvarez, a film historian who has taught courses on American cinema for more than 20 years. “Duvall understood the American imagination—the soldier, the rodeo cowboy, the fallen preacher—and he refracted those myths back to us with a humane and often wry lens. He made men’s contradictions visible without sermonizing.”

From Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now to the domineering Bull Meechum in The Great Santini, from the ecstatic preacher in The Apostle (which he wrote and directed) to the stoic Gus McRae in Lonesome Dove, Duvall’s career mapped the breadth of American storytelling—heroic, small, cruel, tender, and always complicated.

A Career of Quiet Risks

He turned down the pay-off and the part of a lifetime at times, too—reportedly rejecting The Godfather Part III over a salary dispute—preferring instead creative control to comfort. That streak of independence carried him into filmmaking of his own: The Apostle and Assassination Tango are personal, idiosyncratic works that show an artist unafraid to steer his own course.

The Private Dancer: Tango, Farm Life and a Second Home

Off camera, Duvall cultivated a life that read like a parallel script. He split his time between Los Angeles, a sprawling 360-acre farm in Virginia, and Argentina, the country that would become central to his later life and marriage to Luciana Pedraza. There, he discovered the tango, a dance he embraced with seriousness and a boyish joy. He converted a barn into a dance hall where the music could chase off the dust and where, he liked to say, you learned more about a partner than any script could teach.

“He was a man of great appetites—food, music, conversation,” a longtime friend and neighbor on his Virginia farm recalled. “But he was also disciplined. If you were there to learn something, he’d listen and then teach, quietly.”

More Than Awards: A Legacy of Craft and Compassion

In an industry obsessed with flash, Duvall’s legacy is endurance. Seven Oscar nominations across a career that spanned more than sixty years and one Academy Award may quantify some measure of his success, but the truer measure lies in the anchors he provided to scenes, to films, and to younger actors who learned by watching him.

“You’d be surprised how many young actors would come by just to watch him breathe in a scene,” says Jasmine Carter, an actor who credits Duvall’s Lonesome Dove with shaping her early approach to performance. “He taught you that truth is not a big gesture. It’s the way you look when no one’s watching.”

He also showed a modern world that aging actors could still be central storytellers—directing, writing, and producing films well into their later years. In that sense, Duvall’s life offers a gentle rebuke to youth-obsessed cultures. In a moment when many industries reject older workers, his career suggests the opposite: experience, like vinyl that deepens with each spin, can yield new hues.

What Do We Lose When We Lose a Storyteller?

When an actor like Robert Duvall departs, what exactly vanishes? A face on celluloid, certainly. But also a particular way of looking at the human heart—its stubbornness, its generosity, its capacity for regret. In a global culture that often flattens characters into categories—the hero, the villain, the comic relief—Duvall relished the gray.

“He left us with a catalogue of performances that can be teachers for generations,” Dr. Alvarez reflects. “Not just in craft, but in empathy.”

Final Curtain

On last count, Robert Duvall’s filmography runs near a century of credits. His life was braided with music and mud, with Buenos Aires nights and Virginia mornings. He was a man who loved holding court at a dinner table, whose passions included a great meal and the slow intimacy of the tango. He was a husband, a friend, an artist who preferred to let work speak for him.

So ask yourself, when you sit down to a great film next week, to a scene that surprises you, to a line that lingers—who taught the actor on-screen how to be that honest? Chances are you’ll find a trace of Robert Duvall’s influence somewhere there, in the soft way a character exhales or the small, exact moments that turn performance into truth.

He leaves behind not only roles and awards, but a lesson: that acting can be a form of listening—and that a life lived with curiosity, craft, and tenderness becomes the richest kind of story.

Guthrie Urges Release of Mother While FBI Examines Glove Evidence

hanad

February 17, 2026

Guthrie pleads for mother's release as FBI analyses glove — Officials have said they are certain the person in the video is the primary suspect in the case

In the Desert Light: The Search for Nancy Guthrie and a Community Holding Its Breath

Early mornings in the Tucson suburbs are usually a study in stillness: low-slung stucco houses, the silhouettes of saguaros on the horizon, the tang of mesquite and orange blossom in the air. Lately, that quiet has been pierced by helicopters, by the rumble of law-enforcement vehicles, and by the low, insistent tremor of a family’s plea on repeat across television screens.

Nancy Guthrie — 84 years old, fragile, dependent on daily medication and a pacemaker — vanished from her home near Tucson on January 31. Her daughter, Savannah Guthrie, known to millions as the co-anchor of NBC’s Today show, has been the most visible voice in a campaign both private and public: “We still have hope,” Savannah told viewers in one of several raw, direct video appeals. “To whoever has her or knows where she is: it’s never too late to do the right thing.”

A timeline of worry

According to authorities, family members dropped Nancy off at her residence after a meal on the 31st. When she didn’t answer the next morning, relatives reported her missing. Investigators quickly concluded she could not have left on her own — her mobility was severely limited — and have treated the case as an abduction.

What followed reads like a modern investigative thriller: doorbell-camera footage showing a masked man in a ski mask, wearing a holster and carrying an overstuffed backpack; traces of blood on the front porch later confirmed to be Nancy’s; at least two purported ransom notes delivered to media outlets; and a flurry of searches that included a federal court-ordered search of a house in an affluent neighborhood less than three kilometres from Nancy’s home.

The small piece of evidence that could change everything

Of all the items collected by search teams in a roadside field about three kilometres from Nancy’s house — roughly 16 gloves among them — one glove has drawn the most attention. FBI investigators say the glove appears to match the pair worn by the masked man caught on camera. A private laboratory in Florida provided preliminary DNA testing on that glove, and the sample is now in federal hands, en route to the Combined DNA Index System — CODIS — for a national search.

“That single sample could produce a match as soon as it’s run through CODIS,” said a forensic analyst who has worked on similar cases. “It’s not guaranteed, but the potential for a break in the case is real. CODIS comparisons often take around 24 hours once the FBI officially receives the sample.”

Investigators stressed that most of the gloves collected were likely dropped by searchers, but the one submitted for analysis “is different,” according to the FBI. The agency says the evidence requires rigorous quality control before a match is announced — the kind of careful deliberation that can feel agonising when a family is waiting for answers.

Voices from the neighborhood

Neighbors describe a community shaken and organizing in equal measure. “You don’t expect this here, not around these parts,” said María Ortega, who has lived two doors down from the Guthrie residence for 20 years. “We walk our dogs at dawn. We wave to one another. Now, every rustle in the brush makes me turn my head.”

At a small cluster of coffee shops and taquerías a few blocks away, residents — retirees and young families alike — swapped updates and wild theories. “We’re all glued to the news,” said Tom Reynolds, a retired teacher. “You try to keep hope, but it’s like watching your hands fumble in the dark.”

Volunteers have scoured washes and brushlands, leaving water and notes pinned to mesquite trees. That community energy has been palpable. “People want to do something,” a local search coordinator said. “They’re combing the hills, handing out flyers, calling tips. The compassion is real.”

What the science can — and can’t — tell us

Forensic advances have transformed investigations in recent decades. A single DNA trace can point to a suspect, confirm a lineage, or clear an innocent person in hours. But the process is meticulous: samples must pass quality control and be officially logged before a CODIS run. Even when there’s a match, authorities then have to build a case that stands up in court.

“DNA can give you a name, but not always a motive,” cautioned Dr. Elena Moreno, a criminal justice professor who studies forensic evidence. “It tells you who may have been there. It doesn’t always tell you how events unfolded. That’s why you pair lab work with witness accounts, digital forensics, and good old investigative legwork.”

And there are other practical challenges here: elderly victims with health conditions are particularly vulnerable. In the U.S., hundreds of thousands of missing-person reports are filed each year; most are resolved quickly, but cases involving seniors or people with medical dependencies are particularly time-sensitive because of health concerns.

The family’s public grief

Savannah Guthrie has returned to the public spotlight not as a news presenter but as a daughter — her voice threaded with gratitude, fear and an unyielding belief in human decency. She and her siblings have posted videos pleading for their mother’s return, saying they are even willing to discuss ransom demands if it would bring Nancy home.

“There’s not been any proof of life,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told reporters, “but there’s not been any proof of death either.” Those words hang in the space between despair and hope, a liminal place where families and investigators must live until facts arrive.

Broader echoes: safety, media, and the modern missing-persons crisis

This case sits at the intersection of several broader conversations: the vulnerability of older adults, the power and pitfalls of viral media, and the relentless march of forensic technology. It asks uncomfortable questions of communities everywhere: how do we safeguard the elderly? How does intense media scrutiny affect investigations and families? And how should we balance the urgent need for public tips with the caution required by law enforcement?

“There’s a global lesson here,” said Dr. Moreno. “As populations age, societies must think more deliberately about elder safety and community support networks. This isn’t just a local tragedy — it’s a reminder.”

How you can help — and what to watch for

If you think you have information, local authorities ask that you contact the Pima County Sheriff’s Office or the FBI. Tips, no matter how small they may seem, can change the shape of an investigation.

Keep an eye on official law-enforcement releases to avoid amplifying rumours.
Share verified appeals from the Guthrie family or investigators rather than speculative posts.
If you’re in Tucson, watch for community search efforts organized by authorities to ensure volunteers are coordinated and safe.

What to carry forward

Stories like this feel unbearably close — a beloved elder gone, a public figure’s private heartbreak played out on national television. They also force us to reckon with how we treat vulnerability in our neighborhoods and, more broadly, what tools we ask of science and community to keep people safe.

As you read this, think of the porch where Nancy’s blood was found, the grainy footage of a masked figure, the glove in a roadside field, and the voice of a daughter saying, simply, “We still have hope.” What would you do if your neighbor was gone? How would you want your community to respond?

The investigation continues. So does the waiting. So does the search for a woman who, in the desert dawn, disappeared from a life built on small routines and the love of her family. For now, the story is unfinished, and every new tip, every careful step in the lab, could be the one that brings an answer — and maybe, finally, a return.

Kremlin Refutes European Allegation That Navalny Died From Poisoning

hanad

February 16, 2026

Kremlin rejects European claim Navalny died of poisoning — Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison colony in February 2024 while serving a 19-year sentence

Two years later: a graveside, a chemical mystery, and the uneasy silence of a state

It was barely dawn when people began to gather at the cemetery in Moscow where Alexei Navalny is buried—dozens, then more, threading themselves along frost-crusted paths. A grey sky hung low, and the air smelled of wet earth and last winter’s snow; breaths floated like tiny ghosts. Some faces were familiar from years of rallies and courtrooms. Others were strangers—foreign diplomats in dark coats, a woman with a child’s woolen hat clutched to her chest, a man whose scarf hid the lower half of his face.

“We come to remember, yes, but also to remind,” said Irina Popova, a teacher who had traveled into the city from a suburb outside Moscow. “If you forget a person, you let what happened to them disappear, too. We cannot let that be easier for them.”

Two years have passed since Navalny—arguably Vladimir Putin’s most prominent domestic critic—died inside an Arctic prison colony in February 2024 while serving a 19‑year sentence. The grief that morning was raw, but there was also a different kind of intensity: a collective hunger for answers after a new development announced by five European governments.

The claim that reopened the wound

Last weekend Britain, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands released a joint statement saying they believed Navalny’s death was the result of poisoning with epibatidine, a powerful alkaloid originally identified in the skin of certain poison dart frogs. The governments said their assessment relied on samples taken from his body; they did not disclose those samples publicly but noted the findings underpinning their conclusion.

“We have grave concerns based on forensic evidence,” a British official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters. “This is not a matter of conjecture. We asked external laboratories to review biological material, and their assessment points to a toxic exposure that could not plausibly be accidental.”

For readers who did not grow up around the jargon of toxicology: epibatidine is not a household name, but it is notorious in scientific literature. Researchers have described it as an extraordinarily potent compound—dozens, even hundreds, of times stronger than morphine in its effect on nervous tissue—originally isolated from frogs of the Epipedobates genus. It is not something one inhales on a bus or grabs at a market; its presence implies deliberate transfer or exposure, toxicologists say.

What scientists say

“Epibatidine is a message in itself,” said Dr. Ingrid Meyer, a forensic toxicologist at a European university who has studied rare alkaloids. “It’s not pervasive in daily life. If it’s found in human tissue, you have to ask: how did it get there? Accidental contamination is unlikely. The notion that such a compound would appear fortuitously in a remote penitentiary is, frankly, implausible.”

These words, delivered in clinical tones by an expert accustomed to careful caveat, landed like a thunderclap amid a political storm. For Navalny’s supporters and family, they felt like vindication. For many in the West, they crystallized long-simmering suspicions about the risks faced by dissidents behind high, isolated fences. For the Kremlin, they were an accusation to be dismissed.

The Kremlin answer: “baseless, biased”

At the daily press briefing in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was succinct and scornful.

“We naturally do not accept such accusations. We disagree with them. We consider them biased and baseless,” he told reporters, his words measured, the tone unmistakably final. “Russia has its own investigative processes; external judgments of this sort are political posturing.”

Peskov’s response is consistent with a pattern: Moscow has repeatedly rejected Western assessments it sees as hostile or intrusive, and it has characterized much international criticism as part of a broader geopolitical campaign. Yet the public disagreement now centers on questions that seem, in other contexts, purely forensic.

Family, friends, and a plea for justice

Outside the cemetery, Lyudmila Navalnaya, Alexei’s mother, stood with a small circle of mourners. Her voice, when it came, was steady and filled with a weary determination.

“This confirms what we have said from the start,” she told reporters. “He did not simply die in prison. He was murdered. We will find out who did it. I want this to happen in our country. We want justice to prevail.”

Her insistence—that an internal, Russian inquiry should establish accountability—was not just a personal plea. It was also a political challenge. The state has labeled Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation as “extremist” before his death, a designation that has criminalized public mention of his work and placed limits on how mourners and activists can organize today.

“You can’t even talk about him online without risking prosecution,” said Sergei Antonov, a human rights lawyer who now lives abroad. “That climate makes the search for truth extremely difficult inside Russia. Families are left to push against both grief and an apparatus that treats their questions as subversion.”

Why the place of death matters

The Arctic penalty colonies are a particular breed of isolation—far from major population centers, often reachable only by long roads or winter flights that are themselves weather-dependent. Conditions, former prisoners say, can be cruel: naked, prioritised logistics over oversight; contact with the outside world limited; medical care uneven. All this inserts friction into any subsequent inquiry.

“Remote prisons create remote accountability,” noted Elena Markova, who works with an NGO documenting prison conditions. “If something happens in the polar months, it can take days before anyone even knows. Records can go missing. Witnesses can be intimidated. International pressure can help, but it cannot replace transparent domestic institutions.”

Beyond Moscow: global reverberations

What happens now reverberates far beyond the cemetery gate. The European statement has already widened diplomatic fissures: it is a direct rebuke that will be used by capitals in Brussels, London and elsewhere to press for international investigations, visa restrictions, and perhaps new sanctions targeted at individuals associated with prison oversight. It further complicates a certain weariness in international relations, where Western governments must balance demands for human-rights accountability against geopolitical calculations about energy, security and regional stability.

“This isn’t just about one man,” said Daniel Weiss, a scholar of authoritarian systems at a global think tank. “It’s about whether democratic states are prepared to sustain pressure when the evidence arrives, and whether they can make institutions—international courts, forensic bodies—part of a credible route to truth and justice.”

Ask yourself: what would justice look like in this case? A transparent Russian investigation? A multinational inquiry? A detailed, public forensic report? Each option collides with politics, sovereignty, and the practical limits of enforcement. What would satisfy the bereaved? What would satisfy the broader international community? There are no easy answers.

What readers should watch for next

Whether Russia opens its own public inquiry or allows foreign experts access to the prison and to the samples cited by the Europeans.
If any new sanctions or diplomatic measures follow, particularly from the five nations that made the statement.
Reactions within Russia, especially among courts, prosecutors, and civil-society actors who might risk more by speaking out.

Closing: memory, uncertainty, and the cost of silence

As the morning dissolved into a muted winter day, people left the graveside slowly, some with flowers, others with fists half-raised in the old, weary gesture of defiance. The question of how a man died has taken on larger meanings. It is about the value of dissent, the obligations of states to investigate potential crimes, and the ways a global community can insist on answers when a country refuses them.

“We must keep asking,” Irina Popova said, as she tucked a small red ribbon into the snow at the edge of the plot. “Because if we don’t, no one will.”

Two years after his death, the story of Alexei Navalny feels less like a closed file and more like a book with pages being slowly prised open—by families, by scientists, by diplomats, and by strangers who will not stop visiting his grave. The next chapters will tell us something not only about one case, but about our capacity to demand truth in a world that often prefers silence.

Starmer pledges swift overhaul of UK social media regulation

hanad

February 16, 2026

UK minister says talk of plan to replace Starmer not true — Keir Starmer's Labour Party is languishing in the polls

When a prime minister walks into a community centre: Britain’s rushed promise to curb addictive apps

In a small, sunlit room in east London, a circle of folding chairs held parents with tired eyes and teens who scrolled with the elegant, desperate boredom of their generation. It was the kind of place where the political and the personal meet — warm tea, a community noticeboard peppered with flyers, the smell of Sunday dinners and school uniform still in the air.

Keir Starmer stepped in and did something that felt less like politics and more like a conversation. He spoke plainly about his children, about nights spent watching phones glow in bedrooms, and about the “glueing” quality of auto-scrolling feeds that can trap a child for hours. “The status quo, things as they are now, is not good enough,” he told the room. “We’ve taken the powers to make sure we can act within months, not years.”

That pledge — to act fast to protect children from the addictive architecture of modern social platforms — is the latest turn in a global reckoning with social media’s design. The UK government has announced a three-month consultation, due to open in March, to consider banning children from some platforms entirely and to curb features such as infinite scroll. It will also examine restrictions on virtual private networks (VPNs) and AI chatbots, and extend protections against AI-made sexualised images without consent.

What the government is proposing — and why it matters

The plans read like a toolbox of blunt and subtle instruments: age limits similar to an “Australian-style” ban already floated elsewhere in Europe; restrictions on features that hook users into never-ending engagement; age checks on services that previously did not verify youth. There’s even talk of blocking access to VPNs when they act as easy workarounds to geographic enforcement.

“We need to act very quickly, not just on the age concern, but on the devices and applications that make the sort of auto-scrolling, the constant glueing to the machine that you can never stop scrolling,” the prime minister told reporters.

Advocates for tougher rules say parents are in a bind. “I feel like I’m trying to hold back the tide with my hands,” said a mother of two at the community centre. “If you try to block everything, your child loses out on friendships, school groups, the news. But you also don’t want them trapped by something that rewires their attention.”

How other countries are reacting

The UK’s move has not been made in isolation. Spain, Greece and Slovenia have announced intentions to limit underage access to social platforms — a sign that Europe is testing a common appetite for regulation. Proponents point to Australia’s tough stance on online harms as a model worth emulating; opponents warn that hard lines can introduce privacy problems and push users into the gray market.

On the technological front, enforcement is messy. Last year image-hosting site Imgur chose to block images for British users rather than comply with tougher age verification rules. Major adult sites, faced with intrusive verification demands, also blocked access for UK users — a practical evasion that left millions blocked from content rather than verified.

Beyond platforms: privacy, VPNs and unintended consequences

Many of the government’s proposals collide with another fundamental right: adult privacy. Tightening age checks and policing VPN usage can protect children — but they can also limit adults’ ability to access legitimate services, particularly for those in marginalized groups or people living under coercive circumstances who rely on anonymity online.

“Regulation can be protective or paternalistic,” said a digital rights researcher. “The trick is designing rules that shield children without surveilling parents and adults into invisibility.”

There is also a diplomatic dimension. Heavy-handed regulation can create friction with U.S.-based tech companies and free-speech advocates who argue that geographic controls and product curbs overreach. The UK government itself has acknowledged that some future measures could reduce parliamentary scrutiny of curbs in order to act faster — a prospect that has raised eyebrows among civil liberties groups.

Voices from the ground

Across the room the voices were varied. A teenager shrugged and said, “Sometimes I don’t even know why I keep scrolling. It’s like I’m filling a hole.”

“We should redesign systems so they don’t exploit developing brains,” said a child welfare campaigner. “This is about product safety, not nanny state moralising.”

A local youth worker, who has run late-night drop-ins in the same neighbourhood for years, warned of any policy that swings too hard: “If you cut off platforms, kids will go somewhere else. The solution can’t just be a ban — it has to be about education, community spaces, alternatives.”

Experts press for new accountability

Some campaigners are urging the government to go further: regulatory frameworks that treat social platforms like other industries with systemic risk, such as banks. “We need a conduct-based regime that holds senior managers accountable for product safety risks,” argued a child-safety expert in a briefing paper. That would mean not just feature bans but legal liability for companies that design addictive mechanics targeted at young people.

Questions worth asking

As readers, what are we willing to trade for safety? Is it acceptable to constrain adult privacy to safeguard children? Can engineers redesign engagement without destroying the business model that funds public discourse? And who decides which features are harmful?

These aren’t academic questions. They’ll determine whether regulation nudges platforms toward better design — or whether it drives them to take measures like partial blocking, geo-restrictions, and privacy-invasive checks that harm more than they heal.

Short-term: an imminent consultation to frame possible laws and technical measures.
Medium-term: potential amendments to crime and child protection legislation that would harden enforcement.
Long-term: a likely global domino effect as countries watch what works and what backfires.

What happens next — and why you should care

The consultation opens in March and will run for three months. That’s a tight window for a debate that cuts across technology, law, psychology and family life. Expect passionate submissions from tech firms, privacy activists, youth organisations, and ordinary parents.

Whatever emerges will not simply be a UK story. Tech platforms operate globally; regulatory experiments in London can echo in Brussels, Canberra, and beyond. This is a moment to craft nuanced, evidence-based solutions that protect young minds without undermining civil liberties.

If you have children, work with youth, design products, or value privacy, this matters. How would you redesign social media for adolescents? Would you limit features, strengthen education, or push companies to redesign products that chase attention? Tell someone. Write your representative. Join the conversation before whatever is decided becomes law.

In the end, the question isn’t only whether the government will act in months rather than years. It’s whether we will act with clarity and care — protecting children without sacrificing the freedoms and trust that allow the internet to be a place of real connection.

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