World News

May 8-14, 2026

Cuba’s national energy grid suffered a major failure that severed power to the island’s eastern provinces as residents in the capital Havana faced ongoing blackouts. Some residents in the capital set up burning barricades to protest the prolonged power outages.

Colombia’s Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta wetland is facing an environmental crisis due to an invasive plant native to Asia. This fast-growing vegetation is choking fishing routes and clogging waterways, impacting local communities that rely on the lagoon for their livelihoods.

Vast crowds in downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina, marched toward the government headquarters to denounce budget shortfalls eroding the financial foundation of the country’s higher education.

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This gallery was curated by photo editor Anita Baca based in Mexico City.

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AP photography: https://apnews.com/photography

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BEIJING, May 15 (Reuters) – After talks on trade, Taiwan and Iran, Chinese President Xi Jinping showed off the centuries-old trees in Beijing’s walled-off Zhongnanhai compound, where he strolled with U.S. President Donald Trump in the concluding hours of their summit.

A former imperial garden that now houses the offices of the ruling Communist Party and the state council, or China’s cabinet, the compound is adjacent to the capital’s famed landmark of the Forbidden City and off Tiananmen Square.

A hot mic captured the leaders’ remarks, in which Trump expressed surprise that some of the trees were 1,000 years old.

“Let me tell you, all the trees on this side are over 200 to 300 years old,” Xi said through an interpreter, as he gestured towards some towering trunks. “Over there, there are some more than 400 years old.” 

Trump replied, “They live that long?”

Xi added, “There are also 1,000-year-old trees in other places.”

Trump asked Xi if other foreign leaders were also received in the compound.

“Very rarely,” Xi responded. “At first, we usually didn’t hold diplomatic events here. Even after we started having some, it’s still extremely rare. For example, Putin has been here.”

Then he invited Trump to touch a 280-year-old tree.

“Good. I like it,” Trump replied.

The moment offered a rare glimpse of informal interactions between heads of states.

In September, a hot mic captured Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussing organ transplants and the possibility that humans could live to the age of 150, as they walked towards Tiananmen Square to watch Beijing’s military parade.

(Reporting by Mei Mei Chu; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s national energy grid suffered a major failure early Thursday that severed power to the island’s eastern provinces, authorities said, as residents in the capital Havana faced ongoing blackouts.

Cuba’s aging power grid has eroded in recent years as it faces a prolonged economic crisis, recently made worse by a U.S. energy blockade of the island, where daily life can be an ordeal for many of the country’s 10 million people.

The state-run Electric Union said the collapse had stripped power from all eastern provinces from Guantánamo to Ciego de Ávila, and that crews were working to restore power, but it did not give an estimate for how long it would take.

The previous day, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel had described the energy situation as “tense” after supplies of oil delivered by a Russian vessel in late March ran out. Cuba produces barely 40% of the fuel it needs to power its economy.

Russia announced plans to send a second fuel ship to Cuba in early April. According to Russian news reports, the oil tanker left the Russian Baltic port of Vysotsk in January, but has been stuck in the same place in the Atlantic Ocean for the last several weeks.

Power outages in Havana, where authorities have been rationing power, stretched to 24 consecutive hours on Thursday.

On Wednesday evening, Associated Press journalists saw residents in numerous neighborhoods banging pots and pans and setting fire to trash cans to protest the blackouts. Hours later, Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy appeared on Cuban television to describe the energy situation as “critical.”

Cuba’s power grid is crumbling, but the government also has blamed the outages on U.S. sanctions after President Donald Trump in January warned of tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba. The Trump administration has demanded that Cuba release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalization in return for a lifting of sanctions.

The blackouts have led to reduced work hours and food spoilage as refrigerators stop working. In some cases, hospitals have canceled surgeries.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s leadership is on the rocks after his Labour Party suffered heavy defeats in local elections last week.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting on Thursday became the first Cabinet member to resign though he didn’t immediately launch his widely expected bid to oust Starmer.

The election beating may have been the final straw for a leader already tainted by his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to Washington despite the veteran politician’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

More than 90 Labour lawmakers have called for Starmer to step down and make way for a contest to pick a new leader, who would take over as prime minister, and several junior ministers have quit.

Starmer has insisted he is staying put, and no formal leadership challenge has yet been launched.

While there is no clear front-runner to replace Starmer, here are some of the leading contenders for the top job:

Wes Streeting, 43, is widely regarded as one of the government’s best communicators and has led on one of its key pledges, improving the creaky National Health Service.

That mission was personal. The NHS saved his life when he had kidney cancer, and Streeting said he would repay the debt by saving the health service.

Streeting, who was elected a lawmaker in 2015, was long considered to have his eye on the top job but had strongly denied he was plotting to replace Starmer.

He charted his rise from his roots in London’s working-class East End, where he grew up in public housing, in his memoir, “One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up: A Memoir of Growing Up and Getting On.” The title refers to two grandfathers both named Bill: The one on his mother’s side was associated with gangsters and served prison time for armed robbery; he credits the one on his father’s side with leading him on the path to Cambridge University.

Streeting got into politics at a young age, leading the Cambridge student union and becoming president of the National Union of Students.

He later worked for Stonewall, the LGBT group, and has spoken of his struggle coming out as gay and reconciling his sexuality with his Anglican faith.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has long set herself apart as a different kind of politician with a compelling personal story. She was brought up in social housing and left school at 16 as a teen mother.

Rayner, 46, was active in trade unions before she was elected a lawmaker in 2015 and is on the left of the party. She soon rose to Labour’s senior ranks when the party was in opposition and was elected deputy leader in 2020.

Rayner enjoys significant support within the party, but she was forced to resign from the government last year after admitting she did not pay enough tax on a house purchase. She announced Thursday that she had cleared up the issue with tax authorities in what appeared to be a precursor to a possible leadership challenge.

After the fallout over the Epstein files’ revelations on Mandelson, Rayner led a lawmakers’ revolt to force the government to cede control to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee to decide which documents should be released into the public domain.

Former Cabinet minister Andy Burnham, the popular, center-left Greater Manchester mayor, has long been seen as a potential rival for Starmer.

By longstanding convention, the prime minister must be a member of Parliament. Burnham’s supporters favor a delayed leadership contest that would give him time to return to the House of Commons through a special election.

His route back to the House of Commons opened up Thursday after Josh Simons, the representative for the Makerfield constituency in Greater Manchester, said he will step down to facilitate the return of Burnham.

Labour’s executive body will now have to decide whether Burnham will be allowed to stand. Earlier this year, Burnham was blocked from fighting a seat in Manchester.

If he’s allowed to stand, he will likely have to fend off Reform UK, which came in second at the last election when Labour’s majority was around 5,400 votes, or around 13%.

Burnham said he will be seeking to run.

“I grew up in this area and have lived here for 25 years,” he said on X. “I care deeply about it and its people. I know they have been let down by national politics.”

Burnham, 56, served in senior roles in previous Labour governments, including as culture secretary and health secretary.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is a former Labour leader, but his five years at the top of the party when it was in opposition ended in the party’s 2015 election defeat. Miliband, 56, has publicly played down any desire to return to the job, but he is one of the most experienced members of the Cabinet.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, 45, has one of the toughest jobs in government, overseeing immigration and law and order. She has become a favorite of many on the right of the Labour Party with her moves to tighten border controls and crack down on unauthorized immigration.

The former Royal Marine who served with distinction in Afghanistan is the armed forces minister in Starmer’s Labour government and has seen his stock rise within the party ever since he was first elected to Parliament in Labour’s 2024 landslide election victory.

Carns, 46, has a captivating personal story that could attract support among the different factions within Labour. In addition to his distinguished service in Afghanistan, which saw him awarded the Military Cross in 2011, Carns was born in a working class family in the Scottish oil town of Aberdeen to a single mother.

“We do not need more slogans, strategies, press releases or commissions,” Carns said in an article for The New Statesman magazine published on Thursday, “We need action.”

His lack of experience could be a weakness. Replacing a leader who has been criticized for his lack of political sense with a relative newcomer, however compelling their backstory, could be risky

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Jill Lawless, Pan Pylas and Brian Melley contributed.

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BEIRUT (AP) — A third round of direct talks between Israel and Lebanon kicked off in Washington Thursday, days before the expiration of a truce that reduced but did not stop the fighting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Lebanese officials are hoping that the two-day negotiations will yield a new ceasefire deal and pave the way for tackling a series of thorny issues, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.

The Trump administration has been pushing for a breakthrough between the two neighbors that have been officially in a state of war since Israel was created in 1948.

Hezbollah, however, is not part of those talks and has been vocally opposed to Lebanon engaging in direct negotiations with Israel.

Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group have continued to trade near-constant fire across the border despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire on April 17. Initially a 10-day truce, it was then extended for another three weeks.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who attended the first Israel-Lebanon meetings in Washington in April, was with President Donald Trump on a visit to China and did not attend Thursday’s session.

The current round of talks represents a step toward more serious negotiations, with higher-level envoys from Lebanon and Israel taking part after the initial preparatory sessions were headed by the ambassadors of the two countries to Washington.

Lebanon’s envoy heading up Thursday’s talks, Simon Karam, is an attorney and well-connected former Lebanese ambassador to the U.S. who recently represented Lebanon in indirect talks with Israel over implementation of the ceasefire that preceded the latest outbreak of war between Israel and Hezbollah. On the Israeli side, Deputy National Security Adviser Yossi Draznin was set to attend.

There are still large gaps in what the two sides want from the direct talks. Israeli officials have focused on disarming Hezbollah and described the negotiations as a precursor to a potential normalization of diplomatic relations. Lebanese officials have said they are seeking a security agreement or armistice that would stop short of normalization.

Trump has publicly called for a meeting between Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Aoun has declined to meet or speak directly with Netanyahu at this stage — a move that would likely generate blowback in Lebanon.

A senior Lebanese official familiar with the negotiations in Washington said Thursday Lebanon wants a complete ceasefire first and then would negotiate withdrawal of Israeli forces. The issue of Hezbollah’s weapons would be dealt with politically in Lebanon after that, he said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to speak frankly about the talks.

He said Lebanon is “relying heavily on the U.S. administration” to provide it with leverage in the negotiations with Israel and believes that Trump is “sincere” in his desire to help Lebanon.

The official said that when Trump and Aoun spoke recently, Trump did not pressure Aoun to meet or speak with Netanyahu and was understanding when Aoun explained his reasons for declining. According to the official, Aoun told Trump that if he went to Washington and shook hands with Netanyahu and the talks later fell apart, it could have internal repercussions in Lebanon and discredit Trump.

Aoun told Trump that if the two countries are able to reach a security deal, he would come to the White House and “inaugurate” it and Trump responded by saying “I like that,” the official said.

If Israel agrees to a ceasefire and withdraws from the territory it is occupying in southern Lebanon, the official said, he believes Hezbollah would agree to an arrangement under which it would hand over its weapons to the Lebanese army, which could keep some of them and destroy others. Under this plan, Lebanon could consider allowing individual Hezbollah fighters to join the Lebanese army if they meet eligibility requirements, he said.

Meanwhile, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter in an interview with Israeli news site Walla News Thursday said Israel aims “to negotiate for full peace as if Hezbollah does not exist — borders, embassies, visas, tourism, everything.” Despite Lebanese officials’ assertions that diplomatic normalization is not currently on the table, he said he believes “it is possible to reach such an agreement within a few months.” But, he added, “it would be conditioned on the success of the second track — dismantling Hezbollah.”

Thursday’s talks opened hours after a Hezbollah drone exploded inside Israel, injuring three civilians, two of them severely, according to the Israeli military and hospitals. It was the first instance of civilians injured by Hezbollah projectiles since the ceasefire, according to reports from Israel’s rescue service, Magen David Adom.

Israel has struggled to halt frequent Hezbollah drone attacks on Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and over the border in northern Israel.

Israel has also continued to carry out strikes in Lebanon. On Wednesday, Israel struck seven vehicles in Lebanon — three of them on the main highway just south of Beirut — killing 12 people including a woman and her two children, the Lebanese Health Ministry said. Later strikes in southern Lebanon killed another 10 people, including six children, the ministry said.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry says that since the war began on March 2, 2,896 people have been killed — including around 400 since the nominal ceasefire was implemented — and 8,824 wounded. Eighteen Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians inside Israel and a defense contractor working in southern Lebanon have been killed on the Israeli side.

U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon have also been caught in the crossfire and six have been killed.

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Associated Press writer Joseph Federman in Jerusalem contributed.

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AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Yemen’s internationally recognized government and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Thursday reached a deal to free over 1,600 detainees in the largest swap during Yemen’s 11-year civil war.

The deal was signed in Amman, Jordan, after 14 weeks of negotiations, with U.N. officials and the International Committee of the Red Cross present as observers.

Abdelkader al-Murtada, the Houthi head of the National Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs, who was involved in the talks, said that 1,100 of the almost 1,700 detainees are Houthi affiliated, while seven Saudis and 20 Sudanese are among the 580 detainees that will be released by the other side.

The head of the government delegation, Yahya Kazman, said in a post on X that a “number of politicians and media professionals” held by the Houthis will also be released. He did not give details.

U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg said the deal covered the largest release of “conflict-related detainees.” The ICRC in a statement said both sides agreed on the identities of the detainees to be released, and added that the Geneva-based organization is ready to facilitate their repatriation.

It was not immediately clear when the release will start.

The agreement builds on negotiations held in Oman in December 2025, Grundberg said. Both sides at the time discussed the release of 2,900 detainees.

Yemen plunged into civil war in 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen and forced the government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition, including the United Arab Emirates, intervened the following year in an attempt to restore the government to power.

The conflict has pushed the economy to the brink of collapse and caused “severe” food insecurity in northern provinces, according to the World Food Program.

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Chehayeb reported from Beirut.

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DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision last year to abruptly dissolve the U.S. Agency for International Development — once a leading global aid donor — has been followed by a significant increase in violence in several African countries that the agency had supported, according to a study published on Thursday.

While the authors did not blame the USAID cuts for the increase in violence, they said the findings demonstrate that “large-scale, sudden aid cuts can destabilize fragile settings.” They, however, added that this is not evidence that more aid reduces conflict, instead it only shows “the effect of a sudden and unexpected disruption.”

For many years, USAID had provided crucial support to African countries wrecked by conflict and violence. By eliminating more than 90% of foreign aid contracts, the Trump administration effectively cut some $60 billion in funding.

The study by researchers from several universities in Europe and the United States said the abrupt withdrawal of USAID resources also interrupted contracts, staffing and aid procurement.

“The abrupt withdrawal of USAID led to a significant and sustained increase in conflict across Africa’s most USAID-dependent regions,” said the study, published in the Science journal.

The researchers said they examined whether the abrupt shutdown of USAID was followed by an increase in violence in regions of Africa that had historically received the most support and found that there was a correlation.

Africa is facing a threat from jihadis more than any other region in the world, conflict experts say. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, or ACLED, said Wednesday in a new report that jihadis in the region have been more involved in violence across the board and have been increasingly targeting civilians in the last four years.

USAID had long been the key funding partner for many African countries, helping to provide funding that helped governments and aid groups respond to multiple crises across different sectors.

In Nigeria for example, USAID support had helped victims of the militant Boko Haram group, which emerged in 2002. In Ethiopia’s fragile Tigray region, officials relied heavily on U.S. funds as full-scale recovery efforts were yet to start after the war there killed hundreds of thousands.

And in northern Ivory Coast, a front line of the global fight against extremism, USAID had made significant financial commitments to counter the spread of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

The findings from the study underscore the lasting impact of funding cuts, said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, who was not among the authors of the study.

“The lasting problem with the shuttering of USAID is likely going to be that for much of its conflict prevention work, even if you put back all the money … the experience is gone,” Raymond said.

Also, some USAID programs may have helped prevent spillover from conflict zones, said Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst at ACLED.

“We now see increasing insurgency and spillover, so some of those programs may have supported these communities from insurgent threats, and now they are no longer active,” said Serwat.

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SEOUL, May 14 (Reuters) – The possibility that an entity other than Iran was responsible for the attack against a South Korean cargo vessel near the Strait of Hormuz is low, a senior official in Seoul was quoted as saying by the Yonhap news agency on Thursday.

South Korea is analysing intelligence shared by the U.S. on the May 4 attack against South Korean shipper HMM’s Namu vessel, which caused a fire and damaged the lower stern hull, Yonhap quoted a senior foreign ministry official as telling reporters.

“Once we go through the investigation and present the evidence, I trust that the Iranian side will respond in an appropriate way,” the official said.

South Korea’s foreign ministry could not immediately confirm the official’s comments.

Seoul has sent teams of experts to Dubai, where the Namu is being inspected ahead of planned repairs, to conduct a forensic investigation of the damage to the vessel.

Iran has previously denied responsibility for the attack that involved a strong impact on the side of the vessel and has since refrained from commenting further as Seoul continued its probe.

U.S. President Donald Trump said soon after the incident that Iran had fired at ​the South Korean vessel, and urged Seoul to join U.S.-led efforts ​to secure shipping through the strait.

(Reporting by Jack KimEditing by Ed Davies)

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May 13 (Reuters) – Scattered protests broke out in multiple neighborhoods in Cuba’s capital Havana on Wednesday evening, with hundreds of residents banging pots against frequent power cuts despite a strong police presence, according to a Reuters witness.

(Reporting by Dave Sherwood; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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By Trevor Hunnicutt and Andrea Shalal

BEIJING/WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to ask China to help end the costly and unpopular Iran war in discussions with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, with peace talks stalled and the global economic cost of the conflict increasing.

The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran looms large over Trump’s visit to China, the first by a U.S. president since his last trip there in 2017, although analysts say he is unlikely to get the support he wants.

More than one month after a tenuous ceasefire took effect, diplomatic efforts have failed to make progress towards resolving a war that has cost thousands of lives, reshaped alliances in the Middle East and driven up prices of oil and other key commodities around the world.

Washington has called for Tehran to scrap its nuclear programme and lift the chokehold it has placed on the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane through which about 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas travelled before the war began on February 28.

Iran has demanded compensation for war damage, an end to the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and a halt to fighting on all fronts, including in Lebanon, where Israel is battling Iran-backed Hezbollah. Trump has dismissed Tehran’s positions as “garbage.”

Trump’s visit to China, which maintains close ties with Tehran and is a major buyer of Iranian oil, comes as the war fuels inflation at home and raises the risk that voters will blame Trump’s Republican Party in November’s midterm elections. 

The United States hopes to convince China “to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away from what they’re doing now and trying to do now in the Persian Gulf,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News’ “Hannity” programme in a clip released on Wednesday.

“We’ve made clear to them that any support for Iran would obviously be detrimental for our relationship. That obviously is going to come up in this conversation on trade,” Rubio also said in the interview that took place on board Air Force One en route to China.

The Trump administration said on Tuesday that senior U.S. and Chinese officials had agreed last month that no country should be able to charge tolls on traffic through the region, as Iran has threatened to do. China did not dispute that account.

On Wednesday, a Chinese supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of Iraqi crude sailed through the Strait of Hormuz, ship-tracking data showed, marking the third known passage by a Chinese oil tanker through the channel since the war began.

Other countries are exploring shipping arrangements similar to Tehran’s deals with Iraq and Pakistan, sources said, potentially entrenching Tehran’s control of the waterway through which fertilisers, petrochemicals and other bulk commodities vital to global supply chains normally flow.

A Panama-flagged crude oil tanker managed by Japanese refining group Eneos 5020.T has passed through the Strait of Hormuz, ship-tracking data from LSEG showed on Thursday, the second instance of such a Japan-linked ship traversing the strait.

Japan relied on the Gulf for about 95% of its oil imports before the war.

RESHAPING ALLIANCES

New reports on Wednesday highlighted how the Iran war has accelerated geopolitical realignment across the region.

Israel said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly travelled to the UAE in March for talks with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, which Israel said resulted in a “historic breakthrough” in relations between the two. 

They re-established ties in 2020 as part of the Trump-backed Abraham Accords and the relationship has strengthened since the UAE came under Iranian attack.

But the UAE’s foreign ministry denied the trip took place, saying “any claims regarding unannounced visits or undisclosed arrangements are entirely unfounded”. 

Iran, which has struck the UAE more than its other Gulf neighbours in ​response to the U.S.-Israeli attacks, warned the Emiratis against becoming an enemy.

“Enmity with the Great People of Iran is a foolish gamble. Collusion with Israel in doing so: unforgivable. Those colluding with Israel to sow division will be held to account,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi wrote on X.

Separately, Reuters reported that Saudi fighter jets bombed Iran-backed militias in Iraq, part of a broader pattern of military responses involving Gulf nations during the war that have remained hidden. Retaliatory strikes were also launched from Kuwait into Iraq, sources said.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday he believed progress was being made in negotiations to end the war. 

“The fundamental question is, do we make enough progress that we satisfy the president’s red line?” Vance told reporters at the White House. “And the red line is very simple. He needs to feel confident that we put a number of protections in place such that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons. 

(Reporting by Reuters Newsrooms; Writing by Costas Pitas and Stephen Coates; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Kate Mayberry)

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