Cuba’s opposition, browbeaten by the communist government, has been further weakened by the US exile of dissident figurehead Jose Daniel Ferrer, colleagues and analysts say.After refusing for years to leave the one-party state despite repeated imprisonment, Ferrer finally yielded and boarded a flight for Miami on Monday. He was released from prison — where he said he had been tortured — at Washington’s request, according to Havana.”Even in prison, he (Ferrer) was an inspiration. Now that inspiration is gone,” fellow dissident Martha Beatriz Roque, 80, told AFP.Ferrer’s exile, she added, “has left the Cuban opposition without a leader.”The 55-year-old founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) has for years been the face of the fight for democracy in the Caribbean nation where opposition politics is illegal and the act of protest has seen hundreds locked up.Ferrer himself has been repeatedly imprisoned, most recently in April after a brief period of freedom under a landmark deal struck with Washington that saw Cuba removed from a list of terrorism sponsors.He was sent back to jail after Donald Trump took office and returned Cuba to the list.During his brief spell of freedom, Ferrer defied the authorities by criticizing Cuba’s leadership on social media, setting up a soup kitchen funded by exiled Cubans at his home, and meeting the head of the US diplomatic mission.Upon his arrival in Miami, a US stronghold of Cuban anti-communist sentiment, Ferrer — dubbed a “mercenary” of the United States by Havana — vowed to “keep up the fight.””But fighting from the outside is not the same as fighting from the inside,” said Roque, who was arrested with Ferrer and 73 other dissidents during a wave of political repression in 2003 known as Cuba’s “Black Spring.”She is still in Cuba.- ‘Move beyond protest’ -Observers say Ferrer’s departure has robbed Cuba’s already fractured opposition of its most prominent and unifying figure.In a letter announcing his pending exile, Ferrer said he had lost faith in some of his comrades because of their “disunity, dogmatic nature and lack of effectiveness.”Analyst Roberto Veiga of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank told AFP there was “a deficit of real political weight” in the Cuban opposition, with little “capacity to implement solid and realistic strategies.” Cuban dissident Manuel Cuesta agreed the opposition has been unable to capitalize on widespread public discontent and “move beyond protest” to real change in a country also battling a historic economic downturn and mass emigration.Standing up to the government in Havana is not easy: dissidents and protesters are regularly detained, harassed, or, like Ferrer, pressured to leave the country.After historic protests in 2021 — the biggest since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution that overthrew a US-backed dictator and paved the way for communist rule — hundreds of people including Ferrer were locked up.Rapper Maykel Castillo is serving a nine-year prison sentence, while performance artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara received five years, both on “contempt” charges for criticizing the government through their art.Rights groups view them as “political prisoners.”Other dissenters such as playwright Yunior Garcia and visual artist Tania Bruguera opted for exile under government pressure.If ever Cuba’s opposition needed strong leadership, it is now, said Veiga.”If the political time for change runs out, the island could become entrenched” in its political and economic crisis, he added.

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that FIFA chief Gianni Infantino would support moving 2026 World Cup games from US cities for security reasons if necessary.In September, Trump raised the possibility of moving games amid his crackdown on Democratic-run cities, but at the time FIFA said that it was up to football’s governing body to decide where games are held.”If somebody is doing a bad job and if I feel there’s unsafe conditions, I would call Gianni, the head of FIFA, who’s phenomenal, and I would say, let’s move it to another location. And he would do that,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked if games could be moved from Boston, one of the host cities.”Very easily he would do it.”Trump’s comments came a day after he met close friend Infantino in Egypt at a summit on a Gaza ceasefire, where the FIFA boss joined more than two dozen world leaders who were discussing peace in the Middle East.The US president also suggested that, if necessary, events for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics could also be moved. “I could say the same thing for the Olympics,” Trump said. “If I thought LA was not going to be prepared properly, I would move it to another location.”Republican Trump’s administration has deployed national guard troops to Democratic-run US cities this year over the objections of local and state leaders, saying they are needed to counter crime and left-wing activism.Boston is hosting seven games at next year’s World Cup. San Francisco and Seattle are both hosting six matches each at the tournament while Los Angeles is hosting eight.The United States is co-hosting next year’s World Cup with Mexico and Canada, but will be hosting the bulk of the games in the tournament, which has been expanded to include 48 teams.Trump earlier this year appointed himself as chairman of a White House task force for the World Cup.

US and international news outlets including The New York Times, AP, AFP and Fox News on Tuesday declined to sign new restrictive Pentagon media rules, meaning they will be stripped of their press access credentials.The new rules come after the Defense Department restricted media access inside the Pentagon, forced some outlets to vacate offices in the building and drastically reduced the number of briefings for journalists.The media policy “gags Pentagon employees” by threatening retaliation against reporters who seek out information that has not been pre-approved for release, the Pentagon Press Association (PPA) said.AFP said in a statement Tuesday that it “cannot sign up to the terms of the Pentagon document that would require media to acknowledge insufficiently clear new policies that appear to fly in the face of US constitutional principles and of the basic tenets of journalism.””We shall continue to cover the Pentagon and the US military freely and fairly, as we have done for decades,” the agency added.TV networks ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC issued a joint statement saying they will not sign the new rules, which would “restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues.”Alongside Fox, other conservative outlets the Washington Times and Newsmax are also reportedly refusing to agree to the new policy, which could see a total of some 100 press passes revoked.The new rules are the latest in a series of moves that restrict journalists’ access to information from the Pentagon, the nation’s single largest employer with a budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.The Defense Department announced earlier this year that eight media organizations including the Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC and NPR had to vacate their dedicated office spaces in the Pentagon, alleging that there was a need to create room for other — predominantly conservative — outlets.It has also required journalists to be accompanied by official escorts if they go outside a limited number of areas in the Pentagon — another new restriction on the press.And it has drastically reduced the number of briefings for journalists — holding some half a dozen this year, compared to an average of two or more per week under president Joe Biden’s administration, which left office in January.Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth — a former Fox News host and Army National Guard veteran — has campaigned against leaks from the Defense Department.But he was inadvertently involved in the release of sensitive information earlier this year, sharing details about upcoming strikes against Yemen’s Huthi rebels in a chat on messaging app Signal to which a journalist had been mistakenly added.Hegseth has also reportedly used Signal to discuss US strikes on Yemen with his wife and other people not usually involved in such discussions.His use of Signal has prompted an investigation by the Pentagon inspector general’s office.

A Florida man convicted of murdering two women he hired for sex was put to death by lethal injection on Tuesday, one of four executions to be carried out in the United States this week.Samuel Smithers, 72, was sentenced to death in 1999 for the 1996 killings of Christy Cowan and Denise Roach in Tampa. They had been beaten and strangled and their bodies were found in a pond.Smithers was executed at a Florida state prison at 6:15 pm (2215 GMT), the 14th execution in the southern state this year.Another convicted murderer was also put to death by lethal injection in the midwestern state of Missouri on Tuesday.The execution of Lance Shockley, 48, was carried out at 6:13 pm (2313 GMT) for the 2005 murder of a police sergeant, Carl Graham.Graham was gunned down in an ambush at his home. The officer had been investigating a fatal car accident involving Shockley at the time.Shockley maintained his innocence but his appeals were rejected by numerous courts, including the Supreme Court. Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe rejected his clemency request on Monday.Two other executions are scheduled this week.Charles Crawford, 59, is to be put to death by lethal injection in Mississippi on Wednesday for the 1994 rape and murder of Kristy Ray, a 20-year-old college student.Richard Djerf, 55, is to be executed by lethal injection in Arizona on Friday for the brutal 1993 murders of four members of a Phoenix family.In a letter last month apologizing for the crime, Djerf said he was ready to die and would not seek clemency.”If I can’t find reason to spare my life, what reason would anyone else have?” he wrote.There have been 37 executions in the United States this year, the most since 2013, when 39 inmates were put to death.Florida has carried out the most executions with 14, followed by Texas with five and South Carolina and Alabama with four.Thirty-one of this year’s executions have been carried out by lethal injection, two by firing squad and four by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

US President Donald Trump hailed assassinated ally Charlie Kirk as a “martyr for truth and freedom” Tuesday as he posthumously awarded the right-wing activist America’s highest civilian honor.Handing the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kirk’s tearful widow, Trump compared the 31-year-old conservative to Socrates, Saint Peter, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.Trump, 79, also used the somber ceremony at the White House to vow to redouble his crackdown on what he calls radical left-wing groups that he launched following Kirk’s shooting.”In the wake of Charlie’s assassination, our country must have absolutely no tolerance for this radical left violence, extremism and terror,” Trump told an audience of the country’s conservative elite.”We’re done with the angry mobs, and we’re not going to let our cities be unsafe.”The US State Department on Tuesday said it had revoked visas of at least six foreign nationals who had “celebrated the heinous assassination” on social media. In posts to X, the department shared offending posts allegedly by citizens of Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Paraguay who had called Kirk “racist,” “xenophobic” or other characterizations.One German apparently lost their US visa for writing “When fascists die, democrats don’t complain,” according to the State Department.The Trump administration has controversially cited political reasons in stripping others of their visas, including several hundred people involved in Gaza war protests on US universities campuses. Father-of-two Kirk was shot dead on a Utah college campus last month, sparking a wave of grief among conservatives and promises of a clampdown from Trump that has seen National Guard troops sent to several Democrat-run cities. Guests at the ceremony included visiting Argentinian President Javier Milei, a libertarian firebrand, and a host of conservative US media personalities.Kirk’s widow Erika thanked Trump for flying back from a Middle East peace trip for the medal ceremony, which fell on what would have been her late husband’s 32nd birthday.”You have given him the best birthday gift he could ever have,” she said, dabbing away tears and occasionally pausing to collect herself.She added that Kirk, who used huge audiences on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to build support for conservative talking points, “would probably have run for president” if he had not been assassinated.Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged with Charlie Kirk’s murder. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

A new US president, focused on domestic priorities, criticizes his predecessor as too hard on Israel but soon takes on the mantle of peace and reaches a deal heralded around the world.In September 1993, it was Bill Clinton, who brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders together at the White House for the landmark first Oslo accord which marked the beginnings of Palestinian self-governance.This weekend it was Donald Trump who sealed an agreement to end two years of devastating war in Gaza and hailed a “historic dawn of a new Middle East.” But despite his typically immodest language, Trump has quickly drawn questions about whether he is ambitious and committed enough for a broader agreement to solve one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.On his way back from a lightning trip to Israel and Egypt, Trump said vaguely that he will “decide what I think is right” on the Palestinians’ future “in coordination with other states.””A lot of people like the one-state solution, some people like the two-state solution. We’ll have to see,” Trump told reporters.Trump’s brash approach marks a sharp change from the Oslo process, in which Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met quietly with help from Norway and set up a roadmap that was eventually supposed to settle heated disputes such as permanent borders and the status of Jerusalem.Trump had firmly backed Israel despite growing international outrage over its Gaza offensive launched in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.But Trump then forcefully pushed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Israel attacked Hamas leaders meeting in Qatar, a key US partner.”In a lot of ways, the easy part is what was just accomplished, but what would be necessary to move this conflict toward resolution is going to take so much more than the very vague details that are presented in the plan,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.This 20-point plan released by the White House speaks only of an eventual “credible pathway” to Palestinian statehood.It also has little on the West Bank, where Israel has ramped up construction and extremist settlers have attacked Palestinians in the wake of the attack from Gaza-based Hamas.”Maybe it’s the failure of Oslo that gave rise to the rather unconventional approach that Trump has taken, where he has short-circuited any sort of process and simply pressured and cajoled,” Yacoubian said.”The problem, of course, is in the implementation. And that was the problem with Oslo,” she said.If there is no “sustained commitment to seeing through an actual solution to the conflict, rather than kicking the can down the road, then we see how those these processes fall apart.”Other Western powers including France and Britain in their own way also broke with Oslo’s model of painstaking diplomacy and last month recognized a Palestinian state.- Netanyahu long resistant on state -Clinton, who negotiated in meticulous detail, had sparred with Netanyahu, Israel’s long-serving prime minister who has adamantly opposed the prospect of a Palestinian state and the Oslo process.After Netanyahu lost power, Clinton at the end of his term sought to end the conflict with his Camp David summit, which failed.Ghaith al-Omari, who was an advisor to Palestinian negotiators at the time of Clinton’s Camp David summit, said he did not believe any of the current leaders were capable of reaching a lasting peace deal.Netanyahu, he said, is widely mistrusted, even among Arab leaders who want better relations with Israel.Powers from the Arab and Islamic worlds have considered sending troops to stabilize Gaza, but it remains uncertain if they would do so without stability, and Netanyahu has opposed a role for the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank-based rival of Hamas.Mahmud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, turns 90 next month and, beyond his age, is “just too discredited” after his “last 30 years has been associated with failure,” said al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.Al-Omari said Lebanon could show the future ahead, with Israel repeatedly carrying out strikes against Hezbollah since a ceasefire took hold nearly a year ago but without full-scale war.As for Trump, he has shown skill in seizing the moment but has not put in place staff that would indicate sustained diplomacy, he said.”I would be very skeptical if we see the level of engagement we have seen over the last few weeks,” al-Omari said.”We’re nowhere near the kind of kumbaya moment that was projected.”