• Germany’s conservatives win: Opposition leader Friedrich Merz won a lackluster victory in a national election Sunday, provisional results show. Alternative for Germany nearly doubled its support, the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II. Mr. Merz vowed to move quickly on a coalition government.
• West Bank incursion: Israeli tanks moved into the occupied West Bank Feb. 23 for the first time in decades in what Palestinian authorities call a “dangerous escalation.” Israel’s defense minister had just announced troops will remain for a year in parts of the territory and that tens of thousands of Palestinians who have fled cannot return.
• Show of support in Kyiv: A dozen leaders and officials from Europe and Canada are visiting Ukraine’s capital to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are among the visitors.
• Cuts at USAID: The Trump administration says it’s placing all but a fraction of staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave worldwide and eliminating at least 1,600 U.S.-based jobs.
  • Related Monitor story: Before the announcement, Ned Temko sized up America’s foreign aid arm, one of the most broadly impactful agencies in Washington.
• Deportation protections dropped: The Trump administration is ending protections for roughly half a million Haitians that had shielded them from deportation. The decision means they would lose their work permits and could be eligible to be removed from the country by August.
  • Related Monitor stories: The future of U.S. immigration policy now rests partly with the courts. Also: Sarah Matusek explained temporary protected status in November.
• Restoration in Syria: Experts are returning to Syria’s war-ravaged heritage sites such as the ancient city of Palmyra, hoping to lay the groundwork for restoring them and reviving tourism. They say that could provide a much-needed boost to the country’s decimated economy after nearly 14 years of war.
  • Related Monitor story: In another act of reclamation, Syrians are embracing their diversity in comedy clubs and marketplaces, sending a message to their de facto leader, a former Islamist rebel.

While Americans differ on how taxpayer dollars should be spent, you might expect them to rally around keeping those dollars away from fraudsters. But what if an unconventional anti-fraud effort – entrepreneurial and fast – fails to gain public trust by pursuing partisan goals? Or if streamlining without adequate fact-checking or attention to knock-on effects breaks things? “Anytime you tear down and rebuild a function, that takes a lot of time,” says Joseph Mauriello, an internal-auditing expert at the University of Texas. “To me, it actually opens the door for more fraud.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in a bind over Gaza. Phase 2 of the ceasefire with Hamas comes with a knot of competing interests to address: His hard-right allies want a resumption of war; an emotional Israeli public wants more hostages out; the United States wants the ceasefire to proceed. “We are hopeful we will be as successful in Phase 2 as we were in Phase 1,” U.S. special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told a pro-Israel crowd at a memorial event in Miami. “Phase 2 is absolutely going to begin,” he added in a TV interview. Over the weekend, Israel delayed the release of Palestinian prisoners, citing “humiliating” handovers of hostages.

After an executive order by the president of the United States that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America, the style-setting Associated Press said it would stick with the name the body of water has had for more than 400 years, while also acknowledging the administration’s name change. In response, the Trump administration restricted the AP’s White House access. A violation of the First Amendment? The White House says there is a difference between giving reporters access and curtailing their ability to publish. First Amendment experts tend to agree. But they see the move as edging closer to the line, a shift many see as worrisome in a country that supposedly values press freedom. The AP filed a lawsuit Friday. 

Ukrainian towns occupied three years ago have resisted the imposition of “Russkiy Mir,” or Russian World. But amid recent Russian battlefield gains and a radical shift in U.S. diplomacy, more Ukrainians now fight fears and struggle to remain optimistic. In Izium, a town in eastern Ukraine some 28 miles from the front line, liberation in September 2022 after a six-month occupation, was “one of the happiest days of our lives,” says a teacher and education official here. The memory of Ukrainian troops passing the house that day, she says, “just brings tears, again and again.” Today, Russia is slowly advancing once more. Still, in Izium our reporter witnessed regular acts of defiance.

Pelican Bay State Prison’s 900-square-foot classroom is a part of California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. It’s home to the state’s first in-person bachelor’s initiative inside a maximum security yard, and to the first incarcerated college students to receive federal aid in more than 30 years. It’s also home to hope. “The way to change people’s perceptions of who we are,” says one man incarcerated here, “is to show them what we can become.” Justice-watchers tout the positive outcomes associated with such programs, including reduced recidivism. With funding imperiled, however, the future of the groundbreaking partnership is in doubt.

In Zimbabwe, cost and cultural barriers impede access to mental health help. A network of therapy-trained grandmothers sitting on public benches aims to fill the gap. More than a half-million Zimbabweans have sat on a Friendship Bench in the past two decades, thanks in part to U.S. aid-agency funding. “It’s a hard life, but I always feel better after talking to Ambuya,” says a bench user in Harare, using the Shona word for grandmother. The program has spread, including to Washington, D.C., where a dozen older people offer therapy at seven sites in historically Black areas of the city. Wise grannies cross cultures.

Two years ago, a report by the European Parliament estimated that strengthening the rule of law and trust in public institutions would reduce corruption and boost Europe’s economic output by more than $61 billion a year. Now the European Union, which loses an estimated $1 trillion a year to corruption, is finalizing a new directive to impose stiffer penalties on individuals and companies that engage in fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and other forms of corruption.

These actions are worth highlighting because leadership of a decadeslong global struggle against graft may be shifting to Europe from the United States. In just one month, the Trump administration has rolled back long-standing measures to counter fraud and promote transparency. Notably, it suspended a historic measure that inspired much of the world to tackle corruption: the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA.

That 1977 law bars U.S. citizens and companies from bribing foreign officials. When the law was enacted, the U.S. became the only country with a foreign bribery offense. It became a template for similar laws elsewhere, such as the United Kingdom’s Bribery Act.

The 2010 British law added a novel provision holding companies liable if they are presented with an attempted act of corruption and fail to stop it. The requirement “transformed the corporate foreign bribery landscape in the UK,” a Global Anticorruption Blog post noted recently, in part by encouraging companies to adopt higher standards of transparency and lawfulness.

The White House claims the 1977 law “actively harms American economic competitiveness and, therefore, national security.” Yet that runs counter to a global trend toward greater honesty and transparency in corporate affairs and governments. In 1997, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a 38-member group of democracies, adopted an antibribery convention. A United Nations anti-corruption convention followed in 2003.

These collective steps have shown that enforcement against corruption can lead to a self-regulating enforcement by companies and officials.

The world’s first antibribery law is now on pause pending review of how it has been and could in the future be applied. Many other nations, meanwhile, still see both the economic and moral benefits of public trust and the rule of law. “Foreign governments appear to have the appetite to fill that enforcement void left by the U.S.,” observed Drew Meyer, special counsel at Buchalter, a law firm specializing in global corporate law. “Indeed, corruption is widely known to be bad for a company’s bottom line.”