Johany “Flaca” Rodríguez, 48, was ready to leave behind the struggles of life in Venezuela. She has been waiting in the shelter holding 45 people in Assis Brasil, a city of 7,000 residents bordering Peru, because others told her how difficult the journey to the U.S. has become.

Migrants, police, officials and analysts say Biden’s actions have caused a wait-and-see attitude among migrants who are staying in Latin America’s biggest economy, at least for now. Like anywhere along migrants’ routes toward hoped-for new lives, local communities are finding it hard to meet new populations’ needs.

After sleeping on dirty mattresses and in half-torn hammocks, and eating rice, beans and ground beef, Rodríguez decided this month that she and her dog Kiko would spend a few weeks with friends in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Wearing a headband, leggings and a small backpack, Rodríguez woke early to walk more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) for two days to a nearby city of 27,000 residents. There, she hopes to make some money and take a bus to Brazil’s south, then reach the U.S. one day.

“I have to stay here until it is safer to go,” Rodríguez said. “I am not super happy about staying (in Brazil), but that’s what I can do.”

Brazil saw waves of migrants passing through to North America in the first part of the year. There were Indians, Bengalis, Senegalese and Nigerians, among others, said Rêmullo Diniz, the coordinator of Gefron, Acre state’s police group for border operations,

When Biden said he was going to crack down, many people in those groups began staying in their countries instead of heading to Latin America, Brazilian government officials and independent analysts said. For citizens of South American countries, it’s easier. Brazil allows residents of its 10 neighboring nations to stay visa-free for up to two years.

The Biden administration said last week that arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico fell more than 40% since asylum processing was temporarily suspended at the U.S. border with Mexico on June 5. Arrests fell below 2,400 a day for the first time during Biden’s presidency.

Acre state offers a snapshot of the attitude among many migrants, and raises the possibility that Acre and other resting spots will become long-term hosts.

The city of Assis Brasil has little to offer to migrants but the wooden shelter where Rodríguez was staying and a school gymnasium where 15 men can sleep. There are two small hotels and a bus stop used by vans crossing into Peru. It has five restaurants scattered along its main road, two grocery shops and an ice cream parlor that has Amazon flavors like local fruits cupuacu and tapereba. Migrants frequently beg for money at the city’s only square.

There are three daily flights into state capital Rio Branco, where 21-year-old Jay came from India en route to the U.S. to study engineering. He declined to disclose his hometown and his last name.

Wearing a white cap reading “RIO DE JANEIRO,” he said that “it would take too long if I just sat and waited,” in India.

“It is a long trip, very risky. But it is my dream to study there and I will accomplish it,” he said.

Brazil’s westernmost state is a remote enclave in the middle of the rainforest, used by tourists as part of an alternative route to visit Cuzco, once the capital of the Inca empire in Peru.

One of Assis’ main attractions for locals is sitting on the benches of its main square Senador Guiomard to watch soccer on TV and eat barbecue. The small city’s founders came to the Amazon in 1908 to start a rubber plantation that 50 years later became a city. Not much has changed since, despite the BR-317 road that runs by it, the only land connection between Brazil and Peru. When residents of Assis Brasil are bored, and they often are, they go to neighboring Peruvian city of Iñapari to have a drink, generally a pisco sour.

Venezuelan migrant Alexander Guedes Martinez, 27, said he will stay as long as needed to get more cash and maybe in a year go to Houston, where he has family. He came with his 17-year-old partner and their 5-month-old baby.

At the Assis Brasil shelter where they were staying last month, he said that he hopes “to go (back) to Venezuela and get key documents to try to cross in a better fashion.”

“I want to be cautious because of my daughter,” he said. “Being here helps.”

Acre state’s patrol has about 40 agents to inspect 2,600 kilometers (1,615 miles) of border with Peru and Bolivia. A main road connects the three countries, but local police say that many migrants also move through the forest, some of them carrying drugs.

Cuban migrant Miguel Hidalgo, 52, tried to get to the U.S. years ago. He left the island to Suriname, then came to Brazil and doesn’t plan on leaving any time soon.

“I like Brazil. I have been here for a short time, but people are not prejudiced against me, people are lovely,” he said. “I want to live like a human being. I am not asking for any riches. I want to live in tranquility, help my family in Cuba.”

Acre Gov. Gladson Camelli said in a statement to the AP that he is worried about a bigger influx of South American migrants coming soon.

“Our government has tried to do its part in the humanitarian support,” he said.

Assis Brasil’s Mayor Jerry Correia also is bracing for more demand. City hall is feeding about 60 migrants every day and voters are feeling upset in a year of mayoral elections.

“This is all on our back. This is a policy that has to be handled by the federal government,” Correia said. “People don’t know what happens on our border. We need to be seen.”

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Looking for cricket played by locals, not professionals, he found inspiration in another game.

Here’s how he made this extraordinary photo.

Why this photo?
I was looking for daily life scenes involving cricket in Guyana. A few days earlier, I had found some children playing cricket in the street, but after several more days of searching for another scene, I couldn’t find any other cricket activities. After asking around, I learned that people used to play cricket in the sand on Sundays on a beach about 45 minutes by car. This sounded like an interesting and fun story to cover. Full of hope, I took a taxi and began the trip.

When I arrived, I was surprised to see a large ship docked at the edge of the beach that was no larger than 100 (yards) meters. The oversized ship on such a small beach created a Gulliverian feeling of being tiny. The ship seemed to be accepted as just part of the scenery by the locals, who had fun using it for climbing acrobatics – trying to shimmy aboard and then jumping into the water.

How I made this photo
Making the most of my trip, I decided to take photos of people having fun on the beach because I hadn’t found what I was originally looking for. A child started climbing the mooring rope as high as he could and then jumping into the water. Other children began tugging on the line to make it more challenging, causing the child to fall into the water before reaching his goal.

I used a 28mm lens, which emphasized the immense strength of the scene, with the ship in the background and the children seemingly pulling it toward the shore. The beautiful sunset light added to the ambiance. From my position, I waited for a child on the right to enter the frame. When he finally did, I took several shots, varying only in the position of his feet. One of these shots, where his feet were positioned perfectly, gave me the greatest sense of strength and captured the essence of the moment.

Why this photo works
Sometimes, when you take a picture and it turns out well, you feel a surge of energy in your chest that tells you this is the image, without a doubt. That’s exactly how I felt with this photo. Everything I saw was out of the ordinary: a large boat on the shore, people bathing and playing around it as if it were a normal part of their environment. This sense of normalcy juxtaposed with the extraordinary scene is what makes the image so compelling.

The children pulling on the ropes to make their friend fall from above also created an added layer of intrigue. Their actions, seemingly aimed at both play and exerting force on the “metal monster,” gave the moment a palpable sense of strength. The light at sunset enhanced the scene beautifully. The rope starts from the right of composition the frame and leads the viewer’s eye into the image, inviting them to follow the path and engage with the scene. This allows the viewer to feel as though they are part of the action, understanding the playful yet powerful dynamics at play. The positioning of the lens at the beginning of the rope helps to narrate the entire situation effectively.

In any circumstance, I always strive to capture the beauty in people’s actions by relying on light.

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Cuba’s foreign ministry said in a news release that the ships will be in Havana between June 12 and June 17, noting that none of them will carry any nuclear weapons and assuring their presence “does not represent a threat to the region.”

The announcement came a day after U.S. officials said that Washington had been tracking Russian warships and aircraft that were expected to arrive in the Caribbean for a military exercise. They said the exercise would be part of a broader Russian response to the U.S. support for Ukraine.

The officials said that the Russian military presence was notable but not concerning. However, it’s taking place as Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that Moscow could take “asymmetrical steps” elsewhere in the world in response to President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to strike inside Russia to protect Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

Cuba’s Foreign Ministry said that the four Russian ships are the frigate “Gorshkov,” the nuclear-powered submarine “Kazan,” the fleet oil tanker “Pashin” and the salvage tug “Nikolai Chiker.”

During the fleet’s arrival at the port of Havana, 21 salvos will be fired from one of the ships as a salute to the nation, which will be reciprocated by an artillery battery of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, the foreign ministry said.

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Alejo, 43, touches her face up with makeup on a Tuesday morning, and steps out of her tiny apartment on the fringes of Mexico City. She walks until the cracked gravel outside her home turns into cobblestones, and the campaign posters coating small concrete buildings are replaced with the spotless walls of gated communities of the city’s upper class.

It’s here where Alejo has quietly worked cleaning the homes and raising the children of wealthier Mexicans for 26 years.

Alejo is among approximately 2.5 million Mexicans — largely women — who serve as domestic workers in the Latin American nation, a profession that has come to encapsulate gender and class divisions long permeating Mexico.

Women like her play a fundamental role in Mexican society, picking up the burden of domestic labor as a growing number of women professionals enter the workforce. Despite reforms under the current government, many domestic workers continue to face low pay, abuse by employers, long hours and unstable working conditions some equate to “modern slavery.”

Now, as Mexico is on its way to elect its first female president, women like her who feel forgotten by their government hope that having a female leader might shift the balance in their favor.

“I’ve never voted all these years, because it’s always the same for us whoever wins. … When have they ever listened to us, why would I give them my vote?” Alejo said. “I have hope that at least by having a woman, maybe things will be different.”

Still, as two female politicians — former mayor of Mexico City Claudia Sheinbaum and former senator Xóchitl Gálvez — are leading the race to the June 2 presidential election, it’s unclear how much it will shift the realities of working women in the country.

‘YOUR LIFE ISN’T YOUR OWN’
Born to a poor family in the central Mexican state of Puebla, Alejo dropped out of school at age 14 because her parents had no money to pay for her to continue studying. Instead, she and two of her sisters each moved to Mexico City to do one of the few jobs available to them as lower class women: domestic work.

Women in Mexico, like much of Latin America, work in informal jobs — tasks like selling things on the street without a fixed contract or benefits — in rates greater than their male counterparts, something experts following the topic attribute to misogyny in their cultures.

Like many young women coming to the city, Alejo began working as a live-in nanny, sleeping in a small room in the house of the family she worked for.

“It’s like you’re a mother. The kids would call me ‘mama’,” she said. “Their children were born and I would bathe them, care for them, do everything from the moment I awoke to the moment they slept.”

While some domestic workers live separately from families, many more live with families and work weeks, if not months, without breaks. They’re isolated from family and friends, in a custom that roots back to slavery, said Rachel Randall, a Latin American Studies researcher at the Queen Mary University of London.

“In a region like Latin America and the Caribbean, the history of slavery and colonialism continues to weigh on relationships to domestic workers even today in terms of class, race and gender dynamics,” she said.

Alejo said the demands, combined with the low pay of domestic work, led her not to build a family or have children herself. Others told The Associated Press they were fired from their positions after they fell ill and asked for help and time off from the family they’ve worked with for years.

Carolina Solana de Dios, 47, said she started working as a live-in nanny when she was 15 to escape an abusive household. While she feels free from the abuse and knows her job is important, she added: “When you work in someone else’s house, your life isn’t your own.”

‘WE COULDN’T TAKE IT ALL ON ALONE’
At the same time, their help is essential for working women like 49-year-old Claudia Rodríguez, as they continue to fight to enter professional spaces historically dominated by men. Rodríguez, a single mother and owner of an IT company, said she’s had to work twice as hard to get half as far as male counterparts.

In Mexico and much of Latin America, a gap has long divided men and women in the workplace. In 2005, 80% of men were either employed or looking for jobs, compared to 40% of women, Mexican government data shows.

That gap has slowly closed over time, and at the end of 2023, 76% of men were active in the workforce, compared to 47% of women. Large gaps in salary and leadership roles still exist.

Born in a town two hours from Mexico City, Rodríguez fled an abusive father with her mother and siblings, taking refuge in the capital. After watching her mother toil away selling food on the streets and any other job to pay rent, Rodríguez decided from an early age she didn’t want to follow the same path.

Instead of pursuing her dream of professionally dancing, she began selling computers when she was 16.

“I didn’t want to make the same sacrifice that she was making for me,” she said. “So I began to work and study.”

She spent years clawing her way up in the IT industry despite sexual harassment and “men slamming doors in our faces.” But when she married and had children, she said, she would often have to do all the housework in addition to running her own business.

Caregiving can shift the trajectory of a woman’s career in Mexico, making it harder for them to reach higher level professional positions, according to a 2023 survey from the Mexican Institute for Competition. While more than half the women in Mexico say they’ve had to pause their careers to care for children, only one in five men reported the same.

When her husband left her for another woman six years ago, hiring a live-in domestic worker was the only thing she could do to stay afloat.

Today, she and her nanny, Irma, both wake up at 5 a.m., one making lunch for her two daughters while the other drops them off at school. While it’s hard to keep up, now, at least she can breathe.

“She is part of our family,” she said. “In the case of women in business, we couldn’t take it all on alone simply because it’s far too much that society expects of you.”

‘WE’RE GOING TO TAKE ACTION FOR WOMEN’

Despite the load, a historic number of women in the socially conservative country are taking up leadership and political roles. Between 2005 and 2021, the gap between men and women in roles of government and international entities slimmed by more than 25%, according to government data.

That’s in part due to a decades-long push by authorities for greater representation in politics, including laws that require political parties to have half of their congressional candidates be women. Since 2018, Mexico’s Congress has had a 50-50 gender split, and the number of female governors has shot up.

While neither presidential candidate has spoken explicitly about domestic workers, both Sheinbaum and Gálvez have proposed addressing soaring violence against women in Mexico and working to close the country’s gender pay gap.

“In our government, women won’t just be recognized for having a woman president, we’re going to take action for women,” frontrunner Sheinbaum said in a speech on International Women’s Day.

But Norma Palacios, head of the country’s domestic workers union, known as SINACTRAHO, said many of the social advances seen in recent years haven’t trickled down to poorer classes of working women, least of all domestic workers.

In 2019, the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador passed landmark legislation granting domestic workers basic rights like paid leave, limits on working hours and access to health insurance paid by employers.

But failures by the government to enforce those rules has left women “unprotected” and locked in a “dynamic of power inequality,” Palacios said.

“Nothing has changed, and (domestic workers) continue to face informal working conditions, in precarious work, with low salaries facing violence and discrimination, even if on paper we should have more labor rights,” Palacios said.

Neither Alejo, the domestic worker, nor Rodríguez, the single mother, say they particularly identify with either candidate on the ballot, though they both plan to vote. While both say having a woman leading the country would be a step forward, the women — long disillusioned by Mexican politics — still see the leaders as more of the same.

They echo other analysts who say that having a woman on the ballot doesn’t necessarily mean they will make gender issues a priority. Still, they and Palacios, the head of the domestic workers union, hope it will mark a longer-term shift.

“It’s still a woman who is going to be at the head of a country — a sexist country, a country of inequality, a country of violence against women, a country of femicides,” Palacios said.

Meanwhile, workers like Alejo continue down a shaky path as they struggle to push for their own rights.

Alejo is among the 98% of the 2.5 million domestic workers who have yet to enroll in health insurance, according to SINACTRAHO data. She and many others fear that asking for their new rights to be respected would end in them being fired.

Alejo, who long worked as a live-in nanny, eventually moved into her own small apartment alone in a poorer area of the city. After years of low pay and one case of sexual abuse, the 43-year-old said she finally works with a family that pays her a fair wage and respects her.

Still, as she summons up the courage to ask the family to pay for her health insurance, she adds that she knows they see her as replaceable.

“They don’t like that you ask for things,” she said. “It’s not easy finding work, and if you need to work, you end up accepting whatever they give you.”

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For the first time, 30% of electricity produced worldwide was from clean energy sources as the number of solar and wind farms continued to grow fast.

Of the types of clean energy generated last year, hydroelectric dams produced the most. That’s the same as in most years. Yet droughts in India, China, North America and Mexico meant hydropower hit a five-year low. Research shows climate change is causing droughts to develop more quickly and be more severe.

People used more electricity than ever last year, about 2% more, an increase of about as much as Canada uses in a year. Some of this new demand was for heat pumps, which are an efficient way to both heat and cool buildings, and for electric vehicles. It was also for electrolyzers, special machines used to get hydrogen out of water, for energy. These are all technologies that provide solutions to climate change.

Other increased demand was for electricity to feed new data centers and for air conditioning as places around the world become hotter.

Solar made up the biggest share of new clean energy last year. More than twice as much solar power was added as coal power. It was the 19th year in a row that solar was the fastest-growing source of electricity generation. A surge in solar installations happened at the end of the year and the report predicts 2024 will see an even larger jump.

China added more renewable energy than any other country last year — 51% of the new solar power and 60% of the new wind power globally. China, the European Union, the United States and Brazil together accounted for 81% of new solar generation in 2023.

Yet China was also responsible for 55% of coal generation globally and 60% of China’s electricity generation came from coal. The International Energy Agency says coal is the most carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels.

Scientists say emissions from burning fuels like coal must ramp steeply down to protect Earth’s climate, yet there was an increase in electricity made from burning fossil fuels. China, India, Vietnam and Mexico were responsible for nearly all of the rise.

The report said some countries burned coal to make up for the loss of hydroelectric power they experienced when drought caused their reservoirs to dry up. This is an example of a vicious cycle — when climate change prompts the use of more of the substances that cause climate change in the first place.

Despite all the growth in clean energy, fossil fuels still made up the majority of global electricity generated last year, causing a 1% rise in global power sector emissions. Scientists say even if we slashed all greenhouse gas emissions today, the planet would continue to warm for years because of the amount of pollutants already added to the atmosphere.

Analysts expect the world to use even more electricity in 2024. But renewable energy generation is forecast to grow even faster. That could mean a 2% drop (333 terawatt-hours) in energy generated from fossil fuels.

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Taiwan’s national fire agency said four people died in Hualien County. Hualien was the epicenter of the quake that struck around 8 a.m. Wednesday. The local United Daily News reported three hikers died in rockslides in Taroko National Park near the offshore epicenter.

A five-story building in Hualien appeared heavily damaged, collapsing its first floor and leaving the rest leaning at a 45-degree angle. In the capital Taipei, tiles fell from older buildings and in some newer office complexes, while debris fell from some building sites. Schools evacuated their students to sports fields, equipping them with yellow safety helmets. Some also covered themselves with textbooks to guard against falling objects as aftershocks continued.

Train service was suspended across the island of 23 million people, as was subway service in Taipei, where a newly constructed above-ground line partially separated. The national legislature, a converted school built before World War II, also had damage to walls and ceilings.

Traffic along the east coast was at a virtual standstill, with landslides and falling debris hitting tunnels and highways in the mountainous region. Those caused damage to vehicles, though it wasn’t clear if anyone was hurt.

Despite the quake striking at the height of the morning rush hour just before 8 a.m., the initial panic faded quickly on the island, which is regularly rocked by temblors and prepares for them with drills at schools and notices issued via public media and mobile phone.

Authorities said they had only expected a relatively mild quake of magnitude 4 and accordingly did not send out alerts.

Still, the earthquake was strong enough to scare people who are used to such shaking.

“Earthquakes are a common occurrence, and I’ve grown accustomed to them. But today was the first time I was scared to tears by an earthquake,” Taipei resident Hsien-hsuen Keng said. ”I was awakened by the earthquake. I had never felt such intense shaking before.”

She said her fifth-floor apartment shook so hard that “apart from earthquake drills in elementary school, this was the first time I had experienced such a situation.”

Hualien was last struck by a deadly quake in 2018, which collapsed a historic hotel and other buildings. Taiwan’s worst quake in recent years struck on Sept. 21, 1999, with a magnitude of 7.7, causing 2,400 deaths, injuring around 100,000 and destroying thousands of buildings.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said a tsunami wave of 30 centimeters (about 1 foot) was detected on the coast of Yonaguni island about 15 minutes after the quake struck. Smaller waves were measured in Ishigaki and Miyako islands. Japan sent military aircraft to gather information about the impact around the Okinawa region.

Taiwan’s earthquake monitoring agency gave the magnitude as 7.2 while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.4. It struck about 18 kilometers (11.1 miles) south-southwest of Hualien and was about 35 kilometers (21 miles) deep. Multiple aftershocks followed, and the USGS said one of the subsequent quakes was 6.5 magnitude and 11.8 kilometers (7 miles) deep. Shallower quakes tend to cause more surface damage.

The earthquake was felt in Shanghai and several provinces along China’s southeastern coast, according to Chinese media. China and Taiwan are about 160 kilometers (100 miles) apart. China issued no tsunami warnings for the Chinese mainland.

Residents of China’s Fujian province reported violent shaking, according to Jimu News, an online outlet. One man told Jimu that the shaking awakened him and lasted about a minute.

In the Philippines, residents along the northern coast were told to evacuate to higher ground, but no major tsunami was reported about three hours after the quake.

Villagers in the provinces of Batanes, Cagayan, Ilocos Norte and Isabela were asked not to return to their homes until the tsunami alert was lifted, Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology Teresito Bacolcol said.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said there has been no report of injury or damage in Japan. He urged the residents in the Okinawa region to stay on high ground until all tsunami advisories are lifted. He cautioned people against disinformation and urged them to stay calm and assist others.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no tsunami threat to Hawaii or the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. About three hours after the earthquake, it said the threat had largely passed for all areas with waves being reported only in Taiwan and southern Japan.

Taiwan lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the line of seismic faults encircling the Pacific

—Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur.

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The sudden death of Navalny, 47, was a crushing blow to many Russians, who had pinned their hopes for the future on President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe. Navalny remained vocal in his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin even after surviving a nerve agent poisoning and receiving multiple prison terms.

The news reverberated across the globe, with many world leaders blaming the death on Putin and his government. In an exchange with reporters shortly after leaving a Saturday church service, President Joe Biden reiterated his stance that Putin was ultimately to blame for Navalny’s death. “The fact of the matter is, Putin is responsible. Whether he ordered it, he’s responsible for the circumstance,” Biden said. “It’s a reflection of who he is. It cannot be tolerated.”

Other politicians took a more cautious stance. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Sunday that he wouldn’t “jump to conclusions” over Navalny’s death. “If the death is under suspicion, we must first carry out an investigation to find out what the citizen (Navalny) died of,” Lula said in a press conference after returning from an African Union summit in Ethiopia on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, published a picture of the couple on Instagram Sunday in her first social media post since her husband’s death. The caption read simply: “I love you.”

Hundreds of people in dozens of Russian cities streamed to ad-hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repression with flowers and candles on Friday and Saturday to pay tribute to the politician. In 39 cities, police detained 366 people by Sunday evening, according to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests and provides legal aid. Earlier in the weekend, the group reported 401 detentions in two days, but later updated the number and said that their count “may change both up and down over the next few days” as information is being verified.

More than 200 arrests were made in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, the group said. By Sunday evening, court officials in St. Petersburg reported rulings ordering 154 of those detained to serve from one to 14 days in jail.

Among those detained there was Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church — a religious group independent of the Russian Orthodox Church — who announced plans on social media to hold a memorial service for Navalny and was arrested on Saturday morning outside his home. He was charged with organizing a rally and placed in a holding cell in a police precinct, but was later hospitalized with a stroke, OVD-Info reported.

Memorial events also took place in cities across the world.

In Berlin, members of the Russian activist group Pussy Riot held a demonstration outside of the Russian Embassy, holding banners that read “murderers” in English and Russian.

The group, which included Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Lusya Shtein, as well as longtime Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol and former Russian state media journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, planned to march with the banner to the city’s Brandenburg Gate but were ultimately stopped by police.

Tolokonnikova told The Associated Press after the demonstration that such actions were meant to show “that we exist.”

“We show ourselves to each other and support each other, and show with this action that Russia still has a future, and the idea of a ‘beautiful Russia of the future’ hasn’t died,” she said, using a term Navalny has famously coined. “Right now (some are) saying that hope died together with Navalny. But it seems to me that with (the death of) Navalny it wasn’t the hope that died, but rather responsibility was born.”

Dozens of people in Romania’s capital of Bucharest also gathered outside the Russian Embassy on Sunday to pay tribute to the opposition leader.

Many lit candles and placed flowers next to a memorial portrait of Navalny, while several people brandished placards that read: “You don’t win free elections by murdering the opposition.”

In Finland, a group of Russian residents gathered signatures for a petition proposing a name change for a park adjacent to the Russian Embassy in the capital, Helsinki, to Navalny Park in honor of the deceased opposition figure.

The news of Navalny’s death came a month before a presidential election in Russia that is widely expected to give Putin another six years in power.

Questions about the cause of death lingered, and it remained unclear when the authorities would release Navalny’s body. More than 29,000 people have submitted requests to the Russian government asking for the politician’s remains to be handed over to his relatives, OVD-Info said Sunday.

Navalny’s team said Saturday that the politician was “murdered” and accused the authorities of deliberately stalling the release of the body. Navalny’s mother and lawyers received contradictory information from various institutions they visited in their quest to retrieve the body.

“Everything there is covered with cameras in the colony. Every step he took was filmed from all angles all these years. Each employee has a video recorder. In two days, there has been not a single video leaked or published. There is no room for uncertainty here,” Navalny’s closest ally and strategist, Leonid Volkov, said Sunday.

Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service reported that Navalny felt sick after a walk Friday and became unconscious at the penal colony in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. An ambulance arrived, but he couldn’t be revived, the service said, adding that the cause of death is still “being established.”

Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He received three prison terms since his arrest, on a number of charges he has rejected as politically motivated.

After the last verdict that handed him a 19-year term, Navalny said he understood he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime.”

Hours after Navalny’s death was reported, his widow made a dramatic appearance at the Munich Security Conference.

Navalnaya said she was unsure if she could believe the news from official Russian sources, “but if this is true, I want Putin and everyone around Putin, Putin’s friends, his government to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband.” ___ Associated Press writers Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England; Aamer Madhani, in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware; Stephen McGrath in Bucharest, Romania; and Jari Tanner, in Helsinki, Finland, contributed to this report.

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Biden, who was traveling in South Carolina, asked for a moment of silence during an appearance at a Baptist church’s banquet hall.

“We had a tough day last night in the Middle East. We lost three brave souls in an attack on one of our bases,” he said. After the moment of silence, Biden added, “and we shall respond.”

With an increasing risk of military escalation in the region, U.S. officials were working to conclusively identify the precise group responsible for the attack, but they have assessed that one of several Iranian-backed groups was behind it.

Biden said in a written statement that the United States “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing.” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said “we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our troops, and our interests.”

Iran-backed fighters in east Syria began evacuating their posts, fearing U.S. airstrikes, according to Omar Abu Layla, a Europe-based activist who heads the Deir Ezzor 24 media outlet. He told The Associated Press that the areas are the strongholds of Mayadeen and Boukamal.

According to a U.S. official, the number of troops injured by the one-way attack drone rose to at least 34. Another official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not made public, said a large drone struck the base, which two other American officials identified as an installation in Jordan known as Tower 22. It is along the Syrian border and is used largely by troops involved in the advise-and-assist mission for Jordanian forces.

The small installation, which Jordan does not publicly disclose, includes U.S. engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops. Austin said the troops were deployed there “to work for the lasting defeat of ISIS.” Three officials said the drone struck near the troops’ sleeping quarters, which they said explained the high casualty count.

The U.S. military base at al-Tanf in Syria is just 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Tower 22. The Jordanian installation provides a critical logistical hub for U.S. forces in Syria, including those at al-Tanf, which is near where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan intersect.

In a statement on Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency, the country “condemned the terrorist attack” that targeted the U.S. troops. That report described the drone strike as targeting “an outpost on the border with Syria” and said it did not wound any Jordanian troops.

“Jordan will continue to counter terrorism and the smuggling of drugs and weapons across the Syrian border into Jordan, and will confront with firmness and determination anyone who attempts to attack the security of the kingdom,” the statement attributed to Muhannad Mubaidin, a government spokesman, said.

U.S. troops long have used Jordan, a kingdom bordering Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and Syria, as a basing point. Some 3,000 American troops typically are stationed across Jordan, but the number at Tower 22 wasn’t immediately known and isn’t routinely disclosed.

Since the war in Gaza began Oct. 7, Iranian-backed militias have struck American military installations in Iraq more than 60 times and in Syria more than 90 times, with a mix of drones, rockets, mortars and ballistic missiles. The attack Sunday was the first targeting American troops in Jordan during the Israel-Hamas war and the first to result in the loss of American lives. Scores of U.S. personnel have been wounded, including some with traumatic brain injuries, during the attacks.

The militias have said that their strikes are in retaliation for Washington’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza and that they aim to push U.S. forces out of the region.

The U.S. in recent months has struck targets in Iraq, Syria and Yemen to respond to attacks on American forces in the region and to deter Iran-backed Houthi rebels from continuing to threaten commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

“I am confident the Biden Administration will respond in a deliberate and proportional manner,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Republicans in Congress said the administration’s approach had failed to deter America’s adversaries in the region.

“We need a major reset of our Middle East policy to protect our national security interests,” said Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., went further, urging the administration “to strike targets of significance inside Iran, not only as reprisal for the killing of our forces, but as deterrence against future aggression. The only thing the Iranian regime understands is force.”

Biden, who was in Columbia, South Carolina, on Sunday, was briefed in the morning by Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. In the afternoon, he met virtually with Vice President Kamala Harris and his national security team for an update.

The president, in the written statement, called it a “despicable and wholly unjust attack” and said the service members were “risking their own safety for the safety of their fellow Americans, and our allies and partners with whom we stand in the fight against terrorism. It is a fight we will not cease.”

Syria is still in the midst of a civil war and long has been a launch pad for Iranian-backed forces there, including the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Iraq has multiple Iranian-backed Shiite militias operating there as well.

Jordan, a staunch Western ally and a crucial power in Jerusalem for its oversight of holy sites there, is suspected of launching airstrikes in Syria to disrupt drug smugglers, including one that killed nine people earlier this month.

An umbrella group for Iran-backed factions known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq earlier claimed launching explosive drone attacks targeting three areas in Syria, as well as one inside of “occupied Palestine.” The group has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks against bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began.

Three officials with Iran-backed militias in Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with journalists, said the drone attack against the base in Jordan was launched by one of the Iraqi groups. No faction has yet officially claimed responsibility.

Officials said the U.S. military is not tracking any other attacks on its forces Sunday in the region.

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A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stéphen Rostain. But at the time, “I wasn’t sure how it all fit together,” said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding Thursday in the journal Science.

Recent mapping by laser-sensor technology revealed those sites to be part of a dense network of settlements and connecting roadways, tucked into the forested foothills of the Andes, that lasted about 1,000 years.

“It was a lost valley of cities,” said Rostain, who directs investigations at France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “It’s incredible.”

The settlements were occupied by the Upano people between around 500 B.C. and 300 to 600 A.D. — a period roughly contemporaneous with the Roman Empire in Europe, the researchers found.

Residential and ceremonial buildings erected on more than 6,000 earthen mounds were surrounded by agricultural fields with drainage canals. The largest roads were 33 feet (10 meters) wide and stretched for 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometers).

While it’s difficult to estimate populations, the site was home to at least 10,000 inhabitants — and perhaps as many as 15,000 or 30,000 at its peak, said archaeologist Antoine Dorison, a study co-author at the same French institute. That’s comparable to the estimated population of Roman-era London, then Britain’s largest city.

“This shows a very dense occupation and an extremely complicated society,” said University of Florida archeologist Michael Heckenberger, who was not involved in the study. “For the region, it’s really in a class of its own in terms of how early it is.”

José Iriarte, a University of Exeter archaeologist, said it would have required an elaborate system of organized labor to build the roads and thousands of earthen mounds.

“The Incas and Mayans built with stone, but people in Amazonia didn’t usually have stone available to build — they built with mud. It’s still an immense amount of labor,” said Iriarte, who had no role in the research.

The Amazon is often thought of as a “pristine wilderness with only small groups of people. But recent discoveries have shown us how much more complex the past really is,” he said.

Scientists have recently also found evidence of intricate rainforest societies that predated European contact elsewhere in the Amazon, including in Bolivia and in Brazil.

“There’s always been an incredible diversity of people and settlements in the Amazon, not only one way to live,” said Rostain. “We’re just learning more about them.”

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President Joe Biden said the strikes were meant to demonstrate that the U.S. and its allies “will not tolerate” the militant group’s ceaseless attacks on the Red Sea. And he said they only made the move after attempts at diplomatic negotiations and careful deliberation.

“These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea — including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history,” Biden said in a statement. He noted the attacks endangered U.S. personnel and civilian mariners and jeopardized trade, and he added, “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”

Associated Press journalists in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, heard four explosions early Friday local time. Two residents of Hodieda, Amin Ali Saleh and Hani Ahmed, said they heard five strong explosions hitting the western port area of the city, which lies on the Red Sea and is the largest port city controlled by the Houthis. Eyewitnesses who spoke with the AP also said they saw strikes in Taiz and Dhamar, cities south of Sanaa.

The strikes marked the first U.S. military response to what has been a persistent campaign of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. And the coordinated military assault comes just a week after the White House and a host of partner nations issued a final warning to the Houthis to cease the attacks or face potential military action. The officials described the strikes on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations. Members of Congress were briefed earlier Thursday on the strike plans.

The warning appeared to have had at least some short-lived impact, as attacks stopped for several days. On Tuesday, however, the Houthi rebels fired their largest-ever barrage of drones and missiles targeting shipping in the Red Sea, with U.S. and British ships and American fighter jets responding by shooting down 18 drones, two cruise missiles and an anti-ship missile. And on Thursday, the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile into the Gulf of Aden, which was seen by a commercial ship but did not hit the ship.

In a call with reporters, senior administration and military officials said that after the Tuesday attacks, Biden convened his national security team and was presented with military options for a response. He then directed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who remains hospitalized with complications from prostate cancer surgery, to carry out the retaliatory strikes.

In a separate statement, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the Royal Air Force carried out targeted strikes against military facilities used by the Houthis. The Defense Ministry said four fighter jets based in Cyprus took part in the strikes.

Noting the militants have carried out a series of dangerous attacks on shipping, he added, “This cannot stand.” He said the U.K. took “limited, necessary and proportionate action in self-defense, alongside the United States with non-operational support from the Netherlands, Canada and Bahrain against targets tied to these attacks, to degrade Houthi military capabilities and protect global shipping.”

The governments of Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand and South Korea joined the U.S. and U.K. in issuing a statement saying that while the aim is to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea, the allies won’t hesitate to defend lives and protect commerce in the critical waterway.

The rebels, who have carried out 27 attacks involving dozens of drones and missiles just since Nov. 19, had warned that any attack by American forces on its sites in Yemen will spark a fierce military response.

A high-ranking Houthi official, Ali al-Qahoum, vowed there would be retaliation. “The battle will be bigger … and beyond the imagination and expectation of the Americans and the British,” he said in a post on X.

Al-Masirah, a Houthi-run satellite news channel, described strikes hitting the Al-Dailami Air Base north of Sanaa, the airport in the port city of the Hodeida, a camp east of Saada, the airport in the city of Taiz and an airport near Hajjah.

The Houthis did not immediately offer any damage or casualty information.

A senior administration official said that while the U.S. expects the strikes will degrade the Houthis’ capabilities, “we would not be surprised to see some sort of response,” although they haven’t seen anything yet. Officials said the U.S. used warplanes based on the Navy aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and Air Force fighter jets, while the Tomahawk missiles were fired from Navy destroyers and a submarine.

The Houthis say their assaults are aimed at stopping Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But their targets increasingly have little or no connection to Israel and imperil a crucial trade route linking Asia and the Middle East with Europe.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution Wednesday that demanded the Houthis immediately cease the attacks and implicitly condemned their weapons supplier, Iran. It was approved by a vote of 11-0 with four abstentions — by Russia, China, Algeria and Mozambique.

Britain’s participation in the strikes underscored the Biden administration’s effort to use a broad international coalition to battle the Houthis, rather than appear to be going it alone. More than 20 nations are already participating in a U.S.-led maritime mission to increase ship protection in the Red Sea.

U.S. officials for weeks had declined to signal when international patience would run out and they would strike back at the Houthis, even as multiple commercial vessels were struck by missiles and drones, prompting companies to look at rerouting their ships.

On Wednesday, however, U.S. officials again warned of consequences.

“I’m not going to telegraph or preview anything that might happen,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters during a stop in Bahrain. He said the U.S. had made clear “that if this continues as it did yesterday, there will be consequences. And I’m going to leave it at that.”

The Biden administration’s reluctance over the past several months to retaliate reflected political sensitivities and stemmed largely from broader worries about upending the shaky truce in Yemen and triggering a wider conflict in the region. The White House wants to preserve the truce and has been wary of taking action in Yemen that could open up another war front.

The impact on international shipping and the escalating attacks, however, triggered the coalition warning, which was signed by the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Transit through the Red Sea, from the Suez Canal to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, is a crucial shipping lane for global commerce. About 12% of the world’s trade typically passes through the waterway that separates Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, including oil, natural gas, grain and everything from toys to electronics.

In response to the attacks, the U.S. created a new maritime security mission, dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian, to increase security in the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden, with about 22 countries participating. U.S. warships, and those from other nations, have been routinely sailing back and forth through the narrow strait to provide protection for ships and to deter attacks. The coalition has also ramped up airborne surveillance.

The decision to set up the expanded patrol operation came after three commercial vessels were struck by missiles fired by Houthis in Yemen on Dec. 3.

The Pentagon increased its military presence in the region after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel to deter Iran from widening the war into a regional conflict, including by the Houthis and Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria.

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