After 4 weeks below home arrest, Abdalla Hamdok, Sudan’s ousted prime minister, was reinstated yesterday. At a televised ceremony within the presidential palace, he signed a cope with the army meant to finish a bloody standoff that has led to dozens of protester deaths and threatened to derail Sudan’s fragile transition to democracy.

The 14-point settlement met with a wave of anger on the streets. Vocal critics slammed it as an unacceptable concession to a army that has managed Sudan for 52 years of its 60-year historical past and that has sought to weaken the democracy transition from the beginning in 2019. Police officers fired tear gasoline and dwell bullets at jeering protesters.

Hamdok will probably be allowed to type his personal authorities, stated a Western official aware of the negotiations, although vital factors of rivalry between the 2 sides haven’t been labored out, together with essential preparations for sharing energy.

Analysis: “Hamdok preferred to become the secretary of a dictator over a symbol of an emancipatory movement,” stated Magdi el-Gizouli of the Rift Valley Institute, a analysis physique in East Africa. “Whoever marketed this as realpolitik underestimated the depth of the desire for change, and a new future, among the new generation in Sudan.”

Protesters and activists in Barcelona are pushing back against foreign investment firms reminiscent of Cerberus, Blackstone and Lone Star, which have purchased up 1000’s of properties in Spain and at the moment are forcing out residents who can’t pay the lease after struggling financially through the pandemic.

In some circumstances, protesters have bodily blocked legal professionals and accompanying cops from gaining entry to buildings the place they intend to drive individuals from their properties. As residents are pushed out of flats, the group sends squatters to occupy properties owned by the companies elsewhere within the metropolis — typically breaking in to realize entry.

The drawback has caught the eye of Spain’s nationwide authorities, led by a left-wing coalition. It has proposed the imposition of lease controls on funding funds and different massive landlords, which might cap lease for homeowners with greater than 10 properties in areas the place lease will increase have outpaced inflation.

Quotable: Miquel Hernández, a spokesman for the activist group War Against Cerberus, accused the companies of taking advantage of the financial misery brought on by the pandemic. “They’re treating them like any other asset,” he stated, referring to the properties.

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

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As the world’s largest economies shift to cleaner vitality, international locations wealthy in cobalt, lithium and different uncooked supplies wanted for batteries are suddenly playing the role of oil giants.

Since 2016, China has closed its grip on the worldwide cobalt provide after it acquired main mines within the Democratic Republic of Congo, paving the way in which for the tip of main U.S. funding in Congo’s cobalt and copper mines. China’s pursuit of the steel has given it an monumental head begin within the race to dominate the electrification of the auto trade.

China’s cobalt mine acquisitions, an investigation by The Times reveals, occurred after the U.S. basically surrendered the assets, failing to safeguard many years of diplomatic and monetary investments in Congo. Fifteen of the nation’s 19 cobalt-producing mines are owned or financed by state-backed Chinese firms, a few of that are accused of withholding funds and ignoring guarantees to their Congolese companions.

Background: The American president’s son, Hunter Biden, was half proprietor of a agency that helped facilitate a Chinese company’s purchase of one of many world’s richest cobalt mines from a U.S. firm.

Thirty years in the past, the brutal killing of a rich socialite turned certainly one of France’s most enduring homicide mysteries. The subsequent conviction of her Moroccan gardener, Omar Raddad, above, who has all the time maintained his innocence, is now in query, due to new DNA know-how — potentially reopening a case that has lengthy unsettled France.

From these first images of Lady Gaga and Adam Driver in over-the-top après-ski seems to be on set, it was clear the biopic “House of Gucci” could be a spectacle. Gaga plays Patrizia Reggiani, the previous spouse of Maurizio Gucci, inheritor to the luxurious model’s fortune. In 1998, Reggiani — dubbed “the Black Widow” within the Italian press — was convicted of plotting Gucci’s homicide.

Before her divorce from Gucci, Reggiani was an eccentric among the many Italian jet set — she as soon as stated, “I would rather weep in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle.” After Gucci was shot exterior his Milan workplace in 1995, Reggiani instructed pals and reporters that she had wished him lifeless. In her diary, on the day Gucci was killed, there was a single-word entry: “Paradeisos,” the Greek phrase for “paradise.”

In 1998, The Times called Reggiani’s trial “the ultimate real-life soap opera.” It mixed “some of the country’s favorite obsessions: sex, money, designer footwear and astrology.” (Reggiani’s private psychic was among the many co-conspirators, admitting that she helped rent the person who shot Gucci at her consumer’s instruction.)

Reggiani spent 16 years in jail. Since getting out, The Guardian reports, she has typically been photographed round Milan with a parrot perched on her shoulder. — Sanam Yar

That’s it for right now’s briefing. See you tomorrow. — Natasha

P.S. The Times’s Zolan Kanno-Youngs mentioned President Biden’s agenda yesterday on CNN’s “Inside Politics.”

The newest episode of “The Daily” is about Belarus.

Sanam Yar wrote right now’s Arts & Ideas. You can attain Natasha and the group at briefing@nytimes.com.





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