The International Monetary Fund has agreed to more than double the bailout package for Egypt, which is facing its worst economic crisis in decades, exacerbated by war in the neighboring Gaza Strip and Ukraine.

The fund now plans to provide Egypt with $8 billion, up from the initial $3 billion announced in October 2022.

The head of the IMF’s mission in Egypt, Ivanna Vladkova Hollar, noted at a news conference that Egypt’s already struggling economy had been further affected by the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has hampered the country’s vital tourism trade.

At the same time, revenue from the Suez Canal fell by half after Houthi militants, who say they stand in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, began attacking cargo ships using the Red Sea shipping lanes.

Egypt’s Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said the deal would allow the government to secure an additional $1.2 billion, on top of $8 billion, from the IMF’s Environmental Aptitude Fund and would include development partners such as the World Bank and the European Union encourage Egypt to also give more money. loans to help achieve financial stability.

Last week, Egypt signed a $35 billion deal with the United Arab Emirates to develop parts of the Mediterranean coast. Egyptian officials celebrated it as the largest foreign direct investment in Egypt’s history.

Hours before the deal with the IMF was announced, Egypt’s Central Bank, in an effort to rein in rising inflation, devalued the currency by more than 35 percent – it was the fourth devaluation since October 2022 – and raised interest rates by 600 basis points.

Mr Madbouly said his government and the IMF have reached consensus on the objectives of Egypt’s structural reform plan.

“The aim is to increase foreign exchange reserves, reduce debt burden, ensure the flow of foreign direct investment and work towards high growth rates for the Egyptian economy,” he said.

The government and the monetary fund are committed to social protection measures for vulnerable people who will be affected by the reform plans, Mr Madbouly said.

Over the past 18 months, a severe shortage of foreign currency in Egypt, which is overwhelmingly dependent on imports, has wiped out prices – and concerns about the future. The cost of some basic food items quadrupled, debt levels reached record highs and the currency lost much of its value, decimating the purchasing power of people’s incomes and the value of their savings.

Central Bank Governor Hassan Abdalla said the government’s medium-term plan aims to reduce inflation, which reached a record high of almost 40 percent last summer, to single digits.

Before the IMF deal, mounting economic pressure had forced the government to change its tactics, including freezing some costly megaprojects ordered by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, including a lavish new capital in the desert.

Additional pressure came from the IMF, which refused to transfer much of the original loan until Egypt met certain economic policy conditions. One of these was to stimulate private sector growth by eliminating the competitive advantages enjoyed by Egyptian military companies.

Over the past decade, the Egyptian economy has struggled for stability. Many observers say mismanagement, including overspending on mega-projects and long-standing over-reliance on imports, has left Egypt vulnerable to successive external shocks. In addition to the war in Gaza, there was the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which affected both tourism and essential wheat imports.

Mr el-Sisi has repeatedly defended his government’s policies, saying the 2011 uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak had created lasting economic uncertainty.

However, in daily interactions on Cairo’s streets and on social media, many blame the president, whom they accuse of spending money on vanity projects and weakening the economy in a way that undermines Egypt’s influence in the region.

Some experts say the IMF, which has loaned Egypt billions of dollars since 2016, is part of the problem.

“They don’t go deep enough into what’s happening inside the machine,” said Mohamed Fouad, a financial consultant and former Egyptian lawmaker.

Mr Fouad expects the international lender will now make more calculated decisions.

“Their biggest mistake,” he said, “came between 2016 and 2020, when everyone was cheering and focusing only on the macroeconomic aspect. But the foundation was shaky.”

Vivian Yee reporting contributed.

A Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of posting classified intelligence reports and sensitive documents online agreed to plead guilty Monday in exchange for a 16-year prison sentence and a commitment to extensively inform officials about the extent of his leaks.

The pilot, Jack Teixeira, withdrew his not guilty plea during an appearance in Boston federal court and pleaded guilty to six charges of “intentionally retaining and transmitting national defense information,” according to court documents filed by the government.

The judge in the case, Indira Talwani, scheduled a hearing for September to determine whether she would sign the deal. It would be highly unusual for a judge to make major changes to a deal that would require approval from top U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials.

The Justice Department agreed not to charge him with violations of the Espionage Act, which, combined with the other charges, could have resulted in a prison sentence of up to 60 years if he had been convicted.

Airman Teixeira, 22, has been in custody since he was arrested last spring at his mother’s home in North Dighton, Massachusetts. He was responsible for one of the most far-reaching leaks of sensitive information in years – a colossal embarrassment that revealed how even a low-ranking soldier could obtain and release defense secrets for months without being stopped.

Prosecutors said they found no evidence of espionage and concluded that airman Teixeira posted secrets in a chat group on the social media platform Discord to impress people he met online with inside information, particularly details about the war in Ukraine.

The indictment alleged that Airman Teixeira, who worked in an intelligence unit at an Air Force base on Cape Cod, removed the material from computers after conducting unauthorized database searches, even after a superior warned him to stop.

Among the secrets revealed were information on the supply and delivery of military equipment to Ukraine and a highly sensitive report on Russian and Ukrainian troop movements. Officials said the revelations about the troop movements may have compromised how U.S. intelligence collected the information and from whom.

He also shared a report on the hacking of an unnamed U.S. company’s accounts by “a foreign adversary” and details of an unspecified foreign plot to attack U.S. forces abroad, detailing “where and how” an attack could occur, the complaint said.

A New York Times Research into more than 9,500 of his posts painted a portrait of a young man fixated on guns, mass shootings and shadowy conspiracy theories.

The city of Ferguson, Missouri, has agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit accusing it of violating the constitutional rights of thousands of people who said they were jailed without due process because they could not pay the fines.

The lawsuit was filed in 2015 amid protests over the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white Ferguson police officer. It accused the city of jailing the plaintiffs under “deplorable” conditions simply because they could not pay debts for traffic tickets or other minor violations.

“They were threatened, abused and languished in jail,” plaintiffs’ attorneys argued in the lawsuit, noting that these conditions lasted until families could raise enough money for bail, or until prison officials decided to release them.

On Tuesday, ArchCity Defenders, the St. Louis nonprofit that filed the suit, said in a message rack that checks would be sent to more than 15,000 people incarcerated by the city between February 8, 2010 and December 30, 2022, and that the amount would depend on the number of hours each had spent in jail.

David Musgrave, Ferguson’s assistant city manager, said in an email Thursday that the city would not comment “while the settlement agreement is pending final approval by the Court.”

Mr Musgrave asked further questions to the city’s lawyers, one of whom, Apollo Carey, declined to comment. Another lawyer did not immediately respond to an email and telephone call. Neither the mayor nor Ferguson police could be reached for comment Thursday evening.

The lawsuit was one of several in recent years accusing municipalities in the St. Louis area of ​​wrongfully imprisoning impoverished people. Last year, the city of Maplewood, Missouri agreed to pay $3.25 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the city of imprisoning at least 7,000 people in a so-called debtor’s prison system. The city of Jennings, another suburb in St. Louis County, paid $4.75 million in 2016 to settle a similar lawsuit.

ArchCity Defenders has reached “some settlement terms” in seven such cases, Blake Strode, the organization’s executive director, said in an interview. In the meantime, he added, the kinds of practices that landed people who couldn’t pay small fines in jail had declined significantly.

“It’s a really powerful demonstration of what it can mean when people fight back,” Mr Strode said. “When combined with other forms of advocacy and organizing and public pressure,” he added, “litigation can be a tool that can really bring injustice into the spotlight.”

In a 2015 interview with The New York Times, Allison Nelson, one of nine lead prosecutors in the Ferguson trial, described receiving her first traffic ticket at age 18 and then being held for days in lockups that she described as filthy and smelly. from mold, sewage and sweat.

“It was traumatizing to deal with this situation because of the way we were treated,” Ms. Nelson, 32, said in a statement released by ArchCity Defenders on Thursday. “The cells were disgusting, we were fed honey buns and there was human feces all over the walls. It didn’t matter to them.”

She said she wishes the case could have been resolved before her mother, Tonya DeBerry, who was also a prosecutor, died in 2018.

“All I can say is, ‘finally,’” she said.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday moved to decide whether former President Donald J. Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.

The judges scheduled oral arguments for the week of April 22 and said court proceedings would remain frozen while they considered the case.

The court’s brief order states that the court will decide this question: “Whether, and if so, to what extent a former president enjoys presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct that would constitute official acts while in office.”

The Supreme Court’s response to Mr. Trump’s request for a delay had become increasingly urgent as the final resolution would determine whether and how quickly Mr. Trump could appear in court. That, in turn, could affect his electoral prospects and, should he be re-elected, his ability to thwart the prosecution.

In a emergency application Trump asked the Supreme Court to intervene a unanimous panel of three judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had been wrong in ruling that he could face criminal charges for his conduct as president. Total immunity for his official conduct, Mr. Trump’s filing said, is required by the separation of powers implicit in presidential impeachment proceedings and necessary to prevent partisan abuse of the criminal justice system.

“The lack of criminal immunity for official acts threatens the President’s ability to function properly,” the filing said. “Any decision by the president on a politically controversial issue would come with the threat of indictment by the opposing party after a change of government.”

Mr. Trump, widely considered the Republican front-runner, added a practical concern.

“Conducting a months-long criminal trial against President Trump at the height of the election season will radically disrupt President Trump’s ability to campaign against President Biden — which appears to be the entire point of the special counsel’s continued demands for expedition.” , the application said. “The DC Circuit’s order therefore threatens to cause immediate irreparable harm to the interests of President Trump and tens of millions of American voters, who have a right to hear President Trump’s campaign message as they decide how to vote in November.”

Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing Mr. Trump’s federal prosecutions, brought up for discussion with every element of his argument, citing his attempts to undermine democracy.

If Trump’s “radical claim were accepted,” Smith wrote, “it would upend the views of presidential responsibility that have prevailed throughout history while undermining democracy and the rule of law—especially when , as here, a former president would be accused of committing crimes to remain in power despite losing an election, thereby attempting to undermine constitutional procedures for the transfer of power and disenfranchising millions of voters.”

Mr. Smith added that there is no reason to fear prosecutions that would prevent other presidents from taking decisive action.

“That dystopian vision runs counter to the checks and balances built into our institutions and the framework of the Constitution,” Mr. Smith wrote.

In a supporting assignment While urging the justices to deny Trump’s request for a stay, several former prominent officials who had served in Republican administrations said the court did not need to issue a broad ruling because the conduct of which Mr. Trump is accused is so clearly fell outside the immunity that the Constitution could provide. grant.

“Denying a stay would not preclude potential federal criminal immunity for official acts of a president in some other, exceptional situation,” the letter said.

Mr Smith reiterated this point and quoted the officials’ order. “A sufficient basis for resolving this case would be that, regardless of the rule in other contexts not presented here,” he wrote, “there is no immunity from a president committing federal crimes to undermine the electoral process. ”

Norfolk Southern, the operator of the toxic chemical freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, nearly a year ago, has agreed to participate in a federal program that allows employees to confidentially report safety concerns, the company and federal officials announced Monday. .

In the wake of the derailment, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called on Norfolk Southern and the nation's other major freight railroads to join the program, one of a series of steps he urged them to take to improve safety.

The railroads committed to participating in March, but in the months that followed pushed for changes to the program to address concerns about its operation. None of the major freight railroads, known as Class I railroads, had officially agreed to participate until the announcement on Monday.

Norfolk Southern's participation in the program, known as the Confidential Close Call Reporting System, or C3RS, will have a limited scope. The railroad will conduct a one-year pilot program that will apply to approximately 1,000 employees in Atlanta; Elkhart, Ind.; and Roanoke, Virginia, which are members of two unions, a small portion of the company's workforce of about 20,000 people.

“Norfolk Southern has taken a good first step, and it is time for the other Class I railroads to back their conversations with action and fulfill their commitments to join this close call reporting system and keep America's rail network safe ,” said Mr. Buttigieg. said in a statement.

Alan H. Shaw, CEO of Norfolk Southern, said in a statement that the company was “committed to setting the gold standard for railroad safety, and we are proud to be the first Class I railroad to deliver on our promise to co-develop and launch a C3RS program.”

The federal program, which is modeled after a similar program for pilots and other aviation personnel, allows railroad employees to report safety concerns without worrying about potential discipline. But freight railroad companies expressed concern that workers could abuse the program as a way to protect themselves from punishment after making dangerous mistakes.

The Association of American Railroads, an industry group, said Monday that the other major freight railroad companies are still willing to join the program.

“This pledge remains unchanged,” said Jessica Kahanek, a spokeswoman for the group. She added: “AAR and its member rail companies have collectively and individually engaged in good faith discussions with the government and rail workers about strengthening the program.”