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Cuba’s communist government is facing a breaking point in its battle for survival under pressure from President Trump, whose energy quarantine against the country is aimed at collapsing the regime.

The consequences are hitting the population of 10 million people hard, with the U.S. fuel blockade exacerbating a decades-long economic crisis, disrupting access to water and worsening food and medicine shortages.

“There’s a number of epidemics rippling through the population right now, repression is increasing as the regime feels cornered, and they are not signaling any willingness to negotiate with the United States,” said Sebastián Arcos, interim director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

“These people are really, really bad guys, and they have shown this capacity to survive difficult crises,” he added. “I don’t think they can survive this one.”

Trump on Friday suggested the U.S. could achieve a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, perhaps mirroring America’s approach to Venezuela, where the military took out its leaders but kept the regime largely in place while demanding greater economic cooperation.

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The U.S. and Israel pounded targets across Iran, bombing the country’s ballistic missile sites and wiping out warships as part of an intensifying military campaign following the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Blasts rattled windows across the country and sent plumes of smoke high into the sky above Tehran. More than 200 people have been killed since the start of the strikes that killed Khamenei and other senior leaders, Iranian leaders have said.

Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones at Israel and at U.S. military installations around the Gulf, and also at the Saudi capital and the global business hub of Dubai. Earlier Sunday, Iran selected a 66-year-old cleric to join the three-member leadership council that will govern the country until a new supreme leader is selected.

A senior White House official says that “new potential leadership” in Iran has suggested they are open for talks with the United States. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations, said President Donald Trump says he is “eventually” willing to talk, but for now the military operation “continues unabated.”

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Three American service members were killed in action amid the ongoing conflict with Iran, U.S. military officials confirmed, one day after the United States and Israel launched airstrikes and Tehran quickly hit back.

Five others were seriously wounded, according to U.S. Central Command, which didn't provide further details. The service members were not immediately identified.

The announcement of the first U.S. casualties in the conflict came as a new poll shows that one in four Americans approve of President Donald Trump's two-day-old air war, which killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other top officials.

“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them," Trump told The Atlantic magazine in a Sunday morning interview. "They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long.”

Meanwhile, Israel and Iran continued to trade attacks. Explosions were heard in Tehran into the afternoon.

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The president of a Washington, D.C.-based medical service provider that holds a government contract with the Trump administration says the company will no longer provide health care services at immigration detention facilities.

Aspen Medical USA posted job listings for positions in Roxbury, New Jersey at a “secure medical facility” that included nurses, X-ray technicians, radiologists and pharmacists. At least one of the positions said the job would require “providing quality medical care to patients within a transitional corrections setting.”

Earlier this week, the Trump administration closed a $129.3 million deal to buy a warehouse in Roxbury that it plans to turn into a detention center for people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In an interview Friday, Aspen Medical President Ethan Bond said the company is not recruiting for any jobs in New Jersey and said the remaining job postings “should not exist.”

Aspen Medical has faced media scrutiny over similar postings in Merrimack, New Hampshire, where another ICE detention facility had been proposed. The company was among a group of firms recently awarded a U.S. Navy contract in connection with the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar spending plan on immigration enforcement and detention.

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There's electricity on Kyiv's left bank today, so a small elevator carries visitors up to Liliya Martynivna Lapina's 10th-floor apartment. The 88-year-old has been spending her days in her bed under a pile of blankets by a bright but cold window, trying to stay warm.

She sits bolt upright and seems to come alive as visitors enter her apartment, erupting in a stream of words and enthusiasm over the care package of pasta, sugar, tea and cooking oil that has been delivered. Lapina is wearing multiple layers of colorful wool sweaters and a headscarf.

NPR is accompanying the aid group Starenki, which delivers food and fellowship to the mostly older people stuck in their apartments this winter as they try to survive the frequent heat and power cuts brought on by Russia's assault on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin fails to make significant progress on the battlefield, he is trying to break the Ukrainian people's will by plunging them into the cold and dark in one of the coldest winters in years. The capital, Kyiv, has been particularly hard hit. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged those who could to leave the city. But many people, especially older adults, have nowhere else to go.

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As news reports circulated that Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had been killed in US and Israeli airstrikes on Tehran, anti-war protesters gathered across the United States, including outside the White House and in New York’s Times Square to voice opposition to US military involvement in the region.

“It wasn’t sanctioned by Congress, so what Trump is doing is on his own terms, it’s making him a fascist and it’s making the country into a fascist state,” said Sue Johnson, a protester.

Trump, she added, “just couldn’t wait. He’s such an impatient child. He’s like, ‘Well ICE didn’t work, so let’s go stir things up in the Middle East. He bombed Iran for no specific reason.”

“No president can attack or kidnap or bomb another country without the permission of the Congress,” she said, but conceded that “it’s irrelevant what Congress thinks because this president goes and does whatever he wants to do to any country.”

That sense of fait accompli that accompanies recent Trump administration foreign policy actions, including the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, permeated the New York gathering of several hundred protesters.

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Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has been killed, Iranian state media confirmed early on Sunday, in the opening salvo of a war aimed at regime change that was launched on Saturday by the US and Israel.

Khamenei had not been heard from since the strikes began, and satellite imagery showed that his secure compound was heavily damaged in the initial barrage on Saturday.

The confirmation came hours after Donald Trump announced the death of the ayatollah, who has ruled Iran as supreme leader since 1989, in a post on Truth Social.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote. “He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”

Trump said that the goal of the military campaign, which began on Saturday morning with a barrage of missiles and airstrikes, was regime change.

“This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country,” he wrote.

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Iran struck the world-famous Fairmont hotel in Dubai, setting the hotel alight, as the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East on Saturday.

Residents watched in shock as an Iranian missile hit the five-star hotel in Dubai’s luxurious Palm Jumeirah area. Social media videos showed fires breaking out near the entrance of the hotel, which led to four people being injured.

Later Dubai authorities said debris from an intercepted drone caused a fire at the city’s famous luxury hotel the Burj Al Arab.

“Civil Defence teams responded immediately and brought the incident under control. No injuries have been reported,” the Dubai media office wrote on its X account.

The media office also said that part of Dubai’s international airport “sustained minor damage in an incident,” without giving further details.

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