Less than a week after Coachella concluded, the Stagecoach country-music festival has drawn another crowd in the tens of thousands to the now mostly grassless Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif. The three-day event kicked off Friday and will run through Sunday night with headliners Zach Bryan, Jelly Roll and Luke Combs. I’ll be here all weekend to bring you the highs and the lows as they happen. Here’s what went down on Day 1:

Big stage, big show

Three years after he made his Stagecoach debut in 2022, Zach Bryan returned to headline the festival’s first night with a jumbo-sized performance in which he and a band of more than a dozen players ran through roughly 30 songs (and in the process blew way past his scheduled curfew ). The music was ragged but soulful, and as at every Bryan gig, it inspired folks in the crowd to scream his lyrics into each other’s faces.

Wearing what he said was the same sleeveless Indian Motorcycles T-shirt he wore last time at Stagecoach — “I thought it was cute,” he said — Bryan thanked the audience profusely, which felt inevitably like a bit of damage control after his ex-girlfriend, podcaster Brianna Chickenfry, went public last year with accusations that he had been emotionally abusive. (Bryan didn’t directly respond but wrote on Instagram that he was “unphased by the fake s— people say about me online.”)

But if his career seemed in danger just a few months ago, nothing about his reception here suggested that the enthusiasm about him has cooled. He even got away with doing a rollicking version of Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” which he called his favorite song of all time — and which hardly anybody on the field seemed to know.

An unexpected revelation

The headline out of Lana Del Rey’s set — which came as she’s been teasing the release of a purported country album that may or may not drop next month — is that she once made out with Morgan Wallen, at least if the lyrics of one of her rootsy new songs are to believed.

“I kissed Morgan Wallen / I guess kissing me kind of went to his head,” she sang over strummy acoustic guitar (after telling the audience that this would be the last time she’d ever sing the lines), “If you want my secret to success / I suggest don’t go ATVing with him when you’re out west.”

OK!

Let’s not let that bombshell keep us from savoring some of the other peculiarities of this song, which evidently is called “57.5” after the number of monthly Spotify listeners Del Rey once had — “I got 57.5 million listeners on Spotify,” she sang — and which also had her revealing that she talks to Jesus, hates everybody and still flies commercial. “You need an autograph?” she sang with a little shrug. “S—, I don’t mind.”

Performing on a set made up to look like the porch of a backwoods country cabin, Del Rey debuted a couple of other new tunes, including one that appears to be about her alligator-boat captain of a husband, and one that fans online are calling “Quiet in the South.” She covered Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man” and John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” and she brought out the up-and-coming country hunk George Birge to do his “Cowboy Songs.”

She also sang lightly countrified versions of “Video Games” and “Summertime Sadness” that made you think about how durable Del Rey’s fame has been over the past decade and change even as she’s taken every available opportunity to test its bounds.

Maybe that’s why.

T.J. Osborne, left, and John Osborne of Brothers Osborne at Stagecoach on Friday.

(Scott Dudelson/Getty Images for Stagecoach)

Five minutes backstage with Brothers Osborne

How often do you shampoo your hair?

T.J. Osborne: Never.

John Osborne: Never?

T.J.: Never.

John: Wow. I’m once a week.

How many unread text messages do you have?

John: Six. And two unread emails. I try to keep it below 10.

Does anyone besides you know the passcode to your phone?

John: My wife. I don’t know the passcode to hers, though.

T.J.: Anybody that’s partied at my house and they’re like, “What’s the passcode? Gotta change the music.” I’m like, “OK, here you go.”

You don’t have to say with whom, but are you currently involved in a beef with anyone in music?

T.J.: Oh, always.

Would you rather be 10% more talented or 10% better looking?

John: I’ve got plenty of talent.

Name a country song you wish you could sing but you know you can’t.

John: Pretty much any Chris Stapleton song.

T.J.: Or Vince Gill. “Go Rest High on That Mountain” — it just needs that high tenor.

What’s an adult beverage you’ve sworn off?

T.J.: No cinnamon drinks. Fireball, Goldschläger, any cinnamon schnapps — won’t do it.

What’s the last thing you used ChatGPT for?

John: If you come in last in our fantasy football league, you have to do open-mic stand-up comedy. And I was nearly in last place, so I used it to help write jokes. It was so bad. ChatGPT is amazing — but a horrible comedian.

Did you come in last?

John: Fortunately, I didn’t have to use the jokes.

T.J.: The guy who did lose, one of our friends got on a Facebook group for the area we live in and told everyone that Nate Bargatze was gonna do a pop-up to get more strangers to come watch him.

Paris Hilton deejays at Stagecoach on Friday.

(Timothy Norris/Getty Images for Stagecoach)

The art(?) of the mix

Wearing bedazzled headphones to match the rest of her super-sparkly outfit, Paris Hilton took all of about eight seconds to bludgeon the crowd inside Diplo’s HonkyTonk with “We Found Love” by Rihanna and Calvin Harris, which she mixed into Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” to open an almost charmingly obvious DJ set. Later, Hilton brought out Lizzo and the two shouted along to Icona Pop’s “I Love It.”

Best introduction of a song so far

Carter Faith, teeing up her feisty new single, “Grudge”: “This song’s about a stupid bitch that pissed me off.”

Cringiest product placement so far

Tucker Wetmore performed on the main stage in front of a digital mock-up of an old-timey saloon complete with a mounted deer head, several American flags — and a sign advertising the canned vodka seltzer sponsoring his summer tour. Womp-womp.

T-Pain performs at Stagecoach on Friday.

(Timothy Norris/Getty Images for Stagecoach)

Three for three

No one has been more visible on the polo grounds this month than T-Pain, who after playing both weekends of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival capped Stagecoach Day 1 with a late-night set in the Palomino tent. The veteran R&B star said he initially had his doubts that he’d be welcomed by a country crowd when Jelly Roll brought him out for a surprise appearance at last year’s Stagecoach: “These people don’t wanna hear my s—,” he said he told Jelly Roll. Yet here, as at Coachella, his hits went over like the classics they are. Paying forward Jelly’s favor, as he put it, T-Pain brought out another country outsider in Kesha, who joined him to do their new single, “Yippee-Ki-Yay,” which unfortunately is very bad.

Still stomp-and-clapping

Just days after Winston Marshall published an essay in the Free Press about abandoning what he views as an immoral music industry, Marshall’s old bandmates in Mumford & Sons put in a last-minute appearance at Stagecoach that drew a gargantuan crowd to the Palomino. Did everybody but me know that Mumford & Sons was still this big?

Carly Pearce performs Friday at Stagecoach.

(Timothy Norris/Getty Images for Stagecoach)

Five minutes backstage with Carly Pearce

Would you rather drive or be driven?

Drive. I get very car sick.

What’s the last thing you cooked?

Spaghetti squash.

How often do you shampoo your hair?

Every day. I’m that person — I know it’s wrong.

Would you rather be 10% more talented or 10% better looking?

Ten percent better looking, for sure.

Name a country song you wish you could sing but you know you can’t.

Martina McBride, “Independence Day.” She just belts on a level I don’t belt.

What’s an adult beverage you’ve sworn off?

Beer.

A go-to indulgence?

Designer handbags.

You have a tattoo you regret?

I have a rainbow butterfly on my foot that I got to match all the colors in my outfits when I was 16. Now it’s a little trashy.

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Markets have been up and down over the past several weeks, with a level of volatility not seen in a considerable time. Uncertainty breeds volatility, but looking past the noise, one finds Europe in a reasonable position.

Since the start of the year, European stock markets have been outperforming US equities as investors noted the strong relative value compared to the highly priced US markets.

Moreover, European markets are benefiting as governments’ spending plans for increased defence and infrastructure should filter into improved growth.

European consumers, despite expressing confidence concerns in various surveys, have demonstrated resilience in the recent period of high inflation and interest rates. Household savings rates are high across many economies, and employment levels remain stable.

A further growth catalyst could come from the European Commission’s enactment of the Savings and Investment Union, which would channel European savings into support for the expansion of European companies.

Further, the Commission needs to continue rapidly on its path to adjusting internal barriers to trade and investment within Europe, simplifying regulation and focusing on improving trading relationships with other economies.

As the US administration continues its efforts to reposition the global trading environment, financial markets are likely to remain volatile. While the threat of tariffs had been well flagged, the magnitude and breadth of the proposal clearly spooked markets.

The recently announced pause will provide time for countries to negotiate less severe terms, for companies to prepare for the impact on their supply chains, and for investors to fully evaluate their impact.

As for Europe, we expect the tariff issue, if enacted, to impact growth, cutting into a previously improving position. It will be critical for investors to filter out the noise.

There are many questions that remain unanswered and could still impact some firms more severely than others. For example, the largest European sectors with an exposure to trade with the US are the automotive and pharmaceutical sectors.

Wait and see how countries and companies react

If we examine credit markets, we see investors pricing in a rising level of risk, but not yet to a level that would suggest any severe scenarios are on the horizon.

Credit spreads have widened, but so far, only to their five-year historical average levels, not nearly to the wides seen during the pandemic period and the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, with its subsequent period of highly elevated energy pricing.

Part of the reason for this is that many European companies have repaired their balance sheets, improved their financing, and adjusted their margins after weathering the recent crises. European banks are also in strong shape, and corporate default rates are relatively low.

As highlighted on KBRA’s Credit Compass podcast, KBRA DLD’s European Index of private credit default expectations are for a default rate of only 1.25% in 2025.

While the severity of the tariff impact could move the needle with respect to these levels, we will have to wait and see how various countries and companies react.

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Gordon Kerr is European Macro Strategist at global rating agency KBRA.

BOSTON — As a Black teenager growing up in Boston, Wayne Lucas vividly remembers joining some 20,000 people to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak out against the city’s segregated school system and the entrenched poverty in poor communities.

Lucas was back on the Boston Common this weekend to celebrate the anniversary of what became known as the 1965 Freedom Rally. Sixty years on, he joined others Saturday in calling for continued activism against many of the same injustices and inequities that King fought against, and in blaming President Trump and his administration for current divisions and fears about race and immigration across the country.

“The message was … that we still have work to do,” said Lucas, 75. “It was a lot of inspiration by every speaker out there.”

The gathering drew several hundred people on a rainy and windy day, conditions similar to those during the 1965 event. It was preceded by a march by a smaller group, mostly along the route taken to the Boston Common 60 years earlier. As many as 125 organizations took part, organizers say.

A new call to activism

King’s eldest son, Martin Luther King III, gave a keynote speech, saying he never thought racism would be on the rise again as he sees it today.

“We must quadruple our efforts to create a more just and humane society,” he told the crowd. “We used to exhibit humanity and civility, but we have chosen temporarily to allow civility to be moved aside. And that is not sustainable, my friends.”

He added, “Today, we’ve got to find a way to move forward. When everything appears to be being dismantled, it seems to be attempting to break things up. Now, you do have to retreat sometimes. But Dad showed us how to stay on the battlefield, and Mom, throughout their lives. They showed us how to build community.”

The gathering was near the site of a 20-foot-high memorial to racial equity, which shows younger King’s parents embracing.

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the work of 1960s civil rights leaders remains unfinished, with too many people still experiencing racism, poverty and injustice.

“We are living through perilous times,” she said. “Across the country, we are witnessing … a dangerous resurgence of white supremacy, of state-sanctioned violence, of economic exploitation, of authoritarian rhetoric.”

When civil rights movement arrived in Northeast

The original protest march in 1965 brought the civil rights movement to the Northeast, a place Martin Luther King Jr. knew well from his time earning a doctorate in theology from Boston University and serving as assistant minister at the city’s Twelfth Baptist Church. It was also the place he met his wife, Coretta Scott King, who earned a degree in music education from the New England Conservatory.

In his speech that day, King told the crowd that he returned to Boston not to condemn the city but to encourage its leaders to do better at a time when Black leaders were fighting to desegregate the schools and housing and working to improve economic opportunities for Black residents. He also implored Boston to become a leader that New York, Chicago and other cities could follow in conducting “the creative experiments in the abolition of ghettos.”

“It would be demagogic and dishonest for me to say that Boston is a Birmingham, or to equate Massachusetts with Mississippi,” he told the crowd. “But it would be morally irresponsible were I to remain blind to the threat to liberty, the denial of opportunity, and the crippling poverty that we face in some sections of this community.”

The Boston rally happened after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and months before the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in August.

King and other civil rights leaders had just come off the Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama, which culminated in Bloody Sunday on March 7, weeks before the Boston rally. King had also recently led the 1963 Birmingham campaign prompting the end of legalized racial segregation in the Alabama city, and eventually throughout the nation.

DEI comes under threat by Trump administration

Saturday’s rally came as the Trump administration is waging war on some bedrock civil rights themes — diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in government, schools and businesses around the country, including in Massachusetts.

Since his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump has banned diversity initiatives across the federal government. The administration has launched investigations of colleges — public and private — that it accuses of discriminating against white and Asian students with race-focused admissions programs intended to address historical inequities in access for Black students.

The Defense Department at one point temporarily removed training videos recognizing the Tuskegee Airmen and an online biography of Jackie Robinson. In February, Trump fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., a champion of racial diversity in the military, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Brown, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police in 2020, had spoken publicly about his experiences as a Black man, and was only the second Black general to serve as chairman.

The administration has fired diversity officers across government, curtailed some agencies’ celebrations of Black History Month and terminated grants and contracts for projects ranging from planting trees in disadvantaged communities to studying achievement gaps in American schools.

Attacks on diversity make ‘little sense’

Martin Luther King III told the Associated Press that the attacks on diversity make little sense, noting, “We cannot move forward without understanding what happened in the past.”

“It doesn’t mean that it’s about blaming people. It’s not about collective guilt. It’s about collective responsibility,” he continued. “How do we become better? Well, we appreciate everything that helped us to get to where we are. Diversity hasn’t hurt the country.”

He said opponents of diversity have floated an uninformed narrative that unqualified people of color are taking jobs from qualified white people, when the reality is Black Americans have long been denied the opportunities they deserve.

“I don’t know if white people understand this, but Black people are tolerant,” he said. “From knee-high to a grasshopper, you have to be five times better than your white colleague. And that’s how we prepare ourselves. So it’s never a matter of unqualified. It’s a matter of being excluded.”

Imari Paris Jeffries, the president and CEO of Embrace Boston, which along with the city put on the rally, said the event was a chance to remind people that elements of the “promissory note” the elder King referred to in his “I Have A Dream” speech remain “out of reach” for many people.

“We’re having a conversation about democracy. This is the promissory note — public education, public housing, public health, access to public art,” Paris Jeffries said. “All of these things are a part of democracy. Those are the things that are actually being threatened right now.”

Casey writes for the Associated Press.

On the day before volleyball practice began in January, Hall of Fame coach Michael Boehle spoke to his players at Loyola High to let them know about expectations for the coming season.

“One of the things we talk about is cancer within a team and how there are times when cancer can really affect a lot of things and it’s not curable and it spreads,” he said. “We use that analogy talking about bad teammates.”

Players had no idea what was about to come out of their coach’s mouth.

“Unfortunately, today, I’m here to tell you your coach has cancer.”

As if that wasn’t shocking enough, then came a warning.

“You have to stay patient with me. I don’t know if I’m going to be missing practices, games or be gone for a month,” he said. “All I can ask you to do is say an extra prayer for me. Coach is a fighter. That’s all I got. See you tomorrow.”

Boehle grabbed his water bottle and put his head down. There was silence. When he finally looked up, he saw players lined up in a single file offering hugs and telling him, “We’re going to win this battle together.”

Boehle, 58, found out he had prostate cancer after a routine physical and blood test last October alerted his doctors to investigate further. An MRI scan just before Christmas revealed a spot on the prostate. Then came a biopsy in January to confirm a cancer diagnosis.

Since it was discovered early, the prognosis is good. Surgery is scheduled for July after Boehle is finished coaching club volleyball.

As the Southern Section playoffs begin Wednesday and the Mission League-champion Cubs seek their eighth Division 1 title under Boehle, he agreed to discuss the emotions he went through and to encourage others to be checked for a disease that is second only to skin cancer in affecting men.

He remembers the day after his cancer confirmation coming to school, shutting the door to his office and just crying.

“I was scared to death of spread,” he said. “I went down the rabbit hole and started looking up all the different cancers.”

In February he underwent a scan that uses radioactive tracers to see if it had spread. He’ll never forget the day his doctor interrupted his practice with a phone call to reveal the results.

“I’m not supposed to know for about a week,” Boehle said. “And it’s my doctor. I ran out to the pool deck. He says, ‘Michael your report is back and, as we suspected, there’s no metastatic disease.’ I literally dropped the phone on the pool deck. I ran back in and my son, Davis, was there and must have seen what I looked like because he asked, ‘Did you get bad news?’ I said ‘Don’t have a spread. It’s just in the prostate’ and gave him a big hug.

“I was so relieved. That was the biggest news out of my cancer diagnosis, hearing it had not spread. That’s what I needed to hear. I was in a bad place. I needed to hear that.”

With support from his family, players, friends and coaching colleagues, Boehle has been able to move forward and accept the judgment of his doctors that everything will be OK. He’s eating better and working out to be in the best shape possible for his surgery.

He wants to make sure others understand that even though there’s been no cancer in his family, having a routine blood test is a must to help discover problems before they become worse.

“The support and love I got from the volleyball community has been outstanding,” he said. “My message was I was in great health. Just because you don’t have that in your family doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get tested. A lot of people aren’t doing physicals. It’s a real easy test.”

Canadian voters are going to the polls on Monday amid one of the most dramatic campaign transformations in years.

January polls indicated the Conservatives were headed for a certain victory, but the Liberals have since flipped the race upside down, although the competition has narrowed in recent days. Early voting has shattered records with more than 7.3 million ballots cast.

“It’s pretty clear the Liberals are going to win this now,” said Frank Graves, president and founder of Canadian polling firm EKOS Research. “That would have been utterly unthinkable at the beginning of this year.”

Last fall, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who was seen as a Trump-like figure, tapped into rising populism in response to an affordability crisis and inflation under longtime Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

But the tide turned when Trudeau stepped down earlier this year on January 6, paving the way for new Liberal leadership, and President Donald Trump entered his second term, threatening Canada’s economy with a trade war. Suddenly, Canadians unified around their national identity and against Trumpism.

Populism – the belief that power must be taken back from the corrupt elite and returned to the people – led to the Brexit referendum in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US. Graves co-authored a paper that found 34 percent of Canadians have a populist outlook. This election, Graves said, Canadians watched Trump re-enter office and asked themselves, “Do we want to go down this populist path?”

If the Liberals win, it means Canadian voters are standing up to Trump, he said. “It will definitely be a rebuke to Trump, and to the kind of populism that they see on display in his administration.”

How the race changed

A change in US leadership has had a dramatic impact on its neighbour to the north.

At the beginning of the year, Poilievre enjoyed unchallenged popularity. An election would be called sometime in 2025, and it seemed likely that he would face off against Trudeau, who had been in power for nine years and had become deeply unpopular.

Post-pandemic, incumbent leaders in Western democracies faced tough elections due to pandemic restrictions, rising inflation, which had reached as high as 8.1 percent in June 2022, unaffordable housing and political polarisation. Trudeau was no different.

Poilievre was seen as a Trump-like figure in Canada; he had tapped into a “northern populism” that was a smaller share of the electorate than in the US, but still a powerful force, Graves said. Poilievre made Trudeau his punching bag, taking aim at his unpopular policies, like Canada’s carbon tax.

The question of Trudeau’s leadership came to a head when Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland suddenly resigned. In a letter, she wrote that Trudeau was not up to the challenge of the incoming Trump “America First” economic nationalism and high tariffs. Trudeau had no choice but to resign, triggering a leadership race for the Liberals.

In Canada’s political system, Trudeau stepping down meant that the Liberals still held power, but the party had to elect a new leader to run in this year’s election.

While the party held a leadership race, Trump entered office and swiftly declared a 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico. At the same time, Trump made repeated comments that Canada should become the 51st state.

The Liberals’ leadership race took place within weeks of Trump taking office, and the turn of events helped move the party “beyond the unpopularity of the Trudeau government,” said Lisa Young, a political science professor at the University of Calgary.

With Canada’s sovereignty and economy under attack, the Liberals on March 9 elected Mark Carney, who was perceived to be smart on the economy after previously serving as governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 financial crisis and governor of the Bank of England during Brexit and the pandemic.

Carney, elected in a landslide, channelled his popularity by calling a snap election for April 28, the shortest election period allowed by law.

Canada faces Trump’s trade war

Trump’s sudden tariffs have plunged Canada’s economy into uncertainty. More than 70 percent of the country’s exports go to the US, including automotive parts, lumber, agricultural products and steel.

“We are very dependent on the US,” said Sylvanus Kwaku Afesorgbor, associate professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario. “There could be a major economic recession in Canada, because our economy depends largely on the US economy.”

In March, the second-largest steel producer in Canada, Algoma Steel, announced layoffs as a direct result of Trump’s tariffs. The steel plant is the main employer in the close-knit city of Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, and the layoffs were felt deeply across the community. The Sault Ste Marie-Algoma district has been held by the Liberals since 2015, but last year, a steelworker dressed down Trudeau during a campaign stop. Since then, both Poilievre and Carney have made campaign stops in the city.

Afesorgbor said voters who are affected by tariffs, like steelworkers, will likely look at which party is offering a better economic cushion in case of job loss. They may ask themselves, “If there is an economic crisis because of the Trump tariffs, who will be in a better position to solve that?” He said it depends on how voters perceive each party leader’s ability to negotiate with Trump.

Afesorgbor said Canadian voters are “very particular” about the economy, and will choose the party they believe can handle a recession and Trump’s trade war. He said voters may perceive Mark Carney as the better candidate because of his record in the banking sector. “That has shifted a lot of support for the Liberals.”

Liberals take the lead

Trump’s policies towards Canada had more than just an economic impact. To many Canadians, it felt like a threat to their national identity.

“[The tariffs were] seen as an ally abandoning Canada, and then you add to it President Trump’s comments about making Canada the 51st state. So that sparked a wave of Canadian nationalism unlike anything that I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Young told Al Jazeera.

The outlook was not so sunny for Poilievre. “That has essentially shifted the terrain politically, because a substantial proportion of the electorate is suspicious of [Poilievre] being too similar to Trump,” she said.

Graves saw a “profound transformation” in the polls. In February, the Liberals and Conservatives were essentially tied, but in early March, the Liberals pulled ahead to a five-year high as Canadians asked, “How do we deal with this existential threat coming from Donald Trump?” Graves said.

The surge in national pride has pushed voters towards Carney, who was seen as a candidate who could steer Canada through the turmoil caused by Trump. “The Liberals became the place for planting our flag and saying, ‘We are going to remain a sovereign nation’,” Graves said.

Canadian voters set to rebuke Trump

If the Liberals win, as projected, it will signal that Canada is charting its own path relative to Trump, as opposed to electing Poilievre, who is seen as more conciliatory to Trump, Young said.

Graves said Americans should pay attention to Canada’s election, which has raised similar questions about identity and what path to take amid swelling populism. Instead of asking the question of which party to elect, Graves said Canadians are asking, “What kind of country do we want to be?”

“Underneath that question are some of the issues about, do we want to go down this populist path? I think Canadians are pausing and looking and saying, ‘No, maybe that’s not where we want to take our country,’” Graves said.

Graves noted that it’s uncommon for a Western democracy to turn against rising populism. “Americans might find this as a possible prescription to their future, if they don’t want to continue down the path they’re going,” he said.

In the first week of April, the United States carried out air raids across Yemen. One strike hit just a street away from my family home in a quiet neighbourhood of the port city of Hodeidah. As is always the case with sudden attacks, everything happened quickly: the sound of the explosion, the house shaking, the children screaming and the struggle to comprehend what is happening.

Ten years have passed since the start of the war in Yemen. The air strikes of the coalition have stopped, but Israeli and American bombing have taken over. It now feels as if we are in a video game and we have just gone up a level to face another monster – far more ferocious than the previous one.

I thought living through so many attacks would have helped us conquer fear. But I was wrong. The sound of this month’s blast sent my son, Tamim, running into my arms. We were all scared, but what I saw in my little boy’s eyes was pure terror. He does not recall the whole war. He is only six years old and is still discovering the world, which on that day in early April, showed its ugly face to him.

He put his hands on the sides of my face, his little fingers trembling. He then whispered a difficult question: “Is this an earthquake?”

While everyone at home was busy trying to figure out where the bomb had fallen, I was searching in my mind for an answer to my child’s question.

I smiled to try to calm him down, still thinking of an answer. Should I lie and tell him yes? Or should I explain the reality of war, the fighter jet and the missile? Should I tell him the truth: that the world has abandoned us to a fate of constant, deadly bombardment?

I told him it wasn’t an earthquake, that it was an airplane that had passed by and launched a missile. I decided not to share with him the gruesome details of what a missile does once it lands in civilian neighbourhoods. I did not want to distort for him his love for airplanes. Flying above the clouds has been Tamim’s dream, and he has been saving his meagre pocket money to realise it one day.

Mentioning the airplane eased his fear and got him thinking about his flying machines. What truly worries me is that one day my son will come to realise what hearing the sound of a plane really means in Yemen.

We soon found out what the target of the air strike was: a building next to which was a house I had visited before. It was the home of the sister of a close friend of mine. I was overcome by an anxious premonition and decided to call my friend who was living in a different city.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell her at the start of our conversation what had happened. She sounded so happy on the phone. But she understood from my shaky voice that something was wrong. Unfortunately, I had to become the bearer of the horrific news.

We later learned that her nephew, an 18-year-old named Mohamed, had been killed by the explosion. His biggest dream had been to receive a scholarship to study. He had returned home just an hour before the attack after attending classes at an English language institute.

Mohamed perhaps had never imagined that the scholarship he would receive would be for another world and that it required no qualifications other than being a Yemeni.

He became a number cited on the news a few times before being forgotten.

Two weeks later, as I began to write these lines, funerals were held for 80 people who were killed by a bombardment of the Ras Isa port. The United States saw the port as part of the supply chain of fuel for the group Ansar Allah, but it decided not to take into account the civilian workers employed there.

Most of them returned to their families as charred bodies. Some did not return at all – like 26-year-old Abdel Fattah. His body could not be found. His colleagues who survived said he was at the location where one of the missiles fell. When they searched for him, there was no trace – no phone, no shoes, no hair, not even a piece of skin. Abdel Fattah was pulverised.

This is the worst nightmare for a family: having no body of a lost loved one to embrace and mourn.

More days passed. More air strikes hit Hodeidah. I cannot describe how heavy the moments are after a bombardment ends. Who will be the next victim? Where is death lurking? People go into a frenzy calling loved ones. A simple decision to switch off one’s phone can send a family into panic.

And yet, amid all the death and destruction, Yemenis still find a way to show kindness and resilience. I often hear people say that what we are suffering cannot compare to what is happening in Gaza. My fellow Yemenis see pain as a matter of comparison, not a matter of justice – as if the pain must compete against another to be recognised.

I often ask myself: Do we suffer from collective depression? Or do we possess a supernatural power that allows us to adapt to this abhorrent resignation?

Whether the air strikes increase or they stop, there is nothing that can calm our hearts down. This grief accumulates in our bodies and makes us dread what is to come.

Yemenis no longer pay attention to the rest of the world, which has reduced us to mere numbers in international agency reports and news broadcasts.

There is nothing else we can do than write. Perhaps writing can keep alive the memory of Mohamed, Abdel Fattah and hundreds of thousands of other Yemenis. Perhaps one day, our writing can help stop the missiles.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

JoJo Siwa’s bond with Chris Hughes grew undeniable as the pair exchanged cuddles, flirty moments, and emotional confessions in the Big Brother house – with Kath Ebbs revealing their relationship with the Dance Moms star has come to an end

JoJo Siwa has always lived her life in the public eye, but even fans weren’t fully prepared for the emotional rollercoaster that unfolded during her time with Chris Hughes on Celebrity Big Brother.

The unlikely pairing became a fan favourite on the show, despite JoJo being in a relationship with her partner Kath Ebbs, who announced the Dance Moms star brutally dumped her at the CBB afterparty less than 24 hours after exiting the house.

As whispers grow louder that JoJo, 21, ended her relationship to focus on her deepening bond with Chris, 32, we take a look back at all the signs that she was “falling” for the former Love Islander.

READ MORE: JoJo Siwa’s ex Kath Ebbs makes cryptic dig at CBB star after revealing brutal dumping

Physical signs

From hand-holding and cuddles to playful teasing, fans of CBB were sure JoJo and Chris had intense chemistry. They didn’t shy away from close contact – giggling, cuddling, and even one eyebrow-raising moment where JoJo licked chocolate off Chris’s shorts.

It was so obvious that fellow housemate Ella Rae Wise accused the former Love Islander of isolating himself and “not getting to know” anyone else in the house.

Bedtime antics

Perhaps the most telling moments came during more private glimpses into their bond – including being caught on camera holding hands and laughing together in bed. The pair would often keep other housemates awake as they had deep chats well into the night.

At one point, JoJo was called out by Big Brother for “drawing” something on Chris’s hand – with fans speculating it was a love heart.

Heartfelt comments

JoJo didn’t just show it – she said it plenty of times. During the final, JoJo gave a speech at the dinner table in front of her housemates as she said that Chris “feels like family” and he’s “the best thing” to come out of the whole experience.

The US star then said that she has love for Chris as she told him “the love I’ve gained for you is unreal.”

“48 hours”

After receiving a letter from Kath, JoJo cryptically told Chris, “Give me 48 hours,” hinting that she needed time to process her feelings – and possibly make a difficult decision about where her heart truly lay. She later doubled down, telling Chris, “I’ll tell you something in 48 hours,” only fueling speculation that she was weighing a major choice between her current relationship and a future with Chris.

And sure enough, within 24 hours of leaving the Celebrity Big Brother house, JoJo’s former partner Kath claimed she had dumped them “at the after party with Chris in the room next door”.

JoJo’s mum gave her blessing

Jessalynn Siwa, JoJo’s mother, didn’t stay silent. She re-shared a fan-made video comparing JoJo and Chris’s chemistry to the iconic love story of Jack and Rose from Titanic. The “Titanic vibes” comment sent the fandom into a frenzy – especially since Jessalynn’s repost was seen as a subtle seal of approval.

The video featured JoJo and Chris dancing from the Celebrity Big Brother livestream, alongside the caption: “JoJo and Chris are so giving me Jack and Rose vibes. She’s the rich one who has fell in love with someone who is lower class than her and she has probably never had this much fun in her life.

“This is definitely the closest love story to Titanic yet.”

Chris’s emotional reaction

It wasn’t just JoJo declaring her feelings. Chris Hughes was visibly emotional when speaking about JoJo, even tearing up at one point. He compared JoJo to his ex-girlfriend, highlighting their shared personality traits and the connection he felt – suggesting his feelings were very real and very deep.

The Love Island star admitted his “love” for the US star during his exit interview on Friday. “JoJo was a pure rock to me, she was someone I can have fun with and I had fun with her every day,” he said.

“That is to me is a beautiful friendship.”

Kath’s shock video

Meanwhile, JoJo’s partner Kath Ebbs became noticeably absent. She disappeared from social media during JoJo’s stint on the show, with her first video back announcing that she had been brutally dumped by the Dance Mom’s star at the afterparty.

Kath claimed they had “flew across the world” to support JoJo, and she was left heartbroken when her worst fears came true. Once the pair came face to face, the relationship abruptly ended.

READ MORE: Dunelm shoppers rave about £39 ‘Mediterranean’ parasol that’s ‘easy to put up and looks fabulous’

Video caught the moment a massive explosion rocked Iran’s largest port on Saturday, killing 25 people and injuring around 1,000 more, according to state media. Rescue and firefighting operations continued through the night in Bandar Abbas, while an official investigation into the cause of the blast has begun.

NEW YORK — Rule changes announced by the Trump administration last week could allow automakers to report fewer crashes involving self-driving cars, with Tesla potentially emerging as the main beneficiary.

The Transportation Department announced Thursday that it will no longer require automakers to report certain kinds of nonfatal crashes — but the exception will apply only to partial self-driving vehicles using so-called Level 2 systems, the kind Tesla deploys. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk had complained the old reporting rules cast his company in a bad light.

If Tesla and other automakers are required to report fewer crashes to a national database, that could make it more difficult for regulators to catch equipment defects and for the public to access information about a company’s overall safety, auto industry analysts say. It would also allow Tesla to trumpet a cleaner record to consumers.

“This will significantly reduce the number of crashes reported by Tesla,” said auto analyst Sam Abuelsamid at Telemetry Insight.

Added Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, noting that Tesla rival Waymo won’t get an exception, “This is a win for Tesla, a loss for Waymo.”

Tesla stock soared nearly 10% Friday on the rule changes. Wall Street analysts, and Musk critics, have said that Musk’s role as a top advisor to President Trump could put Tesla in position to benefit from any changes to regulations involving self-driving cars.

Other car makers such as Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru and BMW make vehicles with Level 2 systems that help keep cars in lanes, change speed or brake automatically, but Tesla accounts for the vast majority on the road. Vehicles used by Waymo and others with systems that completely take over for the driver, called Automated Driving Systems, or ADS, will not benefit from the change.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which enforces vehicle safety standards, said the new rules don’t favor one type of self-driving system over another, and that the raft of changes it announced will help all self-driving automakers.

“No ADS company is hurt by these changes,” the agency said in statement to the Associated Press. It added that the changes also make sense because, “with ADS, no driver is present meaning stronger safety protocols are needed.”

Waymo declined to comment for this story. The AP reached out to Tesla but did not receive a reply.

Under the change, any Level 2 crash that is so bad it needs a tow truck will no longer be required to be reported if it doesn’t result in death or injury or airbag deployment. But if a tow truck is called for crashes of vehicles using ADS, it has to be reported.

The vast majority of partial self-driving vehicle crashes reported under the old NHTSA rules involved Teslas — more than 800 of a total 1,040 crashes in the last 12 months, according to an AP review of the data. It’s unclear how many of those Tesla crashes required the vehicles to be towed, because a column intended to report that information in the database is mostly blank.

The NHTSA said after this story was published that only 8% of total reported crashes under the old criteria were cases in which partial self-driving vehicles had to be towed away and there was no other qualifying crash-reporting factor involved. It is not clear about cases where tow-away information wasn’t provided.

The relaxed crash rule was among several changes described by the Transportation Department as a way to “streamline” paperwork and allow U.S. companies to better compete with the China in making self-driving vehicles. The department said it would also move toward national self-driving regulations to replace what it called a confusing patchwork of state rules.

“We’re in a race with China to out-innovate, and the stakes couldn’t be higher,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday. “Our new framework will slash red tape and move us closer to a single national standard.”

Traffic safety watchdogs had feared that the Trump administration would eliminate the NHTSA reporting requirement completely.

The package of changes came days after Musk confirmed on a conference call with Tesla investors that the electric vehicle maker will begin a rollout of self-driving Tesla taxis in Austin, Texas, in June. Waymo, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet, already has cybercabs available in that city and several others.

Musk has argued that the previous reporting requirements were unfair since Tesla vehicles all use its partial self-driving systems and therefore log more miles than any other automaker with such technology. He says that his cars are far safer than most and save lives.

Tesla sales have plunged in recent months amid public backlash against Musk’s backing of far-right politicians in Europe and his work in the U.S. as head of Trump’s government agency-slashing advisory team. The company has pinned its future on complete automation of its cars, but it is facing stiff competition now from rivals, especially China automaker BYD.

Condon writes for the Associated Press.

England’s Marco Penge claimed his maiden DP World Tour title – just two months after returning from a betting ban.

The 26-year-old was given a three-month ban in December for placing bets on multiple events, with one month suspended for a year.

Since returning to action, Penge had finished third at the South African Open in March, and followed that up by securing a three-shot victory at the Hainan Classic in China on Sunday.

Penge, who joined the European-based tour last year, started the day in a share of the lead with China’s Xiao Bowen and was one shot behind Sean Crocker as he began the back nine.

But he hit three straight birdies from the 12th to go clear before finishing with a five-under 67 to seal the win on 17 under par.

American Crocker finished in a tie for second with Norway’s Kristoffer Reitan on 14 under, with Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen a shot further back.

“This means the world to me,” said Penge. “It’s something that I’ve always dreamt of achieving – winning on the biggest stage.

“After my time off it was the thing that I wanted to really prove to myself and prove to everyone, to show what a player I am.

“My caddie, through that time, has been my rock. And my wife and my whole team – I wouldn’t be where I am without them.”

Victory saw Penge finish third on the DP World Tour’s Asian Swing standings so he also earned a spot at the US PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.

Japan’s Keita Nakajima, who finished in a tie for 11th on Sunday, was top of the standings ahead of Spain’s Eugenio Chacarra, so both will also be heading to the year’s second major next month.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced an expanded military zone along the southern border with Mexico. He warned that US soldiers will detain and prosecute anyone who makes an unauthorised crossing into the newly-designated ‘national defence’ area.

Images of Pope Francis’ tomb at the Santa Maria Maggiore church in Rome have been released.

A single white rose was pictured lying on the stone tomb that bears the name he was known by during his pontificate, below a crucifix illuminated by a single spotlight.

The late pope was laid to rest at the church – one of four major basilicas in the Italian capital, and one he would regularly visit during his time as cardinal and pontiff – in a private ceremony following his public funeral in the Vatican on Saturday.

Mourners queued outside the church early on Sunday morning to be among the first to pay their respects to Pope Francis, who died aged 88 on Monday.

Among them was Rosario Correale, an Italian, who said it was “very emotional” seeing the tomb. “He really left a mark on us,” he told the Associated Press.

Polish pilgrim Maria Brzezinska felt the resting place befit the man. “I feel like it’s exactly in the way of the Pope. He was simple, and so is his place now,” she told the news agency Reuters after visiting.

Francis was particularly devoted to the Virgin Mary, and Santa Maria Maggiore was the first church to be dedicated to her when it was built in the 4th Century.

The basilica sits near the Colosseum, a stone’s throw from the city’s endlessly bustling and chaotic central Termini station – well beyond the limits of the Vatican, where popes are traditionally entombed.

But it was one the South American pontiff had a long-held affinity for.

It’s senior priest previously told an Italian newspaper that Pope Francis had said he wished to be laid to rest there in 2022, citing inspiration from the Virgin Mary.

“I thought it was amazing that he wanted to be buried here in this basilica,” Amaya Morris, another pilgrim, told AP.

“Out of all of the [churches], he chose this one. So I thought that was really amazing. It’s really humbling to be able to be here.”

Francis’ funeral was attended by heads of state, heads of government and monarchs from around the world – as well as hundreds of thousands of Catholics who lined the streets leading to the Vatican to pay their respects.

Hymns played out on giant speakers, occasionally drowned out by the sound of helicopters flying overhead, before 91-year-old Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re gave a homily on the pope’s legacy.

The cardinal emphasised that Pope Francis had repeatedly urged the world to “build bridges, not walls”.

The funeral was also the venue for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, which the latter said afterwards had the “potential to become historic”.

Trump later questioned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to end the now three-year war in Ukraine, a conflict which Pope Francis had regularly called for peace during his papacy.

Following the public funeral, Pope Francis’ coffin was carried through Rome in a slow procession.

Authorities said 140,000 people had lined the streets, clapping and waving as the hearse – a repurposed white popemobile – crossed the Tiber river and drove past some of Rome’s most recognisable sights: the Colosseum, the Forum and the Altare della Patria national monument on Piazza Venezia.

After a period of mourning, attention will soon turn to the selection of the next pope.

A date has not yet been set but it is thought it could start as early as 5 or 6 May, with 135 cardinals set to attend, making it the largest conclave in modern history.

HE shot to fame in the 80s in a cult classic comedy about a group of American nerds.

And in the early noughties he had a mainstream resurgence playing Lizzie McGuire’s dad in the hit kids’ TV show.

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Now the acting legend is 71 and enjoys spending his time riding his motorcycle in sun-soaked Los Angeles.

New pictures show him in his black biking leathers with fellow enthusiasts at The Rock Store, in Santa Monica hills.

It’s none other than Robert Carradine, part of the famous Carradine family acting dynasty.

Robert has aged gracefully and is embracing his mid-length white hair and matching beard.

In a nod to his Revenge of the Nerds past, he wore a pair of black thick-rimmed glasses as he straddled his pride and joy.

The star’s breakout role, which told the story of a bunch of geeky students who sought revenge on their bullies, spawned three film sequels as well as a reality show, King of the Nerds, hosted by Robert and his original Nerds co-star Curtis Armstrong.

The idea of rebooting the franchise for a reality TV audience belonged to Robert’s ex-wife, Edie.

Robert told The Pop Dose in 2013: “She said, ‘Remember five years ago when we tried to launch a reality show?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘I think maybe we should try to do it again.’

“So I gave a call to Curtis (Armstrong) and said, ‘Are you up for this?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, absolutely!’ So I called my agent, Gordon MacDonald, and it turns out he was friends with Jimmy Fox of Electus, which is one of the production-studio components to the show.

“And they got very excited about a meeting, so we took the meeting, and afterward I found out from Jimmy, who’s their head of production, that he called my agent and said, ‘Please don’t let the guys go anywhere else. Just give me two weeks, okay? We love the idea!'”

Contestants lived together in a house dubbed ‘Nerdvana’ and competed in a series of geeky challenges like giant chess and flying live-action helipads to win $100,000.

There were also cameo appearances from famous names like George Takei, Kevin Smith, Simon Garfunkel and John Oates.

Robert stumbled into the acting world after initially wanting to be a race car driver.

On his half-brother David’s insistence, he auditioned for the John Wayne western The Cowboy as a nervous 17-year-old and got the part, admitting it didn’t require much fakery.

The siblings then worked together on Martin Scorcese’s Mean Streets in which Robert’s serial killer murdered David’s character.

In the early noughties, a decade before his reality show was aired, Robert became a familiar face on the Disney Channel opposite Hilary Duff.

He called his casting in Lizzie McGuire a “godsend”.

“I didn’t really think that they were going to go for somebody of my style and type as Lizzie’s father,” he told Culture Brats.

“And then I found out after the fact that they’d written this guy to be kind of loose and devil-may-care, which I am. [Laughs.] And that seemed to fit the Lizzie McGuire mode.”

Robert’s dad John was an acclaimed character actor who racked up 351 acting credits in his 82 years, including Count Dracula in House of Frankenstein and Preacher Casy in John Ford‘s The Grapes of Wrath.

His brother Keith also has a long list of famous roles to his name ranging from 70s films The Duellists and Pretty Baby, to modern TV shows Deadwood, Dexter and The Big Bang Theory.

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HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Military officers stoop to inspect slim green cannons along the Saigon River. Construction equipment whines as workers erect towering bleachers in a downtown park. Fighter jets and helicopters roar above the city in practice drills.

For weeks, Vietnam has been preparing this city for the anniversary of a defining moment in the nation’s history: On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese forces stormed the Presidential Palace in Saigon, the governing seat of the Republic of Vietnam, just days after U.S. troops had withdrawn. The victory of the communist regime over the U.S. allied armies in the south effectively ended a costly, three decades-long conflict and unified the country.

Fifty years later, Vietnam is celebrating April 30 like never before. But amid the fanfare of parades, fireworks and airshows, a long-standing debate over what to call the holiday continues, a subtle acknowledgment of the lingering scars of a contentious war.

Victorious North Vietnamese troops take up positions outside Independence Palace in Saigon on April 30, 1975.

(Yves Billy / Associated Press)

The official designation is “The Liberation of the South and National Reunification Day,” but it’s known by many other names. Vietnamese who are aligned with the ruling communist party here often refer to it as Liberation Day or Victory Day, while those who resettled in the U.S. still use terms such as Black April or National Day of Resentment. Many Vietnamese in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City — as Saigon is known today — say they simply refer to it as April 30.

In the run-up to the 50th anniversary under General Secretary To Lam, who assumed party leadership in August, academics say that state media and government have embraced the shorthand “Reunification Day.”

“It has been a divisive issue for Vietnamese within Vietnam, and also between the government of Vietnam and the diaspora,” said Tuong Vu, a professor of political science at the University of Oregon and founding director of its U.S.-Vietnam Research Center. “But this year, they have talked a bit more about national reconciliation and unification.”

Throughout history, different names have often been given to the same wars and holidays, depending on who is framing the conflict. Here the Vietnam War is referred to as the American War, or the Resistance War Against America.

The Hien Luong Bridge, located within the Demilitarized Zone in Quang Tri province, is a symbol of the Vietnam War.

(Magdalena Chodownik / Getty Images)

The American Civil War was sometimes referred in the South as the War Between the States, and, later, the War of Northern Aggression. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War is also known as the Yom Kippur War and the October War, among other names.

Academics suggest that, for Vietnam, using the more neutral name of Reunification Day could help bridge a gap with the generations of Vietnamese who grew up abroad.

“It does show an effort to reach out to the other side, and that’s what many people have been advising the government,” Vu said. “If you want to take advantage of the strength of the diaspora, then you have to tone down your rhetoric.”

In February, secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Van Nen said the holiday should be considered a day of peace.

“It must be affirmed that it was a war of national defense, not about winning or losing. On the day peace came, there were mixed emotions — some felt joy; others sorrow. But after 50 years, personal sorrow needs to merge with the joy of the nation,” he said, according to Vietnamese media.

Vietnam’s determination to navigate a changing geopolitical landscape — with a flexible approach known as “bamboo diplomacy” — has also influenced the language its leaders use to describe the past.

For example, Vu said official statements now have fewer references to a “puppet government” in what was formerly South Vietnam, a term used to delegitimize its former adversary and denounce America’s involvement in the war. He added this shift was probably made in the hope of improving cooperation with the U.S. and to strengthen Vietnam’s territorial claims to several islands in the South China Sea.

The country has benefited from maintaining strong bilateral ties to both China and the U.S., its two largest trading partners, even as the rivalry between the two superpowers has intensified.

A gardener waters flowers outside the newly rebuilt Kien Trung Palace within the Imperial City of Hue.

(David Rising / Associated Press)

“They just kind of worked to build relationships with everybody and become a bigger player because of their economic development,” said Scot Marciel, a former ambassador based in Vietnam when it resumed diplomatic relations with the U.S. in 1995. “The business community has tended to view Vietnam as really a rising star in the region. It’s been a very steady, very pragmatic approach.”

The Trump administration may be taking action that could dim that star. Earlier this month, President Trump proposed a 46% tariff on U.S. imports from Vietnam, which could stall the country’s manufacturing and economic growth. Various news outlets have reported that Trump has also told senior diplomats in Vietnam not to attend the April 30 festivities.

Vietnam also invited military personnel from China, Cambodia and Laos to participate in its holiday parade.

“Vietnam prioritizes its relationship with regional and ideological allies as much as this strategic partnership with the U.S.,” said An Nguyen, a historian and lecturer at the University of Maine. “Maintaining that balance, I think, is becoming much harder in today’s context.

Hai Nguyen Hong, a senior lecturer of politics and international relations at Vin University in Hanoi, said he’s noticed the use of terms such as Liberation Day and Anti-American War has decreased over the past three-plus years. That shift, he said, can go a long way in changing perceptions in Vietnam and promoting national harmony.

“The day itself is a historical day. You can’t change it,” Hong said. “What you can change, and what you can see and observe change, is the mood and the attitude of the Vietnamese people.”

Vietnamese media and online discourse are tightly controlled, and there are no national surveys that include uncensored opinions about the government. But ahead of the high-profile commemoration on Wednesday, reactions to the celebration on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City ranged from enthusiasm to ambivalence.

Tran Thi Loan Anh, 27, and Phan Minh Quan, 26, in Ho Chi Minh City, said they will camp out in the early morning of the parade on Wednesday to get a good view of the 50th anniversary celebration.

(Stephanie Yang / Los Angeles Times)

Tran Thi Loan Anh, a 27-year-old tax advisor, said that she and her friends plan to camp out downtown at 3 a.m. the day of the parade, in order to secure a front-row view.

“I’ve been impressed by how the government has organized events that foster patriotism and national pride,” she said. “I’m especially struck by how music is used — traditional songs about the nation performed in such powerful, stirring ways.”

Pham Phu Quy, a driver and deliveryman, was a teenager in Saigon in 1975, with a father who worked for the South Vietnamese government, and a mother who worked for the northern army. Today, the 69-year-old said, Vietnam provides a freedom that differs from his childhood experiences. During the war, soldiers and checkpoints kept him from traveling. Now he rides his motorbike all around the country, taking selfies and photos along the way.

“I don’t know what the future holds, but this is a good enough life for me. Of course, debates between the two sides still continue to this day,” he said. “I just feel that if the country hadn’t been reunified — if the war had continued — everything would still be incredibly difficult.”

Pham Thao Anh, 75, is used to spending the national holiday in the capital of Hanoi where she grew up. But this year, she plans to fly to Ho Chi Minh City to celebrate.

“I remember that some of the soldiers that drove the tank into the Independence Palace that day were from my hometown,” the retired hospital worker said. “So this day has very special meaning to me.”

Le Anh Dung, 23, right, grew up hearing stories about the war from his grandfather and says he watches the April 30 celebration on television every year. His grandfather, Nguyen Van Them, 73, will travel to Ho Chi Minh City with other retired military officials to attend the 50th anniversary commemoration this year.

(Stephanie Yang / Los Angeles Times)

Nguyen Thuy Vy, a 32-year-old translator, said her generation generally has less attachment to the April 30 anniversary than other holidays such as Valentine’s Day, Christmas or Lunar New Year. “Young people I think nowadays are busy with work, and they don’t care about this traditional holiday,” she said.

But Le Anh Dung, a 23-year-old graphic designer in Hanoi, grew up hearing stories about the war from his grandfather, a former military officer who was working in North Vietnam’s artillery unit the day Saigon fell. Reading about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have made him more appreciative of peace at home, he said, adding, “I feel so lucky that I don’t have to endure the smell of gunpowder or crawl into a bunker once in a while, like previous generations did.”

His grandfather, Nguyen Van Them, 73, said watching the celebrations on television helped his grandchildren understand what previous generations sacrificed for them. He believes that tweaking the holiday’s name makes it more meaningful.

“‘Liberation of the South’ is not quite right, because it only mentions one half. But the other half also looks forward to the country’s liberation, unity, harmony and oneness,” Nguyen said.

To Clayton Kershaw, it was more than just a pitchers’ duel.

As Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Jacob deGrom traded zeroes at Globe Life Field in Texas last week, Kershaw sat in the dugout, mesmerized by what he could only describe as an exhibition in pitching excellence.

“Those two guys, that’s how it should look when you pitch,” Kershaw said a few days later. “The fluidness, the effortlessness, the way it comes out of your hand. That’s how you should throw. DeGrom and Yama are two of the best that just, like, make it look really easy.”

For deGrom, a two-time Cy Young Award winner and four-time All-Star, such plaudits are nothing new. But for Yamamoto, the second-year big leaguer blossoming as one of the sport’s best starters, it was a sign of how far — and how quickly — his young MLB career has progressed.

“He’s learned his way really well,” Kershaw said. “And honestly fast, for what it was.”

Last year, as a rookie with massive expectations following his record-breaking $325-million signing out of Japan, Yamamoto was good. Great at times, even. He went 7-2 with a 3.00 earned-run average. He struck out 105 in just 90 innings. He was the Dodgers’ Game 1 starter for the National League Division Series.

And yet, it often felt like something was missing. Like there was another level he couldn’t consistently reach.

“As we can all expect or imagine, there was a lot of uncertainty,” manager Dave Roberts recalled this spring of Yamamoto’s acclimation process. “I wouldn’t say anxiety. But [he was] new somewhere. And there’s expectations that everyone has.”

Entering Year 2, those expectations still were present. And one month in they’ve easily been met — if not surpassed.

Through six starts Yamamoto is all over statistical leaderboards, entering Saturday ranked first in the NL in ERA (1.06), fourth in strikeouts (43), sixth in innings pitched (34) and top-10 in both walks plus hits per inning pitched (1.00) and batting average against (.190).

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto celebrates with teammates in the dugout after throwing six scoreless innings against the Chicago Cubs on April 11.

(Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Associated Press)

And that was after arguably his worst start of the season Friday night, a loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates in which he gave up three runs (one earned) on five hits and a career-high four walks over five innings in another high-profile pitchers’ duel against Paul Skenes.

“Certainly there’s a lot of talent,” Roberts said of Yamamoto. “But it just speaks to how great he wants to be, his own expectations, the work that he puts in to continue to stay at the top of this game.”

Beyond the work, Yamamoto’s transformation has, in the view of many around the team, also come down to a few simple things: more confidence in himself, more comfort in his surroundings and more conviction on the mound.

“Today’s stuff was obviously a little bit of a struggle,” Yamamoto, ever-modest, said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda after Friday’s start. “But if I evaluate my stuff up to this game, it [hasn’t been] bad.”

Getting there required last season’s growing pains. But now he’s blossoming into one of the best pitchers.

“It’s just human nature,” Kershaw said. “If you’ve been somewhere for a year, you get more comfortable, you get more acclimated. And when you have success, you gain confidence.”

After the Dodgers’ postseason opener last year, Kiké Hernández simply had a feeling.

While sitting in the dugout that night as an unused bench bat, the veteran utility man watched Yamamoto’s start against the San Diego Padres closely, trying to understand why a pitcher with so much talent had looked so out of sorts in a three-inning, five-run struggle in his postseason debut.

Hernández had long been convinced of Yamamoto’s potential, wowed by the pinpoint command of his upper-90s fastball and seemingly unhittable movement of his breaking pitches. Hernández had seen the proof of concept too, when Yamamoto blanked the New York Yankees over seven spectacular innings in the Bronx in June.

After that outing, however, Yamamoto suffered a shoulder injury that sidelined him for almost three months. And though he was healthy again by the time of his Game 1 start in the division series, Hernández couldn’t help but feel like the 26-year-old lacked the swaggering — or, at least, assertive — demeanor of a bona fide big league star.

“He was kinda down after Game 1,” Hernández said.

So, during the team’s day off in San Diego following Game 2, Hernández sought out Yamamoto for a one-on-one conversation — meeting with him and an interpreter from the Wasserman Media Group (the agency that represents both players) for almost two hours at a Starbucks on the ground floor of the club’s hotel.

“I just wanted to pick his brain,” Hernández said, “and know where his head was at.”

What Yamamoto shared was illuminating, expressing uncertainty about who he was as a big league pitcher and how to best deploy his arsenal against opposing lineups.

“I felt that he wasn’t very convicted with the pitches he was throwing,” Hernández said. “And he just mentioned that he was feeling a little overwhelmed.”

It was an understandable dilemma. Virtually all rookie pitchers — even those with previous professional experience in Japan — go through such an acclimation period, trying to refine raw talent into tangible results. That learning curve can be particularly steep with a club like the Dodgers, as pitchers have to balance their own personal preferences with the highly detailed game-planning information that goes into the team’s advanced scouting reports.

“When you’re throwing pitches that you don’t want to throw,” Hernández noted, “your conviction is not the same as when you are throwing a pitch that you are committed to throwing.”

Yamamoto’s season being shortened by injury to just 18 starts also detracted from that process. His language barrier with the coaching staff was yet another complication.

“I feel bad for these guys,” bench coach Danny Lehmann, a key voice in the team’s game-planning meetings, said of the challenges Yamamoto and other Japanese imports face early in their MLB careers. “The language barrier, the culture, all that stuff is just a lot. Especially going straight to the big leagues.”

Hernández, however, offered simple encouragement as the two finished coffee: Commit to throwing his best stuff and trust his premium talent would play no matter who stood in the batter’s box.

“I was like, ‘You are already one of the best pitchers on the planet,’” Hernández recounted. “But it still felt like there was more in there. And in order for him to come out and bring his best, he needed to be committed to the pitches he was throwing.”

The message, evidently, resonated.

When Yamamoto made his next start, in a winner-take-all Game 5 of the NLDS, he pitched five scoreless innings to help the Dodgers to a series victory — then thanked Hernández and others in the clubhouse for their support.

“I owe my performance today to my teammates,” he said.

And ever since, Yamamoto hasn’t looked back.

Around the same time Yamamoto met with Hernández, he also had a breakthrough with the coaching staff.

The playoffs, Lehmann said, afforded the team’s so-called “run-prevent department” to take a deeper dive with each starting pitchers. They honed in especially close on Yamamoto, concerned he might have been tipping his pitches in his Game 1 defeat.

From that process, Lehmann recalled, “we got to get to know him a little bit better, and what he wants to do.”

“We just had more time to sit down and watch videos, like, ‘Here’s how your pitches play’ … Even the way his pitches play off each other,” the bench coach recalled. “I think he had a better sense of what we’re spewing at him, and how to decipher it.”

After his Game 5 gem, Yamamoto was solid again in Game 4 of the NL Championship Series (4⅓ innings, two runs, eight strikeouts) and terrific in Game 2 of the World Series (6⅓ innings, one run, four strikeouts), serving as the backbone of a shorthanded, championship-winning pitching staff.

“He was a different animal,” Hernández said.

It carried into spring training, when Yamamoto became an immediate standout with his renewed poise and consistent daily work ethic.

“I think it’s just human nature. If you’ve been somewhere for a year, you get more comfortable, you get more acclimated. And when you have success, you gain confidence,” said Clayton Kershaw of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, here embracing one another following Yamamoto’s performance in Game 2 of the World Series.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“The way Yama throws long toss is amazing,” Kershaw said.

And over the opening month of this season, Yamamoto’s confident mound presence has been mirrored behind the scenes, the pitcher becoming more vocal in game-planning meetings and assured in his clubhouse demeanor.

“You just see, like, his body language, the way he carries himself this year, there’s so much more security in himself,” Hernández said. “When you have that confidence that, ‘Hey, I can do it. I can do it at the highest level.’ That’s what it looks like to me. He’s just so much more confident in his entire routine. He just seems very, very comfortable in his own skin.”

It was all reflected in the pride he took from last week’s duel against deGrom, outpitching the Texas Rangers star with seven shutout innings and a career-best strikeout-to-walk ratio of 10 to 0.

“He elevated his game to another level,” Roberts said. “You could see that he was going against one of the game’s best in deGrom, and he obviously matched him pitch for pitch.”

It was evident again in the disappointment Yamamoto felt following Friday’s loss to the Pirates, when lacked his typical command while getting bested by Skene’s 6⅓ scoreless frames.

“I was falling behind in the count, and then I couldn’t establish my rhythm,” Yamamoto said. “I couldn’t grind through and get myself out of trouble.”

It was another lesson, but this time in a different context. No longer is Yamamoto looking for validation at the big league level. Now it’s about polishing the rest of his rapidly improving game.

“I don’t think it’s rocket science,” Kershaw said. “That’s just like life in any business, or any avenue. You get more comfortable, you get more confident, as you have success and do it.”

Then, thinking back to Yamamoto’s start against the Rangers, the future Hall of Famer paid Yamamoto one of the biggest compliments he could.

“The way he throws,” Kershaw said, “is how I think you would teach it.”

The challenges Myanmar society and statehood now face are truly enormous. A horrific 7.7 magnitude earthquake—scientists compare its power to the simultaneous detonation of 334 atomic bombs—has reduced the cities of Sagaing and Mandalay to ashes, not to mention smaller towns and villages, as well as majestic archaeological sites. The sad reality—natural disasters befalling the country, fratricidal war, international isolation, etc.—is compounded by the lack of a vision for the future. Before answering the question “What can the world give to Myanmar“?” we must ask, “What can Myanmar give (or has given) to the world?”

The natural disaster came as a surprise to all the warring parties—the State Administration Council (SAC), the underground National Unity Government (NUG), its People’s Defence Forces (PDF), and the various ethnic armed organizations (EAOs). All actors are nervous—the temporary ceasefire declared by all parties is not being observed; on the contrary, mercantile ethnic rebels, supported by the PDF and left-wing Burmese revolutionaries, have captured the cities of Indaw (Sagaing Region) and Falam (Chinland).

In these circumstances, only the SAC at least looks like the force that protects the independence and integrity of the state from terrorists of various kinds. However, instead of complaining about the injustice of the global elites towards Myanmar—an injustice that really does take place—the SAC should take care of its own image and that of its country. Despite the slander of the subversive media, one cannot deny the Tatmadaw’s sense of patriotism, its lofty religiousness—which is hardly comparable to any other army—and a sound understanding of national interests; one should not forget that this army crushed the most powerful communist insurgency in the 1960s-80s and saved Burma from turning into an enlarged copy of “democratic Kampuchea.” At the same time, the intellectual level of the military has not kept up with their professional skills, which are also noticeably behind the level of the Tatmadaw of General Ne Win’s era. Neither the military government nor the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which is awaiting elections in late 2025, has offered the people of Myanmar a conceptual political-ideological alternative that could eclipse the proposals coming from subversive anti-Buddhist and anti-national forces. The bayonet-based “dictatorship of law” cannot be accepted as such an alternative.

Naypyidaw Reclaims Legitimacy: NUG’s Narratives Collapse After Earthquake

It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the news of the deadly earthquake has pleased the radical opposition—every natural disaster in Myanmar is seen by the NUG as an opportunity to accuse the “junta” of incompetence and neglect of the needs of the victims. This time, however, the NUG was outdone by its propaganda narratives.

The opposition and experts sympathetic to it have long believed that the “junta” controls only about 20% of Myanmar’s territory, with the majority of the country under the control of “resistance forces.” The disaster has put an end to this propaganda stereotype: it turned out that the densely populated Bamar heartland, where the earthquake’s epicenter is located, is still ruled from Naypyitaw, and this is far from a paltry 20%. Whatever claims are made against the army and SAC services, they were the first to come to the aid of the population. Sagaing Region, which suffered particularly badly, has often been described as “liberated” since 2021, although in reality military action is only taking place in the north of the province, with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) playing a decisive role in the fight against the Tatmadaw, with the Bamar PDFs acting as proxies (de facto cannon fodder). Naturally, the Kachin ethnic separatists do not care about the suffering of the Burmese population, and neither the KIA nor the PDF have the equipment or resources to mitigate the aftermath of the earthquake. The same applies to the affected Mandalay Region. The immediate task of the Ta’ang (Palaung) National Liberation Army (TNLA), which has occupied the “ruby capital of Myanmar,” Mogok, is to use the earthquake factor to strike at the Myanmar military; providing assistance to the victims, regardless of whether they are Bamars or Palaungs, is not what the TNLA leadership, whose puppets are the Mandalay PDF, is thinking about.

The international response to the earthquake is also not in the interests of the NUG. Not to mention those countries that initially did business with the SAC—Russia, China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam—absolutely all humanitarian aid directly or indirectly passes through the institutions of the military government. There was literally not a single country, not a single international organization, that would send rescuers to the “liberated zone” and rescue people in close cooperation with the ethnic rebels and the Burmese “revolutionaries.” The suffering in Mandalay and Sagaing is terrible, but one can only guess at the suffering of the people who found themselves outside the control of the “fascist junta”—the” “revolutionaries” de facto deprived them of the chance to receive qualified assistance.

Some countries, like Australia, refuse to directly engage in dialogue with the SAC regarding the provision of humanitarian aid and have transferred money directly to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). This behavior can only be called politicization of the humanitarian sphere and demagogy—if only because the ICRC, where the Australian money has been sent, closely cooperates with the “junta.”

Despite the minimal U.S. involvement in the aftermath of the earthquake, Myanmar has seen the first rescue efforts in years from Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian charity whose leader, Pastor Franklin Graham, is one of the few religious leaders to back Trump after his disastrous 2020 election. Samaritan’s Purse’s activity could be seen as the first tentative steps toward restoring U.S.-Myanmar relations. Moreover, the rhetoric of Free Burma Rangers founder David Eubank, previously known for training Karen militants, has noticeably softened. He now calls for “representative democracy with justice and freedom and reconciliation for all, including the military,” which contrasts with both Eubank’s previous statements and the NUG’s calls for the military to immediately “go over to the side of the people.”

Not Just a Small Country: Vipassana, the UN, and Neutrality

Myanmar has much to boast about intellectually. Vipassana meditation, which has gained popularity among Westerners, was developed by Burmese monks who participated in a religious revival movement that began under British rule; it could even be argued that vipassana is a piece of the Burmese psyche, just as the samurai ethos is associated (at least until 1945) with the soul of Japan. Myanmar’s spiritual dominance has not been shaken by the civil war—in December 2024, the International Buddhist Education Centre (IBEC), the largest space for meditation practices in Europe, opened in Spain with the support of the Myanmar government, which caused hostility among Spanish leftists, who considered the opening of IBEC to be promoting the interests of the “fascist junta.”

Myanmar’s foreign policy has not always been based on isolation from the outside world—it is enough to recall U Thant, the UN Secretary General from 1961 to 1971, whose insightful mind and broad views more than once softened the frictions of world powers, and humanity should be grateful to this great Burmese for the fact that the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 did not escalate into a nuclear war. This was a time when Burma set a high bar for nationally oriented neutralism, and troops of the Tatmadaw even participated in the peacekeeping mission in the Congo (anticipating objections, we emphasize that U Thant was not at odds with the Ne Win regime in his position, although he was perceived by many as a dissident). Whatever Prime Minister U Nu’s place in Myanmar’s historical memory, it cannot be denied that he not only earned the nickname “Burmese Churchill” for refusing to abandon Rangoon during the Karen and Communist siege but also raised Burma’s prestige to a very high level. U Nu’s moral approach to government attracted some Westerners, such as the economist E.F. Schumacher, who wrote a book on Buddhist economics based on the Burmese experience.

In a situation where the westernized Myanmar youth feels inferior and ashamed of its origin, it is necessary to remind them that Myanmar is not some “small and poor third world country.” This nation has had a significant impact on the spiritual landscape of Western civilization, introducing it to practices from the treasury of the Orient; diplomats of this nation participated in deciding the fate of the world during the most tense moments of the Cold War; finally, the courage and self-sacrifice of the Tatmadaw prevented the spread of the communist plague at that unfortunate moment when other nations of Indochina (South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), despite strong U.S. support, became trophies of the communists. By wisely using this heritage, modern Myanmar could have its weighty say in the world polyphony—about the spiritual dimension of the political. The only question is whether the SAC—the only legal representative of Myanmar—is competent enough to take on this mission.

Hermit at the Crossroads: Myanmar Chooses Foreign Policy Strategy

It is difficult to say whether the Myanmar military realizes that the country they lead is on the brink of an abyss, which is not a war or a natural disaster but a fundamental crisis of national identity. Instinctively, the SAC and the Tatmadaw understand that Myanmar society has changed significantly over the past 20 years and can no longer be governed by naked force. Moreover, in foreign policy, too, one cannot rely on those who are guided by naked force, whether it is forcing a counterpart to adopt an alien ideology (the liberal West) or the predatory plunder of the country’s natural resources under the guise of “brotherly friendship” (China and its satellites).

There are currently three possible foreign policy options for Myanmar.

The first is a de facto capitulation to the “liberal jihadists” and the adoption of the One World paradigm. The Tatmadaw will never agree to this, but it will be implemented in the event of a “victory of the revolution.” The scenario of the defeat of the Tatmadaw by the “revolutionary forces” can be compared in terms of its catastrophic nature to a mixture of the British conquest of 1885 and the earlier Mon rule before the accession of the Konbaung dynasty. The EAOs, who are currently using the PDF as cannon fodder to expand their controlled territories, will finally become criminal fortresses and begin brutal oppression of the Bamars. The liberal ideology, shared by a small layer of exiles and city dwellers, will prove incapable of resisting anti-Burmese supremacism; in addition, the popularity of radical leftists and communists (such groups as PLA, ABSDF, and BPLA), who have an old genealogy in the Myanmar political landscape, will increase. If such a scenario is realized, Western critics of the “fascist junta” will simply wash their hands, leaving the pleasure of extinguishing the Myanmar fire to China, which, against the backdrop of confrontation with the collective MAGA 2.0, is moving closer to the Euro-American liberal bureaucracy.

The second option is to follow the concepts coming from Beijing and Moscow. Rapprochement with revisionist powers such as Russia, China, and Iran to soften the aggressive pressure of Western interventionist forces seems to have captured the imagination of some influential Myanmar generals, as expected. It is worth adjusting for the fact that Russia is seen by the SAC as a force capable of counterbalancing China, which the military has always disliked, despite Myanmar’s involuntary inclusion in Beijing’s sphere of influence since 1989. Myanmar officials have shown interest in joining BRICS and the SCO, in which Naypyidaw wants at least observer status. The fascination with Russia is evident in the fact that the term “multipolarity,” promoted by Moscow, is increasingly heard in speeches by Min Aung Hlaing and Foreign Minister Than Swe, not to mention lesser officials. But what does “multipolarity” mean for Myanmar, and should the generals be happy about the country’s inclusion in the new Eurasian architecture?

It is important to distinguish between how Russia is seen by the SAC and how Myanmar is seen from Russia. It is safe to say that Myanmar is perceived by Russian diplomats as yet another unremarkable Third World country experiencing difficulties in relations with the West and the United States. For Moscow, there is no significant difference between Burkina Faso, Venezuela, and Myanmar—all of them are valuable to Moscow only for their “anti-Westernism.” In the short term, “anti-Westernism” may serve as a pretext for improving relations with Russia, but excessive fixation on this will lead the Myanmar regime to a dead end, or even worse, as can be seen in the example of Assad’s Syria, which had the shortsightedness to ally too closely with Russia. As is well known, this did not prevent Russia from currying favor with the genocidal anti-Christian regime of al-Sharaa, with whom agreements were reached on maintaining Russian military bases in Syria.

The main problem with the “multipolarity” pushed by Russia is that it does not imply real independence of all poles but the existence of several macro-regional warlord superpowers, to whose pole small vassal states are supposed to gravitate. Such “multipolarity” effectively cements the subordination of Myanmar to China—the only pole in East and Southeast Asia that Moscow recognizes (and cannot help but recognize, given the slow but sure absorption of Russia by its eastern neighbor). By providing Myanmar with military and diplomatic assistance in the short term, Russia, consciously or unconsciously, serves as a proxy for China’s interests as the “big brother” in the long term.

Myanmar’s contacts with Russia’s Buddhist regions of Buryatia, Kalmykia, and Tuva, where Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism is practiced, appear positive. However, it should be taken into account that the hyper-centralized structure of Putin’s Russia will not allow the authorities of these regions to play an independent game in Myanmar. Overall, Naypyidaw’s excessive enthusiasm for Russian “anti-Westernism” should be a cause for concern, first and foremost, among thoughtful supporters of the army. In early March, Min Aung Hlaing was greeted with pomp in the Russian satellite, Belarus, and Belarusian experts predictably integrated this visit into the context of “confrontation with the West.” Without denying the importance of purely economic cooperation between Myanmar and Belarus, it is worth reminding patriotic Burmese that President Lukashenko recently solemnly announced plans to bring 150,000 workers (with their families) from Pakistan, a hotbed of radical Islamism, to Belarus. The contradiction between Burmese Buddhist and Western worldviews is self-explanatory, but is not the quasi-communist and now openly anti-nativist ideology of the Lukashenko regime equally distant from the soul of Myanmar? It is ironic that in its quest to attract Pakistani migrants, “anti-Western” Belarus is following in the footsteps of Britain, which, according to J.D. Vance, could become “a truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon.”

Finally, there is a third option. In seeking a way out of its international isolation, Myanmar could try to return to the active neutralism of the “hermit state” that the country has followed since the 1950s. Myanmar’s “hermitism” during the Cold War—especially under Prime Minister U Nu—was valued not for its obscurantist withdrawal from the world community but for its combination of practical non-alignment and religious Buddhist preaching. These are precisely the old traditions of morally oriented diplomacy that should be treasured.

Who is putting a spoke in the wheel of Trump’s Myanmar policy?

The “Trump revolution” against the Deep State raised hopes for a change in U.S. policy towards Myanmar and for a rejection of the export of liberal revolution in favor of pragmatism. These hopes were confirmed by the decrees to abolish USAID and USAGM, which caused a surge of anti-Trump sentiments among the adherents of the “Spring Revolution.” A process of deportation of Myanmar exiles involved in supporting PDF terrorists was even launched. However, no meaningful strategy has been developed in this direction, as evidenced, for example, by the maintenance of anti-Myanmar sanctions under the extension of the state of emergency from 2021 and Marco Rubio’s statement on the occasion of Thingyan (Burmese New Year) that “we remain committed to supporting those working to restore Burma’s path to democracy and will continue to collaborate on peace and security in the region.” The Secretary of State’s use of language familiar from the Biden administration is alarming. But worst of all, the list of tariffs Trump released includes the heaviest tariffs—44%—on Myanmar. Trade between the two countries is almost negligible, but such a measure will quickly have a negative impact on Myanmar’s economy, particularly its textile industry.

Of course, it is quite predictable that Myanmar is not a priority for the Trump administration, which is preoccupied with ending the Russia-Ukraine war, taming Iran, and, most importantly, finishing off the pockets of the Deep State. However, one cannot underestimate the factor of anti-Myanmar and anti-Tatmadaw sentiment in the United States, which has been taking root since the 1990s. The administration’s reluctance to reconsider its approach to a country that is key to containing China is connected with the current situation in the expert community. Unfortunately, there is still no scholar of the level of Ruth Benedict who would write an analogue of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword for Burma Studies. Most American experts on Myanmar are extreme interventionists, ranging from academic leftists to neoconservatives playing on patriotic feelings. If before Trump’s victory these experts emphasized the “export of democracy,” now they are calling on Trump to take a completely illogical step and support the “resistance” for the sake of countering China. In addition to liberal and neo-Marxist lobbyists for the interests of the Rohingya and Palestinians (in this sense, anti-Israeli and anti-Myanmar propaganda overlap), some Christian missionaries who sympathize with the idea of ​​creating a Karen Christian state of Kawthoolei join the chorus of haters of the Myanmar military regime.

Things might have gone better if Stephen Bannon, a former Trump campaign spin doctor, MAGA ideologist, and eminence grise early in Trump’s first term, had been involved in shaping the new administration’s foreign policy. According to The New Statesman, Bannon proposed to Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin during a face-to-face meeting in 2018 that they could work on a Russian-American anti-Chinese alliance. “Dugin doesn’t understand, I don’t think fully, that the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t respect the Russian people,” Bannon shared his impressions. “I think there’s a higher probability there is a shooting war between the Chinese and the Russians than there is that China goes into Taiwan,” he also said. Alas, Bannon’s proposals ran into Dugin’s anti-American resentment, who is unable to shake off the inertia of the Stalinist understanding of “friendship between Moscow and Beijing.” Bannon has ceded influence to Elon Musk, who in many ways needs détente with Beijing, but his ideas are still floating around the corridors of the White House.

One of the latest examples of mistrust in Myanmar-US relations is the news that the Bangladesh Army is allegedly coordinating with Washington to support the Arakan Army (AA) and its proxy Chinland Defence Force (CDF) against the Tatmadaw; it is stated that Bangladesh is fulfilling Washington’s will to “overthrow the Myanmar junta”; moreover, a factory will be built in Cox’s Bazar to produce Turkish UAVs for the AA and CDF. The veracity of these reports is more than doubtful; in any case, it is difficult to imagine that the new pro-Pakistan regime in Dhaka, drifting not only towards Islamabad but also towards Beijing, will support the AA, which is accused of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. It is safe to assume that Pakistani and Bangladeshi intelligence services are involved in Rakhine, but on the side of the Islamist groups the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), and not on the side of AA. Indeed, Dhaka’s policy on the Rakhine problem on its borders is highly contradictory and includes cooperation with all parties (the Myanmar military, armed Rohingya groups, and civilian refugees), with the possible exception of AA, with its reputation as the most uncompromising opponent of the “Bengalis.” The recent arrest of ARSA leader Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi by Bangladeshi police may indicate an attempt to strengthen the position of a rival group, RSO, which is better suited to represent the Rohingya than the discredited ARSA. And Turkey’s intervention on the side of the “resistance” seems completely implausible, given the fact that the Syrian Kurds from the People’s Defense Units (YPG) recently expressed solidarity with the “Spring Revolution” and even sent “anti-fascist volunteers” to the CDF.

Therefore, rumors about a Bangladeshi-Turkish action against the “junta” coordinated with the U.S. should be attributed to someone’s wild imagination. In addition, it should be taken into account that the new authorities of Bangladesh are accused of ethnic cleansing of the Hindu population, so any cooperation between Washington and Dhaka, especially directed against the Myanmar government friendly to New Delhi, could cast doubt on the architecture of American-Indian relations. However, it is also true that the appearance of such reports is not accidental and corresponds to the trend of driving a wedge between Washington and Naypyidaw.

Beware of Han bearing gifts: Chinese intrigue in Lashio

The earthquake has reignited speculation about the fate of Lashio, a major city in Northern Shan State and former home of the Tatmadaw’s North-West Command (Ya-Ma-Kha), which was captured by the ethnic Chinese armed group MNDAA in August 2024.

The real question about Operation 1027, the joint offensive by three rebel armies in Northern Shan State, is the extent of China’s involvement in this anti-Myanmar action. Although the liberal media tends to deny the MNDAA’s dependence on the Chinese communists for opportunistic reasons, for the Burmese public this fact is undeniable. If China immediately began to put pressure on the rebels after occupying Lashio, this only shows that Operation 1027 is part of a Chinese chess game—brilliantly played, it must be said.

In April 2024, without any official statement, the MNDAA began to withdraw troops from Lashio, but it is important to know the whole picture: only a small contingent of the Myanmar military is brought into the city, while all key approaches to Lashio remain in the hands of the MNDAA; the MNDAA police, liaison office, and a certain number of rebels continue to operate in the city. Moreover, a Chinese consulate is to open in Lashio. Thus, the MNDAA receives de facto autonomy, the right to collect the lion’s share of taxes in Lashio and the district, but most importantly, through joint management of the city with the military, the legitimization of an armed group with the status of “terrorist” occurs.

The handover of Lashio to the Myanmar military—if this strange combination can be called a handover—is misrepresented as an illustration of “China’s pressure on revolutionary forces,” but in reality it shows how Beijing’s hypocritical appeasement, using carrots and sticks, is depriving the Myanmar government of a territorial base. Nationalist Telegram channels compare the Tatmadaw’s entry into Lashio to imprisonment, since all approaches to the city are controlled by the MNDAA and their allies from other groups. The symbolism of “returning Lashio” can be considered humiliating for the Tatmadaw, and if Naypyitaw has compromised with the MNDAA, a previously recognized terrorist organization, then this is certainly a victory for China and its proxies, not the Tatmadaw. As for the Burmese “democrats” and the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), who were forced to flee Lashio, the Kokang Chinese did not initially consider them equal allies. The situation becomes clearer if we view the conflict in northern Shan not as a civil war between Myanmar people but as a Burmese-Chinese ethnic conflict.

If the military were to wash the MNDAA and its Chinese backers in blood, it would be a sobering message to anyone who would encroach on Myanmar’s sovereignty. One pro-military Telegram channel notes that “to put it bluntly, China has occupied a major city and territory in Myanmar. If you want to know what it’s like to lose sovereignty, just look at Lashio.” Sure, the Myanmar people are grateful for China’s help in dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake (although Mandalay, the hardest-hit city, has many Chinese residents), but no one will bring back the fallen defenders of Laukkai and Lashio. And no amount of aid can justify enslavement.

Not a banana republic or a satellite, but an independent Buddhist pole

“All that we are is the result of our thoughts,” taught the Buddha. His words can be applied to nation building: “A nation is the result of its thoughts about itself.”

American political scientist Samuel Huntington, in his cult work The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), is skeptical about the existence of a Buddhist civilization—similar to Islamic, Confucian, or Western; Buddhism disappeared in its homeland, India, while in China and Japan, Mahayana formed a syncretic mixture with Confucianism, Taoism, and Shintoism. At the same time, Huntington is more optimistic about the countries professing the Theravada version of Buddhism—Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos—which really do form a kind of community.

The right way for Myanmar is to try to outplay its enemies from both the West and the East by declaring its ambition to be the unifier of Buddhist civilization. The generals’ defensive game has proven ineffective, so they must play offensively—and make claims instead of justifying themselves to the international community.

There are several possible directions to take: strengthening ties with Theravada countries; popularizing Myanmar and its struggle against liberal globalism among Western conservative Buddhists; officially speaking out on global issues from a Buddhist perspective; and, in response to Chinese support for the rebels, providing a platform in Myanmar for the leaders of the Tibetan liberation movement, including the Dalai Lama (which would certainly be attractive to India, which has long supported the Tibetan cause).

The aftermath of the earthquake has already brought the Buddhist community together to help Myanmar. A large rescue team from the small but proud kingdom of Bhutan showed self-sacrifice in clearing the rubble in Naypyitaw; the suffering of the Burmese attracted the attention of doctors from Russia’s Buddhist republics of Kalmykia and Buryatia; and the Dalai Lama made a generous donation to the victims.

An alternative to dependence on superpowers could be close integration within the Theravada world through the conclusion of multilateral military and economic alliances with spiritually related countries. The ASEAN framework cannot prevent the autonomous rapprochement of its members. A full-fledged alliance between Myanmar and Thailand would be an adornment of Southeast Asia and would free both countries from the suffocating embrace of China and the United States; relying on the “two Tatmadaws,” the armed forces of Thailand and Myanmar, the Buddhist Sangha would restore its influence on the secularizing population (especially the Thais, who are rapidly dissolving into Western culture). A Myanmar-Thai military alliance would secure Myanmar’s southeastern border, neutralize the Karen insurgents, and pacify the Shan population, which is characterized by pan-Thai sentiments (due to the Shan belonging to the Tai-Kadai language family).

Myanmar should take a closer look at the foreign policy of Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban has achieved real sovereignty for his nation by freeing it from the dictates of globalists. Today, Hungary, a small country with a population of 9.5 million, plays a disproportionately large role in international politics and mediates between the US, Russia, the EU, China, Turkey, and Israel. The example of Hungary may inspire the Burmese even more if they discover that the Hungarians arrived on the Central European plains from the depths of Asia in the 9th century and that their ancestors probably were in contact with the proto-Burmans in ancient times. In particular, the Hungarian philologist Sándor Kőrösi Csoma traveled to the Himalayas in the 1820s to find the ancestral homeland of the Hungarian people.

From Tibet to Myanmar: the untapped potential of pan -Burmanism

Another dimension, the value of which is more understandable in light of modern theories of nationalism, is the presence of the Lolo-Burmese and, more broadly, Tibeto-Burmese linguistic community. Ethnic groups speaking related languages ​​stretch from the Western Himalayas (a region known in ancient times as Gandhara) to the coast of the Andaman Sea. For example, about 10 million representatives of the Yi (Nuosu) people live in China, and between the 7th and 10th centuries AD their forefathers formed a single organism with the Bamars—the Nanzhao Kingdom. Today, the Yi clearly distance themselves from the Han Chinese, maintaining old-time customs and a polytheistic religion.

It is of great importance to emphasize not only the religious but also the ethnolinguistic kinship of the Burmese peoples of Myanmar and the Tibetans; the memory of the exodus of the proto-Burman tribes from the Amdo region of Great Tibet is preserved in the coincidence of the words for “forward” and “east” and “back” and “west” in the Burmese language. There is a certain temptation to define the Burmese as “Tibetans who have retained their freedom”—above” all, the freedom to practice their religion, a privilege that was taken away from their Tibetan relatives in 1951.

An appeal to a common origin would help heal the Bamar-Karen and Bamar-Kachin conflicts, which are rivalries between brothers. Therefore, the formulation of such a “pan-Tibeto-Burmanism” (analogous to pan-Finnicism, pan-Turkism, pan-Thaiism, etc.) is a promising task for intellectuals interested in Myanmar ceasing to be an arena for competition between foreign states and acquiring leverage over neighboring countries. The indigenous inhabitants of Yunnan and Sichuan, who use Lolo-Burmese languages ​​in everyday life, are no worse than the Kokang Hans, who play the role of Beijing’s tool in Myanmar.

Conclusion

In the new chaotic world, the future belongs to the mediator nations. Myanmar has the potential to become a bridge between several superpowers. Ideally, as described in previous articles, it is a bridge between Russia, the United States, and India, which together could form a global conservative axis against the “armies of Mara.” The monstrous “Mordor” manifests itself in two faces: the trans-border liberal establishment of the West and the Chinese communist giant. It is worth quoting the words of Steve Bannon: “The globalists are totally tied to the mercantilist totalitarian system of the Chinese. China is the economic engine that drives it all. Without China, it doesn’t work; that’s what’s driven the system.” However, it is now clear that the plan of the Russian-American bloc encounters too many obstacles, although it is too early to write it off. In any case, Myanmar should not wait for foreigners to decide its fate but loudly declare the uniqueness of its national identity, based on Theravada Buddhism, the kinship of the Tibeto-Burmans and the other peoples of old Royal Burma, and the noble neutralism of the “hermit state.”

There is something enigmatic in the fact that the spirit of the eternal element—what the French call élan vital—led the proto-Burmans from the Tibetan plateau to the fertile valley of the Irrawaddy, taught them the teachings of the Sakyan prince, saved the country from the Mongol hordes, and placed Myanmar at the rift of two worlds. Was it not so that this nation could fulfill some noble mission before the wheel of Dhamma completed its next circuit and the universe was consumed in the conflagration of eternal fire?

Angel Bay, Porth Dyniewaid, is a secret cove just minutes from tourist spot Llandudno, and is quietly becoming one of the UK’s top locations for spotting seals in the wild

For a stunning weekend getaway with hidden gems and wildlife spotting, Angel Bay in North Wales is the perfect destination. Porth Dyniewaid, known to locals as Angel Bay, is a hidden gem mere steps from the bustling Llandudno, fast becoming one of the UK’s prime seal-watching hotspots.

LateRooms.com chief Matthew Fox commented: “British holidaymakers love a good seaside town and Llandudno has been a classic for generations. But just a short hike around the coast from its pastel promenade and Victorian pier is something truly special, and a real reward for nature lovers.”

This secreted bay is a prime spot for grey seals and their young during the autumn months. Even though autumn is the season for seal sightings, visitors can enjoy their presence nearly all year round.

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Direct access to the beach may be non-existent, ensuring these marine creatures are undisturbed by people, but the view from the clifftops into the cove below is still breathtaking.

Perched on the craggy cliffs, you get panoramic views across the Irish Sea, and on a clear day, you might see scores of seals playfully swimming or lounging on the rocks basking in the sunshine, reports the Express.

Angel Bay remains unspoiled; here, there are no lines, ticket stalls, or souvenir shops – just nature and the occasional fellow hiker on pleasant days.

The cove has received rave reviews on Tripadvisor, with visitors praising the scenic walk and breathtaking views from the top. One enchanted visitor penned: “Absolutely beautiful place with unreal views! So peaceful as we went later in the evening to watch the sunset. We spotted quite a few seals on the shore and in the sea”.

Another shared their delight, saying: “Such a surprise, even though the only reason we visited was to see the seals.

“We never imagined so many of them lounging on the beach, taking little dips in the sea, barking and talking amongst themselves.”

They added: “Could’ve stayed and watched all day. Beautiful to see them in their natural habitat and the walk to the beach follows an easy path so it was a very pleasant stroll.”

Playing a gangster suits Pierce Brosnan. The actor, 71, is often best remembered for heroic characters like James Bond, but ruthless crime boss Conrad Harrigan on “MobLand” is quickly becoming a fan-favorite role. The series, created by Ronan Bennett and written with Jez Butterworth, follows Conrad and his fixer Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy) as the Harrigan family becomes embroiled in a violent feud with the rival Stevensons. The first two episodes were directed by Guy Ritchie, who set the irreverent, fast-paced tone for the series.

“I read the first five episodes and just enjoyed it,” Brosnan says, speaking over Zoom from his home in Malibu. “I basically said, ‘I’m in.’ It was that easy.”

In the most recent episode, the clans form a temporary détente at the funeral of Tommy Stevenson (Felix Edwards), with Conrad’s devious wife Maeve (Helen Mirren) scheming to draw blood behind his back. Brosnan describes the tense scenes at the wake as “beautifully done,” both in the writing and the staging.

“The whole piece has a theatricality — it was like doing a play,” he says. “Helen made the choice of channeling Lady Macbeth, which was very appropriate. It has those Shakespearean undertones. But we had no idea where it was really going because the scripts were coming in at the 11th hour.”

Helen Mirren co-stars as Maeve Harrigan, Conrad’s wife. “Helen made the choice of channeling Lady Macbeth, which was very appropriate,” Pierce Brosnan says.

(Luke Varley / Paramount+)

Brosnan is already anticipating a second season of “MobLand” (it has yet to be greenlit) and finds it miraculous that he’s been given such a memorable part this late in his career.

“It’s been remarkable to see the impact it’s had on the audience,” he says. “People know me as James Bond and that will never go away, which is fine. But now it’s ‘MobLand.’ A long time ago, Sydney Pollack greeted me after a screening of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair.’ He said, ‘Congratulations. Enjoy it. They don’t come around that often.’ I’ve had a career and I’ve always managed to work and to enjoy the work. But every now and then you get a gift of gold dust like Conrad.”

Here, in a conversation edited for length and clarity, Brosnan discusses developing Conrad, returning to the spy genre in the Steven Soderbergh film “Black Bag” and why acting still thrills him.

What did you initially find attractive about Conrad as a character?

I love gangster movies. When I read [the script,] it wasn’t the Conrad we now see. But I enjoyed the writing and I enjoyed the family aspect of it, and it had meat on the bone. Then when Jez Butterworth came onboard, it transformed even into something more spectacular and it had a cohesion of characters that was very exciting. Conrad became more fleshed out when Jez began writing this outrageous character.

Was he written as Irish?

The Irish aspect of him happened on the day. I was going for a North London or South London accent. But on the very first day of shooting with Tom and myself, Guy said, “Go Irish.” I called up my dialect coach, Brendan Gunn, who I’ve worked with many, many times. I said, “Brendan, I’ve got 15 minutes. Give me a Kerry accent.” Brendan gave me a man who I based the voice on — he’s from Kerry and he’s a politician — and I jumped in with both feet. My own Irish accent is so diminished as an Englishman and a Californian. I wanted something that had a bite to it. I wanted something where you could take someone’s head off with the words.

Were you familiar with Guy Ritchie’s improvisational style before this show?

I’d heard about his style of working and it is very impromptu. You have to come prepared on any show. My teachers taught me you will never be directed, so you better come prepared knowing what to do and play it. Guy’s style is very loose, but he knows what he wants and he gives you great freedom. He gave me great freedom in finding Conrad in that he trusted me enormously with just my finding the character.

Did you know the complete arc of your character going in?

No, I was flying blind. Jez and I only had one conversation, really. I never spoke with Guy about the character — he just said, “Go Irish.” But I found it very exhilarating. It gave me freedom. And it was really fast. On that first day, it was a three-page scene outside my [character’s] country home, somewhat expositional, but also with great character nuance. We rehearsed it once and we shot it maybe two or three times. That’s how it started and that’s how it continued.

What did you discover about Conrad as you went along?

There’s a vulnerability to the character that I like. And there’s a great sense of humor to Conrad. He’s so brash and so bold and what he does is so audacious and he is quite terrifying and unhinged. He comes from a mangled life and he’s very cunning and very brutish. And he knows what’s going on. He knows what Maeve is doing and he loves her. She is his lifeline to some kind of sanity, but she is so damaged as well and he knows he’s been manipulated by her. That’s where the humor comes in for me because he doesn’t show all his cards. But after 10 episodes, I’m still finding out this man.

Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and Anson Boon in Episode 5 of “MobLand.” “He comes from a mangled life and he’s very cunning and very brutish,” Brosnan says of his character.

(Luke Varley / Paramount+)

When you’re playing someone who does such bad things do you still need to find a way to humanize him?

That’s a really hard one to define when you’re playing someone this corrupt. You have to let the audience in. You have to do so in such a way that allows the audience to come in to you, to beguile them, to charm them. Then you pull out the stiletto. But that’s the joy of it.

You played another ambiguous character in “Black Bag.” What appealed to you about that role?

The play within the play — me being the head of the [spy] agency having been a former James Bond. The sheer delight of playing within that theatrical arena, just like when I was James Bond doing “The Tailor of Panama,” another film in the world of espionage. But it was tough because I was already on another movie called “Giant,” which is about the boxer Prince Naseem Hamed. I was five weeks into that movie, and I’d already said yes to Steven Soderbergh, so I had to do it. It was overwhelming because I had another week left on the boxer movie and the Soderbergh movie came in.

I got on the train down from Leeds on a Friday night and went to work with Steven Soderbergh on Monday morning, straight into a seven-page scene. It was a real shot in the arm and that week went by really fast, and I went back through Leeds and I finished off my boxing movie, and then went into “The Thursday Murder Club.” I finished that and went off to Munich for a remake of “Cliffhanger” with Lily James and then did “MobLand.”

That’s a lot.

It’s a lot of work, but it’s good. It’s exhilarating, especially when you have been on the other end, looking at a horizon which is rather flat and wondering what’s going to happen next. But I’ve always worked. I don’t like sitting around. I like to work. Once you commit to a project, you give it 100% and you honor the work no matter what.

Were you ever worried that if you returned to the espionage genre, you’d start getting a lot similar roles offered to you?

Oh no. That would be wonderful. I haven’t turned my back on that genre of work. There’s some classical piece I’d like to do. I’m not sure what shape or color that is, but something classical would be rather good to put in there at this point in the career.

Do you still feel a rush of excitement when you start a new project at this point in your career?

Yes. I love not knowing what’s going to happen next and then materializing something. Like with “MobLand,” it had all of the ingredients and then how do you do it? It gives you something to work on and you get away from yourself.

Pierce Brosnan, left, with Tom Hardy, who plays Conrad’s fixer, Harry Da Souza.

(Luke Varley / Paramount+)

Are you trying to get away from yourself?

Not necessarily, but it is a great contentment to have a character to work on, a script under your arm or script by the bed, sleeping with a great character, trying to figure [out how to] play him. Especially when you’re in the company of actors like Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren and Paddy Considine, and all the directors that we worked with. It was quite magical every day to see the work and to see the characters develop. That still excites me at 72. It still enthralls me and activates me. But there will be a time when I know enough is enough.

Are you someone who always wants to take big risks in your career?

“MobLand” definitely had its own strong sense of danger and required making choices that were shooting from the hip. But every job is always the same. There’s that wonderful exhilaration of being invited into a movie with a great director, great cast, great script and the euphoria of being asked to play in the company as an artist. And then the realization that you have do it. Then it becomes a very silent room of expectation within yourself: Can you do it? What form will it take?

How do you feel when a project is done?

I used to hold on. I now let go and I let go fast and I move on. However, with Conrad, having played him for five months and felt the resonance that it’s created, it makes me excited for more.

Is there anything you can tease about the rest of the season?

There’s a fair bit of blood. Not everyone is who they say they are. And there’s a particular rat in the pack. There’s quite a few surprises. All the scripts were consistent with what you’ve already seen. If anything, the writing gets stronger. And there’s an introduction of a particular character who alters the landscape. But don’t trust any of them.