Day: April 14, 2026
Funding effort for ICE, Border Patrol could begin in Senate next week, majority leader says
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The IMF said on Tuesday that it expected the global economy to grow by 3.1 percent this year, a slowdown from its earlier forecast of 3.3 percent, which it had released before the US and Israel began their war on Iran on February 28, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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Since then Iran has retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for oil and gas supplies, and has attacked energy infrastructure in the region, driving up oil prices and squeezing oil and gas supplies, developments that have hit countries most reliant on these imports especially hard.
The new report also marks a slowdown from last year, in which the economy expanded by 3.4 percent. Some regions and countries will be hit harder than others, the IMF said.
Iran’s outlook, for instance, saw one of the largest country-level revisions, with an initial small amount of growth forecast in 2026 cut by 7.2 points, resulting in a forecast contraction of 6.1 percent.
The IMF also cut GDP growth forecasts for Saudi Arabia from 4.5 percent to 3.1 percent.
“The current hostilities in the Middle East pose immediate policy trade-offs: between fighting inflation and preserving growth and between supporting those affected by the rising cost of living and rebuilding fiscal buffers,” the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook report.
“It will be highly uneven across countries, hitting countries in the conflict region, commodity-importing low-income countries, and emerging market economies hardest,” Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said in a release.
For the Middle East and North Africa, the 2026 growth forecast was cut by 2.8 points to 1.1 percent. The IMF slashed its 2026 forecast for the Middle East and Central Asia by 2 percentage points to 1.9 percent.
Meanwhile, in the eurozone, growth is now seen slowing to 1.1 percent this year from 1.4 percent in 2025 and below the 1.3 percent predicted in January.
The lower forecasts were released as the costs of oil, gas and fertilisers surge alongside a slowdown in traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies travel.
“It is just another confirmation of what we knew, which is that the war in the Middle East is changing the growth trajectory in the immediate term and, if it expands, possibly in the longer term as well,” Aleksandar Tomic, associate dean for strategy, innovation and technology at Boston College, told Al Jazeera.
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The 62-year-old military officer, who holds the rank of general-in-chief, is one of the figures closest to the late President Hugo Chávez and to arrested President Nicolas Maduro, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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Rodríguez announced the appointment through her Telegram channel and on X on Monday night, where she said Padrino López “assumes the commitment to boost agricultural production to guarantee national supply and contribute to the country’s new diversified economic model.
The return of Padrino López to the Cabinet comes just 26 days after his removal as defense minister, a position he held for more than 11 years.
On March 18, Rodríguez removed him from that role and appointed Gen. Gustavo González López in his place, two months after the U.S. operation that captured Maduro in Caracas.
During his tenure leading the armed forces, human rights organizations identified him as one of the faces of repression in the country. After leaving office, Padrino López acknowledged that he made “difficult decisions” with “inevitable consequences” and said his objective was “to avoid a war.”
His legal situation adds a controversial element to the appointment. The U.S. Department of Justice included him on its list of wanted individuals and is offering $15 million for information leading to his arrest on alleged drug trafficking charges.
Washington continues to maintain the reward for his capture while coordinating with the same government that has now incorporated him into the Cabinet.
The charges were filed in May 2019 by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., accusing him of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine on aircraft registered in the United States.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the investigation began in June 2014, when Padrino assumed the role of Defense minister, and links him to facilitating drug trafficking through Venezuelan airspace.
His appointment as agriculture minister is part of a broader Cabinet reshuffle led by Rodríguez since her swearing-in.
Since January, she has carried out around 15 ministerial changes and dozens of moves within the upper ranks of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, including the removal of Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman, former U.S. convict and close ally of Maduro, from the Ministry of Industries — a move interpreted as a signal of openness toward Washington.
At the same time, the Venezuelan government has moved forward with a diplomatic recalibration with the United States.
Rodríguez has described former President Donald Trump as a “partner and friend” and has received in Caracas Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in visits that marked an unprecedented rapprochement.
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Satellite images of the aftermath were published by the OSINT resource Exilenova+.
The collapse occurred as a result of a fire that broke out on the night of April 11-12, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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The published images show damage to one of the plant’s production buildings — several sections of the roof have collapsed.
The collapse occurred in the area of production workshops responsible for manufacturing key aircraft components.
Plant No. 46
This refers to Plant No. 46, which is a crucial link in the production process and specializes in manufacturing parts from polymer composite materials (PCM) for the Su-57. In particular, the plant produces the following:
- approximately 300 different parts, of which about 100 are large-scale,
- including aileron panels, air intakes,
- flaperons, floor panels, and wing tip fairings.
Plant No. 46 is also the important part for the serial production of the Su-35S, however, its damage has a significantly greater impact on the production of the former, since the number of composite parts in the Su-57’s structure is many times greater than in the Su-30MK2 and Su-35S.
Russian sources have reported that the labor intensity of manufacturing a complete set of composite parts for the Su-57 in this shop has increased eightfold compared to the Su-35S.
According to analysts’ estimates, damage to or destruction of the workshop would directly halt or significantly slow down the assembly of Su-57 airframes, and cooperation with ONPP “Tekhnologiya” would only be able to partially compensate for this, and with a significant time lag.
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