Communities near Gaza are being urged to start getting their lives back on track, safely. But that will depend on how much they trust government assurances and their neighbors over the border.

• Crypto boss sentenced: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is sentenced to 25 years in prison for a cryptocurrency fraud.
• Disney, DeSantis settle out of court: The Walt Disney World Resort and appointees of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reach a settlement to end a high-profile lawsuit over control of the special district that includes Disney World’s theme parks.
• One year in Russian jail: Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich marks a year behind bars following his arrest by Russian authorities who accuse him of espionage but have offered no supporting evidence.
• Global food waste: A new United Nations report estimates that 19% of the food produced around the world went to waste in 2022. That’s a little more than 1 billion tons.
• Sen. Joe Lieberman remembered: Former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who died March 27, was renowned for his bipartisanship and nearly won the vice presidency on the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in 2000. 

Read these news briefs.

The declining U.S. birthrate is hitting rural areas especially hard. But with immigration, Sioux County, Iowa, is home to a growing population and new schools.

Before it collapsed, the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore was a city icon. You could see it from everywhere. It had a personality – like the city and those who worked on it.

In Senegal, independent judges and democratically minded citizens have defied a regional trend toward military rule. Democracy prevails, but it must also begin to meet people’s expectations for more prosperous lives.

As she searched for the elusive flora and fauna on her bucket list, our writer discovered something even more valuable: Joy isn’t in the discovery – it’s in the quest. 

When the British think tank Chatham House decided last year to measure the resilience of countries to foreign interference, it chose the tiny nation of Moldova as a pilot study. The timing was perfect. In early March, Moldova’s national intelligence agency said Moscow is planning an “unprecedented” destabilization campaign to influence the Eastern European nation’s presidential election as well as a referendum on European Union membership later this year.

“Since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, concern has grown that neighbouring Moldova would be next in Moscow’s bid to regain control over the former Soviet republics,” the think tank stated. Indeed, Russia spent more than $55 million last year to influence elections in Moldova, according to the country’s Security and Intelligence Service.

To Moldova’s credit, Chatham House found the country “is becoming more resilient to Russian interference,” especially in society’s strong support for democracy. That conclusion was based on a survey of 37 international and Moldovan experts.

Just where does such resilience lie in Moldova? To be sure, the country has a new agency to counter Russian disinformation, enlisting the “whole of society” to fight lies with the truth. For the first time, Moldova officially deemed Russia a threat. And with EU help, it is pushing social media companies to take down sites with disinformation while improving the media literacy of citizens.

Yet as President Maia Sandu often says, enacting economic reforms and curbing corruption are key antidotes to Russian meddling. She also hopes that persuading voters of the benefits of joining the EU will neutralize Moscow’s propaganda. One poll shows 54.5% would vote for joining the EU.

In the resilience survey, Moldova scored high for civil society’s efforts to counter disinformation. “We’re counting on our society ... to help us continue to build resilience [against Russia’s hybrid threat],” Moldova’s foreign minister, Mihai Popsoi, told The Associated Press.

And he added, “It’s not whether the Russians would want to come ... and violate our sovereignty – it’s a matter of whether they could.”