Submission Statement: Riots broke out in Paris, Marseille and other French cities on Saturday as police struggled to stop the looting of stores and attacks on buildings after mass demonstrations spiralled into some of the worst street violence in years.

Over half a million demonstrators held largely peaceful protests across the country earlier on Saturday as discontent mounts about France’s high living costs and students denounce failings in the education system.

But clashes soon erupted with police as black-clad, masked groups set cars on fire in central Paris, while others stormed city halls in Marseille, Lille and Limoges. An official’s residence in Bordeaux was also targeted and stores were looted and smashed.

Limoges city hall was largely destroyed by a fire, while in Lyon a tourist office was set ablaze. The violence worsened into the evening, with attacks on stores and restaurants across central Paris and near historic theatres streets away from the Élysée presidential palace as police tried to clear the Champs-Élysées avenue.

At Place de la République in the French capital, where police had spent most of the day trying to dispel protesters with tear gas, streets were filled with rubble from broken shop fronts and TV and social media images showed restaurants on fire. Elsewhere, people looted luxury stores and threw fireworks at police in scenes replicated in other cities.

Lecornu blamed far-left groups for the unrest, saying earlier on Saturday they “clearly want to use these acts of violence as a warm-up before the presidential election”.

Le Pen took aim at far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, another presidential contender, accusing him of instigating the disorder on Saturday and saying: “Legitimate social demands have once again been taken hostage by the far left.”

Posting on X, Mélenchon hit back and celebrated what he called “joyous” scenes of peaceful demonstrations. He decried police tactics, saying some people had been needlessly pepper sprayed and targeted with tear gas.

The French government has defended its response to the protests and denied that it was unprepared.

Months after a deadly car wreck revealed the CIA’s participation in a raid on a Chihuahua drug lab, authorities arrested César Jáuregui, Chihuahua’s former attorney general, for allegedly allowing US spies to participate in the operation without permission from the Mexican government.

Gilberto Loya Chávez, the acting head of the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office, said in a video message that Jáuregui is under investigation for unlawful exercise of public service and conspiracy by public officials. Jáuregui is due to appear before a judge, Loya Chávez added, but did not say when.

The arrest, the official explained, came after the Attorney General’s Office concluded that there had been misconduct in an April operation in which state officials dismantled a clandestine drug-manufacturing laboratory.

The CIA’s participation came to light soon after the raid on April 19. That day, while he was still attorney general, Jáuregui himself announced that four people had died in a car crash as they were returning from a drug raid in northern Chihuahua: two Mexican law enforcement officials and two Americans, whom he identified as instructors from the US Embassy in Mexico City.

Days later, CNN and other media outlets revealed that the two Americans were not just embassy workers: they were CIA agents. The agency has significantly expanded its clandestine anti-cartel operations in the country during Trump’s second term – including assassinations of alleged cartel members and drone flights over Mexican territory.

On Saturday, Loya Chávez was careful to say that the issue at hand was not the drug raid itself, but rather the participation of US officials outside the bounds of Mexican law.

“This action does not disregard the work of the State Investigation Agency, the State Attorney General’s Office, or the Armed Forces in dismantling the clandestine laboratory, because it is of course a very significant result in the fight against organized crime,” Loya Chávez said. “What is being investigated is the way this operation was conducted, the failure to observe the chain of command and the applicable protocols.”

“A good result does not justify breaking the law,” the official added.

CNN has contacted Jáuregui’s office to find out whether he already has legal representation and whether he has entered a plea.

The presence of CIA agents in the operation incensed the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum, which took Chihuahua authorities to task for failing to give prior notice and coordinate with their federal counterparts, as required by Mexican law. Sheinbaum has insisted ever since that the situation had to be investigated to determine whether any crime had been committed.

The president said at the time that her office had been unaware that state officials in Chihuahua and the US government were collaborating independently.

“The relationship is federal, not state,” Sheinbaum said. “They must have authorization from the federal government for this collaboration, which necessarily takes place at the state level, as established by the Constitution.”

Soon after, Chihuahua Governor María Eugenia Campos ordered the creation of a unit to investigate the case.

On April 27, in her first report on the matter, special prosecutor Wendy Chávez said there were indications that the director of Chihuahua’s state security agency, who died in the car crash, had “possible unofficial collaboration” with the US agents and did not inform his superiors that they would be taking part in the operation.

Jáuregui resigned as attorney general that same day, stating that he was accepting “political responsibility” for the tensions the matter had generated.

“There were omissions both in the information provided and in the institutional handling of the points of contact with these individuals,” he said.

Until his arrest on Saturday, Jáuregui had been seeking the conservative National Action Party nomination for mayor of Chihuahua, the state’s capital.

I'm feeling a bit bummed by the apparently negative outlook of global and national politics for public liberty and equality, so to get myself into a more serious mood for contemplating politics, I've decided to interact with it by writing instead.

I'm interested in writing about an "enlightened" despot in pre-Revolutionary Europe, someone like Joseph II or Leopold I (as Grand Duke), who claims to wish to rule for the public happiness and rules with an Illuminati (like the real one in Bavaria, not the ridiculous conspiracist version) clique. The benefits are obvious, but I'd rather focus on what goes wrong when someone with good ideas chooses to go about executing them alone?

• How does he rule?
• What mistakes does he make because of his reliance on himself and a small clique?
• What does his style make impossible?
• What costs does this impose himself and his people?
• What opportunities does he lose?

I can imagine that his clique fails to distinguish between their benefits and humanity's, or that their lack of experience beyond their circles makes them insensitive to the benefits of the feudal past or the populist future, even as they transform their own administration in pursuit of cameralist ambitions. And of course we have all the typcal failings of oligarchic authoritarianism - lack of responsiveness, lack of time on the part of the small number of rulers, cliques, self-interest, excessive focus on "access" to the rulers, etc.

I guess the whole point is: why is the current world order, for all its faults, the one that managed to liberate, in some sense, humanity, whereas the "benevolent" autocrats of old failed to do so durably?

Civilian casualties in Ukraine remain at record levels, with intensified Russian attacks in September continuing a pattern of harm in 2026 far exceeding previous years, UN human rights monitors in Ukraine said on Friday.

The mission verified that at least 328 civilians were killed and 2,105 injured in September – 85 per cent more than in September 2025. 

Casualties were recorded across 22 regions and the city of Kyiv, where civilians were killed or injured on 22 of the month’s 30 days, more often than in any month since the start of the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion.

The trend continued into October. On the night of 6 to 7 October alone, a Russian cruise missile and drone attack killed 22 civilians and injured 45 in Pryluky, in Chernihiv region.

“The first two weeks of October were among the deadliest periods for civilians in years,” said Danielle Bell, head of the human rights monitoring mission.

Energy assault

The high casualties came as Russian armed forces resumed systematic attacks on energy infrastructure. 

On 13 and 14 October, strikes hit multiple energy facilities, including Kyiv’s three main power stations, temporarily leaving 600,000 people in the capital without electricity, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Ukrainian armed forces also targeted electricity and heating infrastructure in occupied territory and in the Russian Federation, the mission said.

“Systematically attacking electricity and heating infrastructure as winter approaches is bound to inflict significant suffering on the civilian population,” Ms. Bell warned.

Risk of displacement

Damaged homes and attacks on energy also risk forcing Ukrainians who have returned home to flee again this winter, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) warned.

“For millions of Ukrainians, the challenge is no longer simply whether they can return home. It is whether they can remain there safely and right now the conditions are making it difficult,” said Arthur Erken, IOM Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia.

Some 1.45 million returnees now live in frontline districts, and during the last cold season only 32 per cent of households could heat their homes adequately. 

Around 2.1 million older people live alone in apartment buildings, leaving them especially exposed to prolonged power and heating cuts.

Less than seven per cent of IOM’s crisis response plan for Ukraine this year has been funded, Mr. Erken said, calling for urgent support to repair homes, improve insulation and maintain essential services.

Another diesel shortage

Meanwhile, the eighth localised ceasefire brokered by the international nuclear energy watchdog (IAEA) between Ukraine and Russia, began on Thursday to allow repairs to a damaged backup transformer, strengthening the connection between the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant and its sole remaining external power line.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi welcomed the cooperation of both sides but warned that diesel fuel at the plant was running low, with no deliveries since March.

“It is essential that steps are taken to increase the volume of diesel fuel available on-site prior to winter, when the situation may become acute,” he said, renewing his call for maximum military restraint from all sides.

Submission Statement: South-east Asia is set to notch up its biggest IPO this year when the owner of the Philippines’ most popular digital payments platform goes public. Mynt, which owns Filipino digital wallet GCash, will raise almost $1bn in the Philippines’ biggest listing, boosting the region’s muted capital markets. Trading is expected to start on Tuesday.

GCash has about 41mn monthly active users, or a third of the country’s population. The platform is used widely to pay bills, transfer funds and pay for purchases from millions of merchants, as well as offering loans. 

There were 71 listings in south-east Asia in the first nine months of the year — 11 per cent fewer than the same period last year, according to Deloitte data. The offers raised a total of $3.6bn, down 9 per cent.

However, the region’s IPO market was “showing renewed momentum, although the recovery remains selective”, said Tay Hwee Ling of Deloitte Southeast Asia.

The return of larger and more mature IPO candidates “signals improving confidence among institutional and international investors”, Tay added.

Stronger equity market performance, improving visibility around interest rate rises and regulatory reforms in some markets have supported offerings across the region, according to analysts and bankers.

South-east Asian IPO volumes have been muted compared with markets in China and India, but there are signs that bourses in the region are coming back to life.

Malaysia is the most active south-east Asian market by volume, accounting for about two-thirds of all listings across the region, according to Deloitte. 

In Vietnam the government has been pushing to expand the role of capital markets and equity funding as a way to meet ambitious growth targets at a time of rising borrowing costs. 

The Vietnamese government wants to double the value of its stock market by 2030, said Thuy Anh Nguyen, a director at Vietnamese fund manager Dragon Capital.

The IPO pipeline remained “strong” for sectors including real estate, healthcare and tech, he said, with momentum set to be maintained next year.

A Russian satellite was tracked on Friday closely stalking a U.S.-owned commercial satellite — part of a space-based network that has supported Ukraine's military.

Aerospace analysts and space intelligence company LeoLabs told Axios it's a rare maneuver that raises the possibility of Russian interference with U.S. space equipment.

The firm said in a statement Friday that the Russian satellite's movement "appears to be a deliberate approach toward" the U.S.-owned ICEYE-X36 imaging satellite, according to the company's tracking data.

As of Friday afternoon, Russia's Cosmos 2612 satellite was roughly three miles from ICEYE-X36, LeoLabs said. A day earlier they were more than 200 miles apart.

Such behavior is "relatively uncommon" in low Earth orbit, it said, where assets can travel around 17,000 miles per hour.

What they're saying: "While the intent remains uncertain, the behavior warrants continued monitoring," LeoLabs said.

The Defense Department declined to comment on Friday and Saturday.

Spokespeople for ICEYE, a company founded in Finland, also declined to comment. The satellite is tied to ICEYE US, per multiple space tracking websites.

A Ukrainian official told Axios the military works with the Finnish satellite company and uses its capabilities but said it was unclear if this specific ICEYE-X36 supports the country.

In January, ICEYE announced it signed an agreement with "a customer within the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine" to "expand their cooperation in space-based intelligence" using their satellite constellation.

The official added that the Ukrainian military wasn't aware of the satellite movements in recent days. It was, however, informed of similar maneuvers this past spring and summer.

In May, a few Russian satellites began maneuvering around the ICEYE-X36, according to commercial space tracking data. The Space Force said the Cosmos satellites were positioned close to a "Western commercial radar satellite used by Ukraine for imagery intelligence."

The U.S. military has repeatedly raised alarm over Russia's development of anti-satellite weaponry.

Aerospace analysts and legal experts said Russia's willingness to burn the satellite's fuel and change its altitude, orbital plane and speed to approach ICEYE-X36 is worrisome.

Clayton Swope, a CSIS senior space fellow, said on Friday the distance is essentially "bumper-to-bumper."

"This is all unusual, and it just points to a purposeful engagement between Russia and a Western-run satellite that's supporting Ukraine," Greg Gillinger, a space analyst with Integrity ISR, told Axios.

Aaron Brynildson, a space law professor at the University of Mississippi, said while there's no strict legal limit on how close satellites can get to each other, countries generally don't get closer than six miles.

At any closer distance, if "the target satellite and the pursuing satellite were to move at the same time, the likelihood they could crash into each other increases significantly," Brynildson said.

The development comes as Ukraine is dealing with a satellite disruption in real time.

The United Arab Emirates has agreed to re-enter the Yemen conflict by resuming payments to some government forces fighting Iran-aligned Houthis in the south, according to sources in Yemen. In return, Saudi Arabia has agreed to provide air cover for the anti-Houthi force.

The new cooperation agreement is the first tangible signs that the deep rift between the UAE and Saudi Arabia over Yemen’s future is starting to be healed – if only because the advance by Houthi forces across Yemen has alarmed all the rival Gulf state rulers.

Saudi Arabia is facing daily drone and missile attacks and is struggling to maintain an atmosphere of normality, as Houthi strikes immobilise its airports and some of its energy infrastructure.

Southern forces – mainly in the Giant Brigades – were previously trained and funded by the UAE, and are regarded as some of the most effective in the disjointed anti-Houthi military coalition. But the UAE quit operations inside Yemen in January, cutting off its funding supply line.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE have responded to a demand this week by southern Yemen separatists for a referendum on secession, a move that would restore the 1967-1990 borders, when Yemen was two separate states.

The separatist Southern Transition Council has also not yet agreed for its troops to fight outside the borders of the old Southern Yemen, but an explicit agreement by Saudi Arabia to allow a referendum would be likely to lead to the lifting of that restriction.

Yemen’s UN-recognised government, based in Aden, declared last week a counteroffensive to drive Houthi forces from the capital Sana’a, but so far the military drive has met with limited success around Majzar near Marib and the Bab al-Mandab strait.

There is also no direct contact between the STC leader, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, and Saudi officials. Zubaidi fled to Abu Dhabi in January after a failed STC attempt to take charge across the south and announce a referendum on separation in two years’ time. In response, the Saudis bombed UAE arms shipments for STC forces.

The UAE then announced it was quitting all involvement in Yemen, and the Saudi-backed government said it would seek to try Zubaidi for treason.

UAE officials are deeply concerned by the state of the conflict. Despite massive losses, the Houthis are determined eventually to capture Taiz and Marib, the two remaining cities outside the boundaries of the old Southern Yemen.

On Friday two missiles fired by the Houthis struck the airport of Aden while a passenger plane was preparing to take off. No casualties were reported.

The missiles landed about 500 meters from the Yemenia Airways aircraft, and approximately 100 meters from the midpoint of the runway, said Yemen’s information minister, Moammar Al-Eryani.

The strike came a day after at least five people were killed and 16 injured in a Houthi attack on a presidential palace in Aden.

Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el Sisi, said he was convening an emergency session of parliament to grant his country’s military the powers to take action in defence of Saudi Arabia. He stressed Egypt would not be taking any offensive action, and would only defend Saudi Arabia.

In the UK, discussions are continuing about a Saudi request for further military aid. The UK has sent an RAF Voyager air-to-air refuelling aircraft, but regional diplomats are pressing for the UK to do more. Some concern is being expressed over whether Riyadh should be engaging closer with other Gulf States, including Oman and Qatar, on the issue.

The legal implications of a blanket UK backing for the largely Saudi air campaign is also being considered, since the court of appeal in 2019 found the UK had acted unlawfully in issuing arms export licences during a previous Saudi bombing campaign of Yemen in 2015-16. The Campaign Against Arms Trade said the UK had made no proper assessment of potential Saudi breaches of international humanitarian law, forcing the UK to revise its procedures.

Saudi Arabia claims to have revised its methods substantially since then, and certainly argues that it is acting in self-defence in line with the UN charter. The UN security council on 15 October adopted a UN presidential statement on 15 October asserting Saudi Arabia’s right to act in self-defence in line with international law.

No accurate death toll in the war since August is available, but more than 200,000 people have been displaced, according to the UN, which is placing increasing pressure on Aden-based humanitarian groups.

Trees wrap around buildings, roots sprout from riverbeds of plastic trash, and vines creep down the street. Nature is working to reclaim downtown Port-au-Prince after years of dereliction and gang warfare. But at dawn, through this post-apocalyptic urban forest still come streams of humanity: Hundreds of civilians walk through this dead zone every day, some carrying food, others heading to work — as first light permits them to cross gangland and into what’s left of the city’s free streets.

It is a scene of desperation that repeats at dusk, when the same single file of hundreds returns home. Here were once waterfront villas, a cathedral, a busy market frequented by tourists. No one comes here anymore — unless they have no other choice.

Years of political turmoil, corruption and the ascendance of a deadly gang coalition are suffocating Haiti’s capital city. The US and international community have repeatedly tried and failed to help bring order. Now, the remnants of Haiti’s government have rolled the dice with a very different option: a US private security tycoon.

Erik Prince and his private security teams were contracted by the US government during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, most remembered for Blackwater employees opening fire in Baghdad’s Nusoor Square, killing 17 Iraqi civilians. Four of his contractors were convicted in the US and later pardoned by President Donald Trump.

Now he’s in Haiti, where his mercenaries are working with elite local police to break the gangs’ chokehold — a secretive project known as the “Task Force.”

Prince has also introduced drone warfare to Haiti, with over 2,000 strikes since the Task Force began its operation last March. One seen by CNN shows a tiny drone flying straight into what looks like a water tank on a roof. It ruptures, and then suddenly the building is aflame — a strike on what a Task Force source said was a gang factory for Molotov cocktails.

“Insurgencies are not defeated by taking out just leadership,” Prince said last month, in an exclusive interview with CNN in Port-au-Prince. “I know there’s been obsession of that in the United States, but wars are won by taking significant numbers of enemy manpower off the battlefield.”

“They are evil criminals and the best place for them is in the ground.”

It’s an approach that critics say defies international law and due process. But for many Haitians exhausted by years of gang atrocities, the more important question is: Is it working?

Prince’s new company Vectus Global was hired by Haiti’s interim government last year. The Task Force now works in a fractured security landscape that includes the Haitian National Police, the new UN-mandated Gang Suppression Force, Haiti’s long-neglected army and a network of armed vigilante groups.

Soft-spoken in person but prolific on social media, Prince touts his work in Haiti as a model to other failing states with their own intractable security problems.

“When we started, a police truck was lost every week — attacked, ambushed, burned, the occupants slaughtered, butchered,” Prince said, standing on a rooftop overlooking gang-held parts of the capital. “That’s done now, because there’s much better response, quicker air support, drones, whatever, that prevents the police from being overmatched.”

Promised milestones have been elusive. When his contract was announced early last year, Prince said he aimed to free up key roads within a year, making it possible to drive from the northern port city of Cap Haitien to Port-au-Prince. Eighteen months on, the vital route remains strangled by gang checkpoints.

International flights to Port-au-Prince are stopped because of the risk of being shot over gang territory. General elections were supposed to be held in December; they have been postponed indefinitely.

Nonetheless, the past year has, at the least, halted the gangs’ advance in the capital, according to one assessment. The United Nations, which monitors the situation on the ground with quarterly updates, said in September that security operations “have contributed to halting the expansion of gangs in Port-au-Prince and cleared some areas from gang control, including in downtown.”

The death toll remains high. Of the 5,700 people killed or injured in 2026, more than half were casualties around security operations, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said in early October.

The gangs are also changing their strategies. They’re accelerating into other parts of the country, including farming communities that feed the nation. Forcible recruitment of children has tripled over the past year — between 30% and 50% of gang members are now minors, UNICEF estimates.

When gangs come under attack, they leave their youngest members behind with orders to fight until the end, one police commander told CNN.

In the mists of the steep hills that ring southern Port-au-Prince, CNN saw one Task Force operation where helicopters manned by foreign contractors assaulted gang positions, and drones detonated amid the clatter of gunfire.

Earlier this summer, a gang had massacred at least 47 residents and kidnapped dozens more in the town of Kenscoff, on the main southern route out of the capital. It was an apparent attempt to gain leverage over the Task Force, with the gang leader releasing a video threatening to kill hostages if drones hurt his troops.

The gang eventually released its hostages but dug into the tiny nearby hamlet of Bois D’Avril, into which Prince’s foreign ex-special forces flew in September, engaging them in an hours-long firefight.

Footage obtained by CNN showed the Haitian National Police’s SWAT unit entering the village, machine-gunfire in the background, and the distant thud of explosions. It also provided a rare sighting of some of Prince’s men, chatting with a SWAT officer who says, “I have heard a lot of things about you.”

A heavily armed foreign contractor points out to the officer a hillside building as a good security position. “We will be around the next few days to help you out,” he says, in an apparent Australian accent.

It was an operation that local residents cheered, rushing in to burn gang barricades after police declared the area clear. But for now, it’s still too dangerous for the area’s residents to return home. Many are now refugees in their own country, adding to the more than 1.5 million people who are internally displaced in Haiti — about a tenth of the national population.

“I’ve been left with nothing,” said one Kenscoff refugee, Luckson Alfrezin, from a cramped encampment in the capital, after the gang killed his uncles, cousins and aunts, and livestock.

“It’s like being a car with no lights on. You’re living but you don’t see why. You are already dead.”

A central question is how Haiti’s patchwork forces will hold and defend reclaimed areas like Kenscoff. It’s a role beyond what Prince’s small force is designed to do, but where coordination with the still-growing Gang Suppression Force and Haitian National Police is evolving.

Prince would not disclose the annual fee he receives for work with the Task Force, claiming only that it is a “fraction” of the cost of the short-lived Multinational Security Support mission — an initiative backed financially and logistically by the United States, that once envisaged 5,500 foreign police in Port-au-Prince.

“Our cost is one-sixth of what their annual camp cost was,” Prince said. The sum is likely in the tens of millions of dollars.

His income will be augmented by a deal to help control Haiti’s porous border with the Dominican Republic for the next 10 years in return for 10% of any new customs revenue collected. The long-term contract has raised criticism locally of how Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé is using his mandate as interim leader.

Human rights lawyer Rosy Auguste Ducena, who advocates for the rights of victims of violence, says the Haitian public is fed up with the slow pace of change.

“Absence and inaction are still the biggest issue with all the security forces operating in Haiti,” she said, pointing out that no major gang leader has been killed in years.

So far, the Vectus contractors are perceived as “useless,” she added.

“First of all, we don’t notice them, that’s the main thing: We don’t see them. And we know they’re very costly because it’s still our taxes that pay them and  we don’t see the results,” she added, calling for greater accountability from all the security forces operating in the country.

Armed groups still operate with “relative impunity” in Haiti, according to Ducena — a fact underlined by dozens of gang social media accounts flaunting their money, weapons, and freedom of movement, in addition to gruesome torture and kidnapping videos.

Prince’s drones have had two palpable effects.

First, ordinary people have been caught in some of the blasts. The UN counts 85 civilians dead from drone strikes across Haiti, according to a CNN tally of UN reporting, and directly attributes this to a “private military contractor.” Accounting is patchy, however, and rights workers say some deaths may go unreported because of difficulties they have reaching the kinds of gangland areas targeted by drones.

The most prominent case was a failed strike on a gang leader’s birthday party in September last year. At least eight children were among the dozen or more people killed when a drone’s explosive fell in the wrong location.

“Everybody started running and screaming. A drone had fallen behind the square where the gang leader was having a party, at the soccer field,” said one woman to CNN, whose 6-year-old daughter was among the dead. “When I rushed to see, I found my child dead, face on the ground.”

Prince acknowledges that accidents are “not impossible,” but declined to comment on specific cases. His team runs “dozens of hours of surveillance in an area before we do anything there — a patrol, a raid, or certainly a drone strike,” he added.

The second impact of the drone strikes has been to force the gangs to take note.

CNN spoke to several gang members in the downtown area of BelAir, where armed men roam the streets openly. They don’t flinch when armored police patrol vehicles pass by, but are wary of the drone threat.

One of them, who gave him name as Etienne, told CNN that “drones are pushing us out of the area.”

A gang lieutenant, Julio, had a message for Prince. “The biggest threat is Erik Prince’s force,” he said, claiming that if the American left “tomorrow,” it would create a need for peace and dialogue with Haiti’s National Police.

“We armed men need peace too. Imagine, I have a wife and kids,” he said from behind his camouflage balaclava, his subordinates holding batons and guns around him.

Dialogue and disarmament have been floated before in Haiti, but sources say attempts to gauge interest from the main gang coalition Viv Ansanm (“Live Together” in Haitian Creole) have so far fallen flat.And while Haiti has committed to a handover protocol for child gang members, getting the public to accept reintegration of anyone with gang associations is likely to be challenging.

That may be why Prince seems so confident in the brutal fix he’s offering.

“I welcome all those critics to come and walk through the rough neighborhoods of Port-au- Prince for a week or a day and see how long they last,” he said.

With less than three weeks left until the midterm elections, which will determine which party has the majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, national polls generally point to an advantage for the Democratic Party. There is even talk of a “blue wave,” namely a sweeping victory for the Dems. But will these projections translate into election results? A reason for skepticism is the Republican Party's counteroffensive backed by its vast financial resources.

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President Donald Trump waived massive tariffs linked to Russian energy exports mandated in a law that he signed last month, as the measures complicated his push to lower diesel prices ahead of the US midterm elections.

Trump invoked a waiver clause under the law, which was championed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham as a way to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. The law also codified and expanded sanctions targeting Moscow.

“I am hereby waiving the application of such sanctions, restrictions, and duties provided for in the Graham Act. I have submitted to the Congress a certification that the issuance of such a waiver at this time is in the national interests of the United States,” Trump said in an executive order released late Friday.

The directive does formally impose the tariffs, while suspending their implementation, meaning that Trump could apply them at another time if he chooses.

The measure gave Trump 30 days to impose 100% tariffs on all goods from the top five buyers of Russian crude. It would also slap sanctions on numerous Russian entities and impose 500% tariffs on all US imports of Russian energy products. That one month deadline was set to expire on Oct. 18.

Those provisions conflict with his plan — announced last week — to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin to release the country’s diesel supplies into global markets. Trump is seeking to lower US diesel prices that are hovering at record highs weeks before the Nov. 3 elections.

Waiving the tariffs risks fresh pushback from members of Congress, including many Republicans who were outraged by his decision on Russian diesel. A bipartisan group of senators signed a letter this week demanding that Trump rescind the deal with Putin and enforce the provisions of the Graham law.

Waiving the law also avoids a potential clash with the top purchasers of Russian energy products, China, India and Turkey.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican and longtime champion of Ukraine, wrote the bill before he died in July and its passage was seen as a way of honoring him. Graham had repeatedly called such sanctions the key to bringing Putin to the negotiating table to end his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which is in its fifth year.