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The Trump administration is pushing countries around the world to sign a joint declaration that calls for “trade over aid” and explicitly rejects America’s history as a leading provider of humanitarian assistance and other support to the developing world.
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Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange on Feb. 18, 2026.
NYSE
U.S. Treasury yields were little changed on Wednesday as investors monitored signals from the White House that talks to resolve the Middle East conflict will resume this week.
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note — the key benchmark for government borrowing — was up more than 1 basis point at 4.27%.
The 2-year Treasury note yield, which is more sensitive to short-term Federal Reserve interest rate decisions, rose 1 basis point to 3.761%. The longer-dated 30-year Treasury bond yield also climbed 1 basis point to 4.879%.
One basis point is equal to 0.01%, and yields and prices move in opposite directions.
Markets rallied on Tuesday following reports that a fresh round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran could be held in Islamabad over the coming days. Investors also continued to probe economic data for signs of inflationary pressures caused by the conflict.
Treasury yields fell on Tuesday after the latest producer price index — a key gauge of pipeline costs for final demand goods and services in the U.S. — rose by 0.5% in March, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was markedly lower than the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 1.1% for the month.
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest average U.S. 30-year fixed mortgage rate is published later on Wednesday. The 30-year fixed rate with conforming loan balances fell to 6.51% for the week ending April 3, sliding from its seven-month high of 6.57% the previous week.
Other data releases expected later include monthly import and export prices for March.
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Berlin will coordinate the repatriation of military-age males with Kiev, the German chancellor has said
Berlin and Kiev will coordinate efforts to return military-age Ukrainian men residing in Germany to their home country, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced following a meeting with Vladimir Zelensky.
As Ukrainian forces suffer mounting losses in the conflict with Russia and the pool of willing recruits continues to shrink, draft enforcement squads have increasingly turned to violent methods to fill the ranks in recent months. Men are being snatched off the streets, from workplaces and residential areas, as evidenced by hundreds of videos circulating online.
The heavy-handed tactics employed by Ukrainian press gangs have led to a rise in violent confrontations with unwilling recruits, their families, and passersby, with multiple recruits and draft enforcement officers being injured or even killed.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Zelensky in Berlin on Tuesday, Merz reiterated the German government’s “support for Ukraine’s efforts to reduce the number of Ukrainian men of military age leaving [their home] country.” According to the German chancellor, “this is essential to ensuring Ukraine’s defense capabilities, social cohesion, and reconstruction.”
“We need rapid, tangible progress here, also in the interest of both sides,” he stressed.
Zelensky concurred that the issue “must be addressed,” adding that “of course, our armed forces would want these people to return to Ukraine.”
In January, Merz similarly called on Ukraine to create conditions that would encourage its young men to remain in the country rather than flee to Western Europe.
Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Germany became the top destination for Ukrainian migrants in the EU, taking in more than a million people, according to the Federal Statistical Office.
Some Ukrainian officials have acknowledged escalating public discontent with the forced mobilization campaign.
According to Vadim Ivchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s national security committee, only around 8-10% of new personnel entering the armed forces are willing recruits.
Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev’s Western backers of waging a proxy war against Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”
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Elfilea, a small but growing VTuber, is now part of a serious online controversy linked to streamer Thomas Sykkuno. The issue started when another streamer, Mal Hemomal, shared a long public document with strong claims about him. In that document, Elfilea’s name came up as someone who had also been in contact with him. Soon after, Elfilea spoke out herself, saying she felt hurt and misled after knowing him for years.
Elfilea, also known as Elfi, is an independent VTuber who presents herself as a “celestial elf” character online. She streams mainly on Twitch, where she has built a small but loyal audience of a few thousand followers.Her content is simple and casual. She spends time chatting with viewers and playing different types of games. These include multiplayer online battle arena games, horror titles, simulation games, and platformers. Her style is relaxed, and she focuses more on conversation than high-level gameplay.Before becoming a VTuber, Elfilea worked as a cosplay artist. She moved into VTubing in December 2024, which gave her a new way to connect with people online while staying anonymous behind a virtual avatar.Her streaming schedule has not been very regular. Based on public tracking sites, she has streamed only a few times recently, including limited activity in 2026. Still, her name started getting more attention only after the current controversy.
The situation became public when Mal Hemomal shared a detailed document online. In it, she described her experience with Thomas Sykkuno and made serious claims about his behavior. She wrote:“After speaking to Elfilea a few days ago, we were able to corroborate our experiences with Sykkuno and learn that we were both victims of his. We had no idea that he was talking to both of us at the same time.”She also claimed that Elfilea had been in contact with him for around five years without knowing about another relationship.After this, Elfilea posted her own statement on X. She said:“I am beyond disappointed and heartbroken. After 5 years of knowing each other, I had really grown to trust him, only for him to take advantage of that, of me. I feel used and lied to.”Later, she shared that things became worse after she spoke publicly. She wrote that her accounts were being targeted and that she received threats and spam messages. Because of this, she made her account private and said she might leave the platform.In another message, she clarified that she was never officially in a relationship with Thomas Sykkuno. She explained that she stayed polite with him over the years because they were friends and she did not want conflict.As of now, her profile shows that she is on a break, using the word “hiatus” in her header. The situation is still developing, and there has been no final conclusion from all sides.
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OPINION — Australia is entering one of the most complex and psychologically destabilizing security periods in its modern history. The ASIO Director‑General’s Annual Threat Assessment 2025 underscored a strategic environment defined by accelerating foreign interference, sharper geopolitical competition, and a domestic threat landscape that is more fragmented, more digitally enabled, and more unpredictable than at any point in the past decade.
2025’s assessment was notable for its future‑focused framing: a warning that Australia is not simply managing discrete threats, but navigating a structural shift in the security climate itself. ASIO’s futures work, which is normally classified, outlined a trajectory to 2030 marked by intensifying espionage activity, the mainstreaming of conspiracy‑driven extremism, and a rising cohort of younger Australians vulnerable to radicalisation.
Burgess said: Many of the foundations that have underpinned Australia’s security, prosperity and democracy are being tested: social cohesion is eroding, trust in institutions is declining, intolerance is growing, even truth itself is being undermined by conspiracy, mis- and disinformation. Similar trends are playing out across the Western world. (ASIO)
Against this backdrop, the Bondi attack (on 14 December 2025, during a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach, where two gunmen opened fire on the crowd) and the consequential Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion, have become national inflection points. While the Commission will rightly focus on operational lessons, interagency coordination, and systemic gaps, its broader significance lies in how it has shaken public confidence. Australians are now grappling with the uncomfortable reality that threats can emerge rapidly, across domains, and exploit seams between federal, state, and community‑level preparedness.
Furthermore, recent events in Iran as well as the intensification of others conflicts abroad underscore the importance of strong foreign intelligence agencies to provide governments with accurate information to guide policy and reduce the risk of miscalculation or misunderstanding. Informed decision‑making becomes essential to managing both international and domestic consequences.
This is precisely why the establishment of the National Spy Museum Australia (NSMA) is not a cultural luxury – it is a strategic necessity.
For decades, Australia’s intelligence and national‑security community has operated behind a veil of necessary secrecy. Yet the 2025 threat assessment makes clear that the most significant vulnerabilities now sit at the intersection of public behavior, digital ecosystems, and foreign manipulation. Espionage and interference no longer target only government; they target communities, universities, businesses, and individuals.
A population that does not understand how intelligence works – or why it matters – is a population more easily exploited.
The NSMA addresses this gap directly. By telling Australia’s intelligence story with accuracy, dignity, and national purpose, it provides something the country urgently needs: a civic literacy uplift in how modern threats operate and how national security is actually maintained.
Museums are not typically thought of as instruments of national resilience. But globally, intelligence museums from Washington to Berlin have become powerful soft‑power platforms. They demystify the work of intelligence agencies, build public trust, and attract the next generation of intelligence professionals, including technologists, analysts and linguists.
For Australia, the timing is critical. The Bondi Royal Commission will inevitably expose gaps – some operational, some cultural, some structural. The NSMA offers a parallel national building project: one that strengthens public understanding, honors quiet service, and reinforces the legitimacy of the intelligence mission at a moment when trust is both fragile and essential.
Australia is facing significant changes in the security climate ,which Burgess described as a long‑term shift rather than a passing storm. In such an environment, national resilience is not built solely through classified capabilities. It is built through public comprehension, societal cohesion, and a shared understanding of the threats we face.
The National Spy Museum Australia is, at its core, a nation‑building institution. It anchors Australia’s intelligence story in the public domain at the exact moment the country needs clarity, confidence, and connection to the people who protect it.
In a decade defined by uncertainty, the NSMA offers something rare: a strategic investment in public understanding – one that strengthens Australia’s security from the inside out.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
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The UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI – the first global body of its kind – is gearing up for its inaugural in-person summit.
Read the full story, “Putting humans at the centre: UN AI panel begins work on global impact study”, on globalissues.org →
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U.S. Central Command announced Saturday that American naval forces have begun clearing sea mines from the Strait of Hormuz, with two guided-missile destroyers conducting operations in the critical waterway on April 11 as part of a broader effort to restore safe passage through one of the world’s most vital maritime chokepoints. USS Frank E. Peterson […]
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NASA’s Artemis II astronauts were seen being helped across the deck of a US navy recovery ship, after splashing down on Earth from their mission around the moon.
Published On 11 Apr 2026
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Now 21 years old, the alleged victim has spoken out about her experience for the first time. (BuzzFeed News is referring to her as “G.” to protect her identity.) Then just 11 years old, G. was on the cruise with her grandmother and little sister and was excited about the vacation. “Automatically, as a child, you think it’s going to be amazing,” she said.
Before the ship had even cast off for the Caribbean, G. went downstairs to get the Wi-Fi password, she told BuzzFeed News. “I asked the person that was outside of the restaurant for directions to the lobby,” she recalled. “And when he guided me, he immediately grabbed on my boobs.”
G. ran to the lobby in search of someone who could tell her the Wi-Fi password. She said she “was scared to go through the same direction” on the way back because she might cross paths with the man who had touched her. But she needed to return to her room and feared getting lost on the giant ship.
As G. walked past the restaurant, she got into an elevator. She said the same employee followed her in, blocking the doors. “He said, ‘Can I have a kiss?’” she recalled. “I gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he said, ‘No, not there.’” She then alleged that the employee leaned down, kissed her on the mouth.
After he let her go, G. ran to her room in tears. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
She said she told her grandmother why she was so distraught, and they went to the lobby to report what happened to guest services. G. said they asked her about the incident and what the employee looked like and promised it would be investigated.
Taplin, who was on board at the time, said she watched the elevator surveillance footage, which confirmed the child’s version of events. Later, G. said she was asked to identify the assailant by looking at photographs of four employees. According to both Taplin and G., the girl identified the assailant as a waiter at one of the ship’s restaurants.
Taplin said she did her best to investigate the case but claimed she was obstructed throughout the process. She claimed she told one of the ship’s senior officers to call the FBI while the boat was still docked in Port Canaveral, Florida. But the officer decided to cast off at around 5 p.m. and did not inform the FBI until the ship was in international waters.
Afterward, Taplin said, the senior officer interviewed the accused crew member while she was present. The official report of the meeting, obtained by BuzzFeed News, states that the crew member “hesitated, but eventually denied kissing the girl” and only gave her a “high five and hug.”
Taplin said that what wasn’t included in the report was that during the meeting, the officer had threatened the crew member, saying, “I’m going to cut off your dick right now” and that he would remove the crew member’s testicles and “put his balls in his mouth.”
When the ship docked in the Bahamas the next day, local police officers arrived. According to Taplin, the police berated and threatened the alleged attacker, pressuring him to confess. “It was just so wrong,” Taplin said. “I mean, you got him red-handed with what he’d done, right?”
In the end, he signed a statement that Taplin alleged was written by the Bahamian police. “I touched her right breast with my left hand,” the signed confession reads. However, Taplin noted that the alleged suspect was not arrested. Instead, he was repatriated to the state of Goa, in India.
G. said she was so scared for the rest of the vacation that she didn’t want to leave her grandmother’s side and never felt safe on board again. She said she could only relax during a stop at Castaway Cay, a private Caribbean island that Disney owns, because she knew her assailant wouldn’t be there.
After G. reported the attack, she said that Disney instructed the employee who was cleaning her room to demonstrate how they create little animals out of the towels and they put a princess bedspread on her bed. “But that was basically it,” she said. After she got home from her cruise, G. said that her family only heard from Disney once to tell them that the accused crew member had been deported.
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As a fragile cease-fire takes hold, Iran is sorting through the wreckage from U.S.-Israeli strikes, which have exacted a heavy toll on its civilian infrastructure. The New York Times has verified damage to 22 schools and 17 health care facilities, a fraction of the devastation in the war so far.
The scale of devastation is likely far greater than The Times’s analysis. The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country’s primary humanitarian relief organization, said on April 2 that at least 763 schools and 316 health care facilities had been damaged or destroyed in the war.
The Times confirmed damage by using high-resolution satellite imagery and by verifying footage from state media or social media sites, including X, Telegram, Instagram and Facebook. The analysis was limited to schools and health care facilities that were damaged on or after Feb. 28, the first day of the war.
The Times’s analysis shows that the damage was often caused by strikes in crowded neighborhoods — especially in Tehran, a capital of 10 million people that is as densely populated as New York City.
The Times was not able to verify the total number of people killed at schools and health care facilities. At least 1,701 civilians have been killed in Iran as of Tuesday, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Among them are students, teachers and health care workers.
In most instances examined by The Times, the intended target of a strike was not clear. In some cases, schools and health care facilities were damaged by nearby strikes; others were directly hit. It was not always possible to determine whether the strikes were by the U.S. or Israeli military.
Schools and hospitals hold some of the strongest protections of all civilian infrastructure under international humanitarian law, and intentional attacks on them could be considered war crimes. Even strikes on military targets that damage nearby schools and hospitals can violate international law, experts say, and military commanders are expected to take stringent measures to prevent and minimize such harm.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other American officials have insisted that the U.S. military is acting with precision.
During the second week of the war, Mr. Hegseth accused Iran of “moving rocket launchers into civilian neighborhoods near schools, near hospitals to try to prevent our ability to strike.” He has not provided any proof for this assertion, and when asked by The Times to provide such evidence, the Pentagon declined to comment.
The Pentagon also declined to comment on The Times’s analysis of schools and health care facilities damaged during the war.
By far the deadliest strike on civilians came on Feb. 28, the first day of the war, when the Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School was bombed in the southern Iranian town of Minab. The strike killed at least 175 people, most of them children, according to Iranian health officials.
An ongoing investigation by the U.S. military found that American forces were responsible for the bombing, according to U.S. officials and others with knowledge of the preliminary findings. The military had used outdated information and labeled the school as a military target, the early findings said.
The site of the school was originally part of an Iranian naval base, but according to a visual investigation by The Times, the building had been fenced off from the naval base for at least 10 years. It had clearly visible play areas, and its walls were painted blue and pink.
U.S. officials have emphasized that the findings of the investigation were preliminary and that there were still unanswered questions about why the outdated information had not been double checked, said the people briefed on the inquiry. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said the investigation is “still ongoing.”
On the same day, in Abyek, west of Tehran, a blast from a nearby strike ripped through a boys elementary school, blowing out windows and sending dozens of children on the playground running for cover.
Satellite image analysis and video footage verified by The Times showed that the strike had apparently targeted a communications tower less than 400 feet away. One boy was killed, Iranian state media reported. The footage showed that he appeared to have been hit by debris on the playground.
Verified footage showed that another strike that day hit near a high school in Tehran’s Narmak district, in a residential area where Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was known to live. Two students were killed, according to Mehr, a semiofficial news agency.
A fourth strike that day, using a new U.S.-made ballistic missile, hit a sports hall, an adjacent elementary school and a blood transfusion center near a military facility in the city of Lamerd, according to weapons experts and a visual analysis by The Times. The sports hall was being used by a young girls’ volleyball team at the time.
At least six people, including at least four children, were killed in this strike, according to a Times review of a list of fatalities released by an Iranian news agency, images of caskets posted online, recordings of funeral speeches and reference photos of the victims.
As the war got underway, the Iranian government suspended classes in schools across the country. But U.S.-Israeli strikes continued to damage school buildings for weeks.
Some, such as the Shaghayegh Girls’ School in Khomein and a building at the Iran University for Science and Technology in Tehran, were directly hit and reduced to ruins, according to analysis of video and satellite imagery.
Health facilities have also been substantially damaged, impacting patients, health care workers and emergency crews.
On March 1, the facade of the Gandhi Hospital in northern Tehran was ripped off during heavy strikes that appeared to target Iranian state television facilities across the street.
Videos taken on a government media tour from outside and inside the hospital show the extent of the strike’s damage.
The hospital was forced to evacuate its patients, including at least one infant in an incubator, according to Iran’s health ministry, hospital officials in interviews with Iranian state media, and footage verified by The Times.
“We have newborn babies,” Dr. Mohammad Hassan Bani Assad, the hospital’s president, told Iranian state television. “We had eight patients in the I.C.U., two in critical condition. Women giving birth. Embryos in our fertility department.”
The bombing forced another hospital complex in the city of Bushehr, in southern Iran, to evacuate babies.
In footage shared by the Iranian Red Crescent Society and verified by The Times, an emergency worker grew emotional as he looked over infants in the hospital’s damaged newborn ward.
“If we disconnect what they’re hooked up to, they will die,” he said. “Look at them. This poor kid. This dear child.”
Under international humanitarian law, military commanders planning a strike must consider the risk of incidental damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure. In each attack, they are supposed to weigh the expected military gains against expected civilian harm, and take precautions to minimize that harm.
Experts said that Mr. Hegseth has dismantled many of the systems meant to help the United States abide by such obligations. They noted that the defense secretary has fired the military’s top lawyers, who advise military leaders on domestic and international laws of armed conflict, and that he has closed Pentagon offices and terminated positions designed to reduce and respond to civilian harm.
Mr. Hegseth has also boasted about his efforts to scale back what he has called “stupid rules of engagement.”
Oona Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School, said those rules “were developed precisely to prevent this kind of civilian harm,” referring to the damage caused to Iran’s schools and hospitals. Ms. Hathaway was one of over 100 U.S.-based international law experts who signed an open letter this month expressing “profound concern over serious violations of international law” during the war.
On Monday, Mr. Trump, who has threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages,” brushed off a question about the possibility that U.S. attacks on civilian infrastructure could amount to war crimes. Iran has also been accused of striking civilian infrastructure in the Middle East.
Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, the military headquarters leading the war, told The Times that it takes reports of civilian harm “seriously” and that it does not “deliberately target civilians.”
He declined to answer detailed questions about the steps it was taking to minimize civilian harm in Iran, citing the ongoing investigation into the strike that killed scores of children at the school in Minab. He referred other questions to the Defense Department, which also declined to comment, citing the investigation.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it “operates in accordance with the law of armed conflict” and takes precautions, “as much as possible under the circumstances,” to mitigate civilian harm. The military “invests significant efforts in assessing potential civilian harm” before a strike, the statement added.
About half of the damaged schools and health care facilities identified by The Times’s analysis were in Tehran, a crowded and typically bustling city, where the bombing has been intense.
According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, more than 46,000 residential and commercial units have also been damaged in the capital.
Delaram Sina Psychiatric Hospital
1 school,
3 health care facilities
Imam Reza Elementary School
Shahid Bahonar Middle School
Arian Pouya Elementary School
Hedayat Boys’ High School
Shahid Mahallati Elementary School
During the war, the United States and Israel have struck not only the facilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, but also government buildings, intelligence offices and police stations.
As in many cities around the world, those sites are often near schools, hospitals and residential buildings. In Tehran, multiple strikes hit the police headquarters in the Vanak neighborhood during the first days of the war and damaged several nearby hospitals, according to satellite imagery analyzed by The Times.
A video shot from near the Red Crescent building and verified by The Times shows a massive smoke plume rising from the site of the police headquarters.
Instances verified by The Times of damage to schools and health care facilities caused by strikes on civilian neighborhoods are “within the scope of foreseeable effects” that military commanders are meant to minimize, said Mara Revkin, a professor and scholar of armed conflict at the Duke University School of Law.
The World Health Organization has verified at least 23 attacks on the Iranian health care system, including 11 attacks on health care facilities, said Dr. Hanan Balkhy, the W.H.O.’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean. Six of the 11 facility attacks that the W.H.O. has verified were in Tehran.
Iran’s health care system is still “standing on its feet,” but operating under increasing strain, with disruptions to patient services and continuity of care for chronic conditions becoming more difficult, Dr. Balkhy said, adding, “Destroying health care and access to health care and doctors and medication is harm.”
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