Fresh water leak adds to Louvre museum woes

SWIMMING WITH MONA LISA

By AFP
February 13, 2026


The water leak comes in the wake of the brazen jewellery heist at the Louvre which shocked France - Copyright AFP Julie SEBADELHA

Karine PERRET and Adam PLOWRIGHT

After a break-in, strikes and a ticket fraud scandal, the beleaguered Louvre museum in Paris said Friday it had suffered a water leak in its most-visited wing, the second flood in three months.

The fire brigade had to be called overnight after a burst pipe in the Louvre’s Denon wing, which houses some of the museum’s most valuable exhibits including the Mona Lisa, according to a statement.

While the space containing Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece was not affected, the leak damaged a room of 15th-century Italian works and its decorative ceiling, painted by French artist Charles Meynier.

“The ceiling artwork shows two tears in the same area, caused by water, and lifting of the paint layer on the ceiling and its arches,” a statement from management said.

The cause of the damage was a heating-system pipe above the room, the statement added. Firefighters intervened shortly after midnight.

The water leak adds to a growing picture of structural and maintenance problems inside the world’s most visited museum, which suffered a hugely embarrassing robbery last October.

A water leak in late November damaged several hundred works in the Louvre’s Egyptian department, and management had to shut a gallery housing ancient Greek ceramics in October because ceiling beams above it threatened to give way.

The Louvre’s chief architect Francois Chatillon conceded in front of MPs in November that the building was “not in a good state”.

A message on the museum’s website Friday stated that “for reasons beyond our control, certain rooms are exceptionally closed”.



– Fraud scandal –



The news came just a day after revelations that police had dismantled a “large-scale” ticket fraud network at the Louvre that allegedly includes two museum employees and several tour guides.

The Paris prosecutor’s office estimates that the fraud, which involved Chinese tourists, could have cost the institution up to 10 million euros ($11.9 million).

Investigators believe several guides working with Chinese tourists were re-using tickets and entering the Louvre several times, bribing security staff to get their compliance.

Police have seized around a million euros in cash and 486,000 euros from different bank accounts linked to the gang.

The accumulation of problems has piled pressure on museum boss Laurence des Cars who faced calls to resign after the October 19 robbery in which thieves steal crown jewels worth more than $100 million.

Two intruders used a truck-mounted extendable platform to access a gallery containing the jewels, slicing through a glass door with disk-cutters in front of startled visitors before grabbing eight priceless items.

Disgruntled staff have also launched a wave of strikes since the start of the year demanding more recruitment and improved salaries, forcing management to shutter the former royal palace on several Mondays.

The Louvre welcomed nine million visitors last year.

WTO chief urges China to shift on trade surplus


By AFP
February 13, 2026


WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the WEF summit in Davos 

- Copyright AFP Fabrice COFFRINI

The head of the World Trade Organization on Friday urged China to change its growth model, arguing that its soaring trade surplus was ultimately unsustainable and risked sparking new trade barriers.

Beijing says it wants to support the multilateral trading system, “because it has benefited quite a bit from it”, WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told the Munich Security Conference.

However, “the export-led growth model that drove China’s growth for the past 40 years cannot drive China’s growth for the next 40,” said Okonjo-Iweala.

“And the $1.2 trillion trade surplus is not sustainable. Because the rest of the world cannot absorb it,” she added.

“And if China does not act, we will see more barriers.”

China’s trade surplus hit a record $1.2 trillion last year. This was despite a sharp decline in its trade with the United States, as a fierce trade war between the world’s two largest economies revived after President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Other trade partners more than filled the gap, increasing Chinese exports overall by 5.5 percent in 2025, while imports stayed flat in dollar terms.

China’s economy expanded five percent in 2025, Beijing said Monday, one of its slowest rates of growth in decades as the world’s second-biggest economy struggled with persistently low consumer spending and a debt crisis in its property sector.

In October, Trump reached a truce with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. But in January, he announced that he would impose tariffs on countries trading with Iran. China, which is at the forefront of these countries, has warned that it will defend its interests.

Other major markets for Chinese products, such as the European Union, are alarmed by the imbalance in their trade balance with China.

Europeans, concerned that their markets will serve as an outlet for Chinese production surpluses, are urging China to stimulate its domestic consumption, which has been sluggish for years.

The WTO is holding its ministerial conference, its biennial main gathering, in late March in Cameroon.

Conflicts turning on civilians, warns Red Cross chief


By AFP
February 13, 2026


ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric has condemned the disregard shown for the internationally-agreed laws of war - Copyright AFP Elodie LE MAOU

Conflicts are deliberately being turned into wars against civilians with drones and other technology and countries are flouting international law with impunity, the Red Cross chief said Friday.

“We count and classify more conflicts today than we did 15 years ago — twice as many; four times as many as we did 30 years ago,” Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, told the Munich Security Conference.

“But it’s not only the numbers: it’s the intensity, it’s the scale and it’s the fact that conflicts are over-layered with fast technological advancement — amplifying the negative impacts on civilians, on entire countries because they increase displacement at fast pace,” she said.

“There’s never a moment where drones fight against drones. Drones fight against the military and increasingly against civilians. Wars are turning into wars not against weapon-bearers but against civilians — deliberately.

“And that is the impact of the hollowing out of international humanitarian law.”

Spoljaric said the rule of law was only upheld by political will to respect universally-ratified international agreements.

International humanitarian law is a set of rules that seek to limit the effects of armed conflict. It protects people who are not or are no longer participating in hostilities and restricts the means and methods of warfare.

The ICRC acts as the guardians of international humanitarian law.

During a panel discussion on humanitarian assistance, Spoljaric said it was up to leaders to make such laws a political prority and adopt a protective interpretation of the laws, rather than a permissive one.

“Only then will we be able to curb” the number and scale of conflicts, and reduce the cost of humanitarian aid, she said.

She said international humanitarian law had to be tied to national security interests, “otherwise it will not become a priority”.

“Because if you dismantle the rules of war, if you say ‘I will win this war at all costs, no rules apply’, you are sending a signal to every arms bearer that everything is allowed, and it’s a question of time until a bomb explodes in your town.

“The new technologies, the spread of armed groups make this possible today.”

Mercedes-Benz net profit nearly halves amid China, US woes


By AFP
February 12, 2026


Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang says the AI chip titan is working with Mercedes to put self-driving capabilities into some of its electric cars - Copyright AFP Patrick T. Fallon

Louis VAN BOXEL-WOOLF

German carmaker Mercedes-Benz reported Thursday its lowest annual profit since the Covid pandemic, as it counted the cost of US tariffs and cutthroat competition in China.

Net profit for 2025 was 5.3 billion euros ($6.3 billion), Mercedes said, down almost 49 percent from 2024 but better than had been expected in a poll of analysts by financial data firm FactSet.

“Amid a dynamic market environment, our financial results remained within our guidance,” chief executive Ola Kaellenius said, adding that he saw hope in over 40 new model launches planned for the next three years.

“We are moving forward with a clear game plan and a very competitive product portfolio,” he said.

The firm expects a similarly difficult 2026, however, with revenue projected to be around last year’s level of 132.2 billion euros.

Its core profit should be “significantly above” the 2025 figure thanks to an absence of one-off restructuring charges.

But at its core car business, Mercedes sees a profit margin this year of three to five percent — potentially weaker than the five percent it achieved last year.

Mercedes-Benz shares opened down 4.5 percent in Frankfurt but later recovered a bit, trading down 2.6 percent at midday, making it one of the worst performers in Germany’s blue-chip DAX index.



– ‘Once-in-a-hundred years transformation’ –



A storied company that traces its history back to Carl Benz inventing the first motor car in 1885, Mercedes last year took a hit from US President Donald Trump putting tariffs on foreign carmakers.

Speaking on the earnings call, chief financial officer Harald Wilhelm said the duties introduced partway through last year had cost the company about 1 billion euros.

“It’s really a lot of money,” he said. “It’s going to go up in 2026 because we’ll have a full-year impact — It’s going to be a significant number.”

The duties came as the company was facing a triple whammy of cratering sales in China, stagnant demand in Europe and the costs of investing into electric cars despite patchy demand.

“The auto industry and our company, we’re in a once-in-a-hundred years transformation,” Kaellenius said on the call.

“It’s happening in an environment that is more dynamic than we have experienced in many, many years.”

China, the world’s biggest car market, has become a battleground for German carmakers amid a brutal price war and fierce competition from local players like BYD and Geely.

Mercedes-Benz’s sales by volume in China plunged 19 percent last year to their lowest level since 2016, helping drag overall worldwide sales down by 10 percent.

Wilhelm said that Mercedes-Benz expected to lose further sales in China despite new launches, and that difficulties in the market could further weigh on results.

“China is always, I think, unforeseeable in terms of the intensity of the competitive environment,” he said. “It could be an element which could bring us even further down.”

Ubisoft targets new decade of ‘Rainbow 6’ with China expansion

By AFP
February 13, 2026


Investors were happy with Ubisoft. — © AFP/File Dimitar DILKOFF

Tom BARFIELD

Troubled French games giant Ubisoft will strive to project confidence this weekend with a massive esports event for its shooter “Rainbow Six Siege”, while hoping a reorganisation and expansion to China can keep the money rolling in.

“We’re stepping things up a lot for 2026 with China coming aboard,” said Francois-Xavier Deniele, head of marketing and esports for the franchise.

“The balance is going to change, we know that when they arrive in a game, they’re extremely competitive”.

Chinese internet giant TenCent has climbed aboard as an investor in “Rainbow Six” and Ubisoft’s other top-selling titles “Assassin’s Creed” and “Far Cry”.

The mega-franchises are stabled together in one of a string of new “creative houses”, supposed to offer the group’s development teams more financial and creative freedom after several years of financial woes, job cuts and a tumbling share price.

China is “a very, very mature market, a lot more mature even than (the West) for this kind of game,” Deniele said.

But TenCent’s billion-euro investment in exchange for a 26-percent stake in Vantage, finalised last November, suggests it believes in Ubisoft titles’ ability to hold their own.

With a $3-million prize pool, this weekend’s Ubisoft-organised invitational event in Paris for top teams is “a heck of a signal” that “shows we’re capable of packing the Adidas Arena,” Deniele said.

The Paris venue’s 8,000 seats are more often filled by basketball or music fans.

Chinese internet giant TenCent is investing in some of Ubisoft’s top games 

– Copyright AFP/File BERTRAND GUAY

In China, “it’s totally natural for the new generation to watch esports matches and play with their friends in PC bangs (cybercafes)… very similar to Korea,” Deniele said.

This year’s busy esports season for “Siege” follows on from last year’s revamp of its systems and graphics, which “laid the foundations for the 10 years ahead,” he added.

A team first-person shooter in the vein of genre classics like “Counter-Strike”, “Rainbow Six Siege” is one of Ubisoft’s biggest titles, rewarding coordinated tactical play and deft use of destructible environments.

– Fierce competition –

“Siege” has not escaped wobbles of its own in recent months.

Hackers gained access in December to systems that allowed them to ban or restore large numbers of accounts and manipulate the game’s cosmetic item marketplace — a key source of revenue.

In such cases “the community needs to be reassured very quickly”, Deniele said, crediting the “ultra-fast” reaction of the development team for the fact that “people came back to the game and were happy with what we were able to do”.

Developers must also ensure a steady pipeline of fresh content for today’s long-lived online games, with “Rainbow Six” facing competition from incumbents such as “Call of Duty”, “Valorant” or “Overwatch”.

New challengers are also constantly emerging onto the unforgiving field.

Wildlight Entertainment, developers of fantasy shooter title “Highguard”, which launched in January to great fanfare, on Wednesday announced layoffs from its small development team — leaving only a “core group” to maintain the game.

At this weekend’s “Rainbow Six” event “we’ll be announcing a quicker release schedule for content, because people want more and more”, Deniele said.

“It’s a game people play every day, so we have to get faster.”

‘Avatar’ and ‘Assassin’s Creed’ shore up troubled Ubisoft


By AFP
February 12, 2026


Ubisoft's star has fallen with investors in recent months

 - Copyright AFP GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT

Strong performances from major franchises including an “Avatar” tie-in game and juggernaut “Assassin’s Creed” buttressed struggling French games giant Ubisoft’s third-quarter results, the company said Thursday.

Revenue at 318 million euros ($380 million) in October-December had made for a “solid” period “exceeding our expectations” chief executive Yves Guillemot said in a statement.

Ubisoft’s star has fallen with investors in recent months, as it has weathered mixed reception for some new titles and announced a far-reaching restructuring and cost-cutting drive.

Shares in the group have lost almost 95 percent of their value in five years, booking their worst single-day performance in January with a 40-percent collapse.

Ubisoft reported Thursday that its preferred “net bookings” yardstick, which excludes revenue from deferred sales, climbed 12 percent year-on-year to almost 340 million euros in its third quarter.

The pace was still higher over the first nine months of the financial year, adding 17.6 percent to reach 1.1 billion euros.

Major contributors to sales growth included the latest instalment in the Assassin’s Creed series, released last year, and the “Avatar” film tie-in game — updated to coincide with the release of the James Cameron saga’s latest episode in December.

Ubisoft confirmed its January forecast of an operating loss of around one billion euros for the full financial year, sapped by multiple delays and cancellations announced alongside details of its restructuring.

Bosses’ woes are far from over, as the company this week faced a three-day strike by several hundred of its 3,800 French employees.

Triggers for the walkout included an end to work-from-home provisions.

Ubisoft’s restructuring will farm out many of its dozens of studios worldwide into an industry-first system of five “creative houses”, each dedicated to developing a different genre of game.

It also said in January that it was launching a third round of cost-cutting aimed at finding 200 million euros of savings over two years.

The company said the same month that it would look to slash up to 200 of around 1,100 positions at its Paris headquarters.

Such cuts follow studio closures elsewhere in its global network, including San Franciso, Osaka, Stockholm, Leamington in Britain and Canada’s Halifax.

France’s biggest games company, Ubisoft today has around 17,000 employees worldwide after shedding more than 3,000 in recent years.

Struggling brewer Heineken to cut up to 6,000 jobs


By AFP
February 11, 2026


Heineken's beer shipments fell 2.4 percent last year

 - Copyright ANP/AFP/File Freek VAN DEN BERGH

Under-pressure Dutch brewer Heineken said Wednesday that it would scrap up to 6,000 jobs as it faces what it called “challenging market conditions” with beer volumes down compared to last year.

The company said it would be “accelerating productivity at scale to unlock significant savings, reducing 5,000 to 6,000 roles over the next two years”.

“We remain prudent in our near-term expectations for beer market conditions,” chief executive Dolf van den Brink said in a statement.

Van den Brink stunned the company last month by announcing that he would be stepping down after almost six years at the helm.

He told reporters he was leaving with “mixed emotions” after acknowledging that he had guided the company “through turbulent economic and political times”.

“My priority for the coming months is to leave Heineken in the strongest possible position,” he said.

Heineken employs around 87,000 people globally.

In October, the brewer had already announced it was cutting or reassigning 400 jobs as part of a reorganisation of its Amsterdam head office to take advantage of new technologies.

Top executives declined to specify where the bulk of the job cuts would come, but chief financial officer Harold van den Broek hinted they would come in Europe.

“Europe is a big part of our business,” he told reporters. “And you see from the financial results also that it is very tough to drive a good operating leverage there.”

“So we are focusing many of the initiatives to strengthen our European business, but not exclusively so,” he said.

Beer volumes globally at the world’s second-biggest brewer after AB InBev were down 2.4 percent in 2025, the firm reported in its annual results.

The decline was especially severe in Europe and the Americas, which dropped 4.1 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively.

In the fourth quarter of last year, total global beer volumes were down 2.8 percent.

Total annual sales for Heineken came in at 34.4 billion euros ($41 billion), compared to the 36.0 billion it banked in 2024.

Net profits were 2.7 billion euros, which the firm said was a 4.9 percent gain on last year when currency fluctuations were stripped out.

Looking ahead to 2026, Heineken forecast full-year organic operating profit growth of two to six percent, after a 4.4 percent rise last year to 4.4 billion euros.

UK’s crumbling canals threatened with collapse

By AFP
February 11, 2026


The breach happened on the Llangollen Canal at Whitchurch in Shropshire - Copyright AFP Oli SCARFF

Stephen Conneely

On a misty winter’s day in the English midlands, engineers struggled to drag stranded narrowboats from a waterless, mud-filled canal that collapsed weeks earlier, in a delicate, multi-million-pound rescue operation.

The sight starkly illustrated an ongoing battle to maintain the UK’s historic, yet deteriorating, waterways.

Britain’s canal network “is facing pressure it has never faced before,” said Charlie Norman, director of campaigns at the Inland Waterways Association (IWA), an independent charity advocating for the upkeep of the UK’s canals and rivers.

“The entire canal network is vulnerable,” Norman added, pointing to the “increased effects of climate change” such as drought in the summer and heavy rain in the winter.

“Inadequate funding across the sector” has provoked an “overall deterioration” in the 4,700 mile-long (7,600 kilometre) network, they said.

Britain’s 200-year-old canal network was once the backbone of the country’s economic transformation during the Industrial Revolution, but is now crumbling, experts say.

About a dozen workers were overseeing the complex operation to rescue three narrowboats stranded in a canal in Whitchurch, on the English-Welsh border, last month.

Watching from an empty canal bank and wearing a high-viz jacket and white hard hat, was Julie Sharman, the chief operating officer of the Canal & River Trust –- a charitable organisation in charge of maintaining some 2,000 miles (3,200km) of waterways across England and Wales.

Behind her were two 20-tonne narrowboats waiting to be rescued by an imposing winch machine in a nearby field with the help of a specialist excavator.



– ‘Tough decisions’ –



“There’s no disguising the fact that we do need more money to look after our canal network,” she told AFP.

“People sometimes think canals are looked after by local authorities or by the government, and they’re not. They’re looked after by us, as a charity,” she said.

The trust is investigating the Whitchurch breach, but Sharman said “our engineers have to make tough decisions every week” about which projects to tackle and “there’s always a very long list of things we would want to do”.

“Small breaches and failures have happened since the canals were built,” she added, but “it’s rare to have a breach of this scale”.

In January 2025, there was an earlier canal collapse in Bridgewater, northwest England, which led to just under two miles of the canal being drained of water.

The Canal & River Trust, the largest authority, says its fixed annual grant of £52.6 million ($71.8 million) from the government, amounts to just 22 percent of its annual income, but that will reduce by five percent from 2027 for the next decade.

The rest, some 78 percent, is funded by the charity’s own investment and self-generated income, including user fees and fundraising, supported by thousands of volunteers.

Last week, the UK government pledged an additional £6.5 million funding for the trust “to help build long-term resilience across the network”.

“Our historic canals and waterways are not only world famous and precious to communities across the country — they are also a vital part of our national infrastructure,” said Water Minister Emma Hardy.

British Waterways, a statutory body of the UK government, ceased to exist in 2012 and handed maintenance of canals and rivers to a series of 144 navigation authorities.

It was believed the move would diversify funding potential allowing bodies to tap into government grants, commercial revenue and charitable donations.



– Transport, leisure, homes –



“Before canals, transporting goods across Britain was limited to horse and cart,” said historian Mike Clarke.

The advent of the canal greatly increased the nation’s capacity to transport goods.

After declining in use, “a restoration movement came about in the ’60s” and people began to live on canal houseboats, Clarke said.

Now more than 35,000 boats are registered with the Canal & River Trust, plying the network to transport goods or just for pleasure. And about 15,000 people are said to live on canal boats moored on the banks.

Matt Gibson, 52, moors his sage-green houseboat, bedecked with plants, on the Regent’s Canal near central London.

He moved in during the pandemic “to explore a different way of living”.

“I get a bit spooked when I can hear drunk people outside at night,” he told AFP. “I do love living here, though — I don’t need much more space to live”.

The United Nations said Friday it was deeply alarmed by the crisis unfolding in Cuba.

Fire at refinery in Havana as Cuba battles fuel shortages


By AFP
February 13, 2026


A fire at the Nico Lopes oil refinery in Havana - Copyright AFP YAMIL LAGE

A fire broke out Friday at a refinery in Cuba’s capital, threatening to compound the island nation’s struggles as it faces what amounts to a US oil blockade.

AFP observed a massive column of smoke rising from the Nico Lopez refinery in Havana Bay, though it was not known if the blaze was near the plant’s oil storage tanks.

Two Mexican navy ships arrived at the same harbor Thursday with more than 800 tons of much-needed humanitarian aid.

Cuba, already contending with a years-long economic crisis, has risked being plunged into darkness since US President Donald Trump vowed to starve the communist nation of oil.

The Caribbean country of 9.6 million inhabitants lost its main oil supply line when Trump last month ordered the ouster of Nicolas Maduro, the long-term leader of Cuban ally Venezuela.

Trump said no more Venezuelan oil would go to Cuba, and also threatened tariffs for any other country stepping in with crude supplies.

The island, under a US trade embargo since 1962, has for years been mired in a severe economic crisis marked by extended power cuts and shortages of fuel, medicine and food.

No foreign fuel or oil tanker has arrived in Cuba in weeks, experts in maritime transport tracking have told AFP.

Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Miami-born son of Cuban immigrants, have made no secret of their desire to bring about regime change in Havana.

The Republican leader has said Cuba is “ready to fall.”

Emergency measures kicked in this week to conserve Cuba’s fast-dwindling fuel stocks. The government shuttered universities, reduced school hours and the work week, and slashed public transport as it limited fuel sales.

Staffing at hospitals was also cut back.

The United Nations said Friday it was deeply alarmed by the crisis unfolding in Cuba.

Two Mexican navy ships arrive with humanitarian aid for Cuba


By  AFP
February 12, 2026


The Mexican Navy ship ARM Papaloapan arriving in Havana Bay with humanitarian aid - Copyright AFP/File Mauro PIMENTEL

Two Mexican navy ships with more than 800 tons of humanitarian aid arrived in Cuba Thursday, as the island nation struggles under what amounts to a US blockade of oil deliveries.

President Donald Trump has vowed to starve Cuba of oil after the US military ousting of Nicolas Maduro, the leader of Venezuela, which had been the communist nation’s main supplier of the commodity.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has protested against the humanitarian impact of Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on any country sending crude to Cuba, and promised to provide aid.

The ships Papaloapan and Isla Holbox, sent by Sheinbaum’s government, entered Havana Harbor on Thursday, an AFP team observed.

They are carrying fresh and powdered milk, meat, beans, rice and personal hygiene items, the Mexican foreign ministry says.

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Miami-born son of Cuban immigrants, have made no secret of their desire to bring about regime change in Havana.

The Republican leader has said Cuba is “ready to fall.”

The island of 9.6 million inhabitants, under a US trade embargo since 1962, has for years been mired in a severe economic crisis marked by extended power cuts and shortages of fuel, medicine and food.

It has now also been cut off from critical oil supplies from Venezuela — whose leader was toppled in a deadly US military strike last month — and from Mexico under the threat of US tariffs.

The resulting shortages have threatened to plunge Cuba into complete darkness, with power plants struggling to keep the lights on.

No foreign fuel or oil tanker has arrived in Cuba in weeks, experts in maritime transport tracking have told AFP.

Emergency measures kicked in on the island this week to conserve its fast-dwindling fuel stocks. The government shuttered universities, reduced school hours and the work week, and slashed public transport as it limited fuel sales.

On Monday, Sheinbaum said Trump’s “unfair” measures would “strangle” an already teetering economy.

Her country has been mulling how to send oil to Cuba without incurring punishing tariffs.

“We will continue supporting them (Cuba) and taking all necessary diplomatic actions to restore oil shipments,” Sheinbaum said Monday.

Tourists empty out of Cuba as US fuel blockade bites


By AFP
February 12, 2026


Cuba's tourism industry falters as country struggles amid US fuel blockade - Copyright AFP Paige Taylor White

Rigoberto DIAZ

With rolling power cuts, hotel closures, and flight routes suspended for lack of fuel, tourists are gradually emptying out of Cuba, deepening a severe crisis on the cash-strapped island.

Several nations have advised against travel to Cuba since the US tightened a decades-old embargo by choking vital oil imports.

“I found only one taxi,” said French tourist Frederic Monnet, who cut short a trip to a picturesque valley in western Cuba to head back to Havana.

“There might be no taxis afterward,” he told AFP.

A petroleum shortage has led to regular hours-long power cuts, long queues at petrol stations, and has forced many airlines to announce that they will cancel regular services.

About 30 hotels and resorts across the island are being temporarily closed due to low occupancy and fuel rationing, according to an internal Tourism Ministry document obtained by AFP.

Since January, a flotilla of US warships have stopped Venezuelan tankers from delivering oil to Cuban ports.

Washington has also threatened Mexico and other exporter with punitive tariffs if they continue deliveries.

Several Canadian and Russian airlines are sending empty flights to Cuba to retrieve thousands of otherwise stranded passengers, and others are introducing refuelling stops in the route home.

American tourist Liam Burnell contacted his airline to make sure he could get a flight back.

“There was a danger that I might not be able to return, because the airport says it doesn’t have enough fuel for the planes,” he said.



– ‘Critical, critical’ –



An absence of tourists is more than an inconvenience for the Cuban government.

Tourism is traditionally Cuba’s second major source of foreign currency, behind revenue from doctors sent abroad.

The revenue is vital to pay for food, fuel, and other imports.

And the 300,000 Cubans who make a living off the tourist industry are already feeling the pinch.

A hop-on, hop-off bus touring Havana’s sites on Thursday was virtually empty.

Horses idled in the shade of colonial buildings, waiting for carriages to fill with visitors.

“The situation is critical, critical, critical,” said 34-year-old Juan Arteaga, who drives one of the island’s many classic 1950s cars so beloved by tourists.

“There are few cars (on the street) because there is little fuel left. Whoever had a reserve is keeping it,” he said.

“When my gasoline runs out, I go home. What else can I do?” he said.

The island of 9.6 million inhabitants has faced hard times since the US trade embargo took hold in 1962, and in recent years the severe economic crisis has also been marked by shortages of food and medicine.

On Thursday, two Mexican navy ships arrived in Cuba with more than 800 tons of much-needed humanitarian aid — fresh and powdered milk, meat, cookies, beans, rice and personal hygiene items, according to the Mexican foreign ministry.

Musician Victor Estevez said because tourism has been “a lifeline for all Cubans…if that is affected, then we are really going to be in trouble.”

“The well-being of my family depends on me.”

The tourism sector had already been severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, experiencing a 70 percent decline in revenue between 2019 and 2025.

Tourism expert Jose Luis Perello said the island now faces the prospect of “a disastrous year.”

Charcoal or solar panels? A tale of two Cuba's

By AFP
February 10, 2026


Cuban vendor Elio Galvan sells charcoal to families who have begun cooking over open fires amid ever longer blackouts caused by fuel shortages - Copyright AFP Jim WATSON

Lisandra COTS

The US oil siege, which has worsened an already severe energy crisis, has created two classes of Cubans: those who use generators or solar panels to power their ovens, and those who have resorted to cooking over open fires.

On the side of a highway on the outskirts of Havana, vendors sell bags of charcoal and makeshift braziers, some fashioned from old washing machine drums.

“Everyone knows what’s coming. We don’t have fuel in the country; we have to find alternatives,” Niurbis Lamothe, a 53-year-old state employee, told AFP after buying a homemade stove.

“The shoe just got tighter than it already was,” commented another shopper who declined to give her name as she sized up a a bag of charcoal costing 2,600 pesos (US$5.25), roughly half the average monthly salary.

The woman, who has a young child, explained that her salary could not stretch to solar panels or a lithium battery to keep the lights on during power cuts of up to 12 hours a day.

“This is the most affordable way” to cook, she said as she loaded a sack of charcoal onto her electric motorcycle — the vehicle of choice for many Cubans given severe fuel shortages, which they charge when they have power.

Yurisnel Agosto, the 36-year-old charcoal merchant, confirmed that he “has never sold so much” of the fossil fuel.

Before, his customers were primarily pizzerias or grilled-meat restaurants, who cook over coals; now they are families.

“People come and buy three sacks to be prepared for when there’s no electricity,” said Agosto, his hands blackened from filling, stacking, and arranging the sacks on the side of the road.

For most Cubans, even charcoal is a luxury, and wood the staple fuel source.



– ‘Desperate’ –



Cuba, which has been under a US trade embargo for over 60 years, was already struggling through its worst crisis in decades when President Donald Trump took steps to cut off its entire oil supply.

The government has announced drastic measures to ration whatever fuel is left, including preventing airlines refueling on the island.

For some Cubans the crisis has triggered memories of the rationing of the “Special Period,” the severe economic crisis that followed the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, at the time Cuba’s main oil supplier.

Thirty-five years later the writing was on the wall when US special forces overthrew Nicolas Maduro, the socialist president of Cuba’s closest ally, Venezuela.

Washington immediately halted Venezuela’s oil shipments to US arch-foe Cuba and threatened tariff hikes on any other countries supplying the island with crude.

For wealthier Cubans, solar panels are the salvation.

The number of solar panel installation companies has multiplied since 2024, when the Cuban government relaxed restrictions on importing the mostly Chinese-made devices.

“People are desperate to find a solution,” Reinier Hernandez, one business owner, told AFP.

Since mid-January, he has barely slept as he fields a flurry of orders, prepares quotes, and organizes the work schedule of his 20-or-so employees.

“Sometimes I get home at one in the morning,” Orley Estrada, one of his installers, confided.

In the Guanabacoa neighborhood, in eastern Havana, workers are busy installing 12 solar panels on the roof of a nursing home run by the Catholic Church that doubles as a soup kitchen.

The Dominican nuns who run the kitchen prepare food for about 80 elderly or destitute people — growing numbers of Cubans are forced to rummage through garbage bins for food — each day.

Sister Gertrudis Abreu fundraised to amass the $7,000 needed for the panels.

“Without electricity, we had no other option,” she explained to AFP.

But with the smallest solar package from Hernandez’s company costing $2,000, most Cubans have yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

‘Outrage’ as LGBTQ Pride flag removed from Stonewall monument

By AFP
February 10, 2026


Human Rights activist Jay Walker speaks during a protest in front of the Stonewall Monument in Manhattan in New York - Copyright AFP Jim WATSON

Gregory WALTON

The removal of an LGBTQ rainbow pride flag from the United States’ most prominent gay monument after new rules issued by the Trump administration sparked an outcry and a noisy protest on Tuesday.

The removal of a large rainbow flag from the Stonewall National Monument in New York followed a January 21 memo from the federally run National Park Service responsible for the heritage site.

It banned the flying of flags other than the US national banner and the Department of the Interior’s colors, with limited exceptions.

About 100 noisy demonstrators, many draped in LGBTQ flags, gathered in a park opposite Stonewall in downtown Manhattan with attendees decrying the move as a “slap in the face” for the community.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he was “outraged” by the removal of the rainbow pride flag from the monument.

“New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history,” he wrote on X.

The Stonewall national monument memorializes the eponymous Stonewall Uprising of 1969, when LGBTQ New Yorkers rose up against discriminatory policies and oppression.

A police raid of the small Greenwich Village gay bar ignited six days of rioting that birthed the modern US gay rights movement, later extended to transgender and non-binary people, who do not identify as male or female.



– ‘Unconscionable behavior’ –



Trump regularly criticized transgender people and what he termed “gender ideology extremism” while on the campaign trail, and days after returning to office he signed an executive order declaring only two official genders in the United States, male and female.

A month later, the National Park Service scrubbed references to transgender and queer people from the website of the monument, with other government departments implementing similar purges.

“To have somebody take down something that is so meaningful to us and to our community outside a historic site like that is basically a slap in the face,” said trans community organizer Jade Runk, 37, who used cable ties to fasten LGBTQ flags to railings in Christopher Park opposite Stonewall.

“It’s a message saying ‘we don’t want you to exist’.”

The area around the Stonewall monument, including the adjacent, privately run Stonewall Inn, is still adorned with many bright LGBTQ flags, as well as banners representing the trans community.

New York state Governor Kathy Hochul said that she would “not let this administration roll back the rights we fought so hard for.”

The National Park Service did not respond to an AFP request for comment.

LGBTQ campaign group GLAAD said “attempts to censor and diminish visibility are tactics that LGBTQ Americans overcame decades ago, and we will continue to defeat.”

Gay history archivist Alec Douglas, 29, told AFP that “we’ve seen this movie before.”

“It’s just unconscionable behavior from an autocratic government to erase a minority,” said Douglas, holding up a rainbow flag from a 1994 pride march signed by the banner’s original designer, Gilbert Baker.

Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal told local media he would reraise the flag at the site on Thursday.

One protester angrily shouted “Let’s do it now. What are we waiting for?”

Noisy humans harm birds and affect breeding success: study

By AFP
February 10, 2026


Scientists say that noise pollution is impacting bird behaviour, stress levels and reproduction. - Copyright AFP Jim WATSON

Noise pollution is affecting bird behaviour across the globe, disrupting everything from courtship songs to the ability to find food and avoid predators, a large-scale new analysis showed on Wednesday.

Researchers reviewed nearly four decades of scientific work and found that noises made by humans were interfering with the lives of birds on six continents and having “strong negative effects” on reproduction success.

Previous research on individual species has shown that single sources of anthropogenic noise — such as planes, traffic and construction — can impact birds as it does other wildlife.

But for this study, the team performed a wider analysis by pooling data published since 1990 across 160 bird species to see if any broader trends could be established.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found clear evidence of a “pervasive” impact of noise pollution on birds worldwide.

“We found that noise significantly impacts communication risk behaviours, foraging, aggression and physiology and had a strong effect on habitat use and a negative impact on reproduction,” it said.

This is because birds rely on acoustic information to survive, making them particularly vulnerable to the modern din produced by cars, machinery and urban life.

“They use song to find mates, calls to warn of predators, and chicks make begging calls to let their parents know they’re hungry,” Natalie Madden, who led the research while at the University of Michigan, said in a statement.

“So if there’s loud noise in the environment, can they still hear signals from their own species?”

In some cases, noise pollution interrupted mating displays, caused males to change their courtship songs, or masked messages between chicks and parents.



– Underappreciated consequence –



The response varied between species, with birds that nest close to the ground suffering greater reproductive harm, while those using open nests experienced stronger effects on growth.

Birds living in urban areas, meanwhile, tended to have higher levels of stress hormones than those outside of cities.

The authors said that noise pollution was an “underappreciated consequence” of humanity’s impact on nature, especially compared to the twin drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change.

Some 61 percent of the world’s bird species have declining populations, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said in October.

But many solutions to combat noise pollution already existed, said the study’s senior author Neil Carter, from the University of Michigan.

For example, buildings are constructed to improve visibility and minimise bird collisions and in much the same way, could be adapted to stifle sound.

“So many of the things we’re facing with biodiversity loss just feel inexorable and massive in scale, but we know how to use different materials and how to put things up in different ways to block sound,” he said.

“We know what to use and how to use it, we just have to get enough awareness and interest in doing it.”