Day: April 13, 2026
The development will create an attractive green route, enhancing the walk to and from the station to the city centre, connecting the Garrick Theatre and shops, as well as the planned new cinema and leisure facilities.
Plans include new trees, planting, seating and natural play features, creating a space for people to sit and spend time in rather than just pass through.
TCC co-founder and director Alex Pimley said, “We are delighted to be involved in this imaginative project which will help bring this part of Lichfield to life, making it easier and more enjoyable to walk between the station and the city centre.”
TCC is already acting as quantity surveyor and employers agent for the development of Lichfield’s new Everyman cinema in the Three Spires Shopping Centre. This development will include food and drink outlets as well as a roof terrace, outdoor seating and a public plaza.
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UK newspaper The Guardian, quoting an unnamed Italian diplomatic source, reports that Israel summoned its Italian ambassador to protest Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani’s comments regarding Israel’s deadly attacks on Beirut, News.Az reports, citing Aljazeera.
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Tajani called the attacks, which killed more than 300 people, including women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, “unacceptable” during a visit to Beirut.
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“I find President Trump’s words towards the Holy Father unacceptable. The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and normal for him to call for peace and to condemn every form of war,” Meloni said, News.Az reports, citing Aljazeera.
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The Italian prime minister, who was the only European leader to attend Trump’s inauguration in 2025, made the remarks after having issued an initial statement backing Pope Leo but making no specific mention of Trump’s attack on the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
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The ship, registered in Comoros as Elpis, is partially laden and was sanctioned by the United States in 2025 for its “involvement in the sale, purchase, and transportation of Iranian petroleum” as part of Iran’s shadow fleet, News.Az reports, citing CNN.
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Conversely, a Botswana-registered tanker, Ostria, turned back while attempting to transit the strait. Just 41 minutes after Trump’s deadline, the ship changed its intended destination from Oman to the United Arab Emirates after turning around, according to CNN’s review of Kpler ship-tracking data.
Minutes after the blockade took effect, another tanker, Rich Starry, broadcast its status as “drifting” off the coast of Qeshm Island, apparently stalling its voyage through the channel.
Hours before the start of the US blockade, shipping data showed traffic at the key waterway had thinned.
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The crisis has particularly affected Caritas Cuba, one of the country’s main social assistance channels, which relies heavily on local transportation networks to deliver food and hygiene supplies to vulnerable communities, according to CiberCuba, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski told USA Today in an interview Sunday that aid shipments are being distributed through improvised means with almost no motorized transport because of gasoline shortages.
Wenski, who has coordinated aid shipments from South Florida for three decades, said Cubans have told him the island is approaching “ground zero” of humanitarian collapse.
Organizations linked to Caritas say more people are turning to soup kitchens for food, underscoring worsening food insecurity among vulnerable populations, digital outlet CubitaNow reported.
Cuba has faced increasingly frequent blackouts, chronic shortages of food and medicine and a transportation system largely paralyzed by fuel scarcity in recent years.
The arrest of Nicolás Maduro by the United States interrupted Venezuelan oil shipments of between 25,000 and 35,000 barrels per day that had supplied most of Cuba’s fuel needs, worsening the energy crisis. Mexico also suspended shipments following sanctions imposed by Trump administration.
According to United Nations reports, about 170 containers of essential goods valued at $6.3 million remain stranded at ports because of the fuel shortage.
Francisco Pichón, the U.N. resident coordinator in Cuba, warned that the country’s humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate as the energy crisis compounds damage caused by Hurricane Melissa.
Despite limited fuel deliveries, including a recent Russian oil shipment, Pichón said “humanitarian needs in the country remain very urgent and persistent.”
He said more than 96,000 surgeries have been postponed, including 11,000 involving children. Another 32,000 pregnant women face heightened risk because of unstable prenatal care access, while 3,000 children are experiencing vaccination delays.
Nearly 500,000 children and teenagers are attending shortened school days.
About 1 million people have been affected by water shortages because they depend on trucked water deliveries.
Pichón noted that Cuba has the oldest population in Latin America, increasing the vulnerability of elderly residents amid the crisis.
The United Nations system and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs have proposed a $94.1 million plan to import fuel specifically for humanitarian use and sustain essential services that include healthcare and water access.
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A dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon over guardrails for how the military could use its artificial intelligence tools led the agency to label Anthropic a supply-chain risk last month, barring its use by the Pentagon and its contractors, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
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“We have a narrow contracting dispute, but I don’t want that to get in the way of the fact that we care deeply about national security,” Anthropic Co-founder Jack Clark said at the Semafor World Economy event in Washington.
“Our position is the government has to know about this stuff … So absolutely, we’re talking to them about Mythos, and we’ll talk to them about the next models as well.”
The nature and details of Anthropic’s talks with the U.S. government, including which agencies are involved, were not immediately clear.
Mythos, announced on April 7, is Anthropic’s “most capable yet for coding and agentic tasks,” the company said in a blog post, referring to the model’s ability to act autonomously.
Its capabilities to code at a high level have given it a potentially unprecedented ability to identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities and devise ways to exploit them, experts said.
A Washington, D.C., federal appeals court last week declined to block the Pentagon’s national security blacklisting of Anthropic for now, a win for the Trump administration that comes after another appeals court came to the opposite conclusion in a separate legal challenge by Anthropic.
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New York City has been a hotspot for demonstrations, with some gathering on Sunday in support of Trump’s handling of Iran and others protesting against the war on Monday, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
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Here are some photos from Monday’s protest in New York:
Demonstrators during an anti-war protest in NYC, April 13, 2026. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
Demonstrators were detained. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
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Sunday’s elections were marred by logistical problems that led to shortages of voting materials across parts of the capital in the first round, while Popular Force candidate Keiko Fujimori led the vote, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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In response to the disarray, the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) allowed an extension on Monday for voters to continue casting their ballots to choose the next president, vice presidents, senators and lawmakers.
A total of 187 missing polling stations were installed at 7 a.m. (1200GMT) and will remain open until 6 p.m.
As of 10.47 a.m. (1547GMT) on Monday, with 54.499% of ballots counted, right-wing candidate Keiko Sofia Fujimori Higuchi was in the lead with 1,687,382 votes, or 16.957% of the total. Close behind, far-right candidate Rafael Bernardo Lopez Aliaga Cazorla had received 1,435,846 votes, or 14.429%.
The three-time candidate and daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori — the first Latin American president to be tried for severe human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in two massacres and the kidnapping of political dissidents during his presidency — is seeking the presidency for the fourth time.
As the first round concludes, Fujimori offered a cautious celebration of her narrow lead over Lopez Aliaga.
“The quick count results are a very positive sign for our country because, as I pointed out in the debate, the enemy is the left, and according to these results, they would not make it to the second round. That, I repeat, is positive for all Peruvians,” she told reporters on Sunday.
Running under the Popular Renewal party, Lopez Aliaga aims to build a platform focused on security, anti-immigration policies, and economic development. This marks the second time the businessman and ultraconservative candidate has run for the presidency.
Sunday’s elections stood out for the unusually large number of presidential candidates — 30 in total — which made a first-round victory impossible, as 50% of the vote is required to win outright.
If they emerge the top two candidates in the first round, Lopez Aliaga and Fujimori will face off in a runoff election on June 7.
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