What happened
The Trump administration has abandoned plans for a $1.776 billion compensation scheme intended for Americans who claimed that they had been unfairly targeted by previous governments.

The proposed Anti-Weaponisation Fund, unveiled by the Department of Justice only last month, faced criticism from Democrats and scepticism from some Republicans. It also became the subject of legal challenges, with a federal court ordering a temporary halt to the programme while its legality was considered.

Who said what
Speaking before a House appropriations panel, acting Attorney-General Todd Blanche confirmed that the initiative had been shelved, telling lawmakers: “We’re not moving forward with the fund, period.”

Trump had used words like “weaponised” and “weaponisation” more than 800 times in public statements, said Charlie Smart and Karen Yourish in The New York Times. But many of the people the US president had said were victims of weaponisation “faced enough evidence against them that they were convicted at trial or pleaded guilty”.

What next?
Although the fund has been abandoned, legal scrutiny continues over related agreements involving Trump’s tax affairs.

What happened
UK Athletics has been hit with a £350,000 penalty for corporate manslaughter over the death of a Paralympian. Emirati shot-putter Abdullah Hayayei died in 2017 after a misassembled 200kg cage fell on him during a training session in Newham, London.

The 36-year-old, who had competed at the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, was due to compete at the World Championships later that year.

Who said what
Judge Richard Marks KC concluded that Mr Hayayei’s death was “tragic, untimely and wholly avoidable”. “This was an accident which sooner or later was waiting to happen.”

Hayayei’s widow, Badriah, said her husband “went out to represent his country”, but had “returned as a corpse because of this negligence”.

UK Athletics said it was “deeply and genuinely sorry for what occurred”. The fine “represents a major financial hit” for the organisation, which has “faced severe difficulty in recent years following lapsed sponsorship and broadcast deals”, said The Telegraph.

What next?
The court was told that UK Athletics is expected to make a £400,000 loss in its next accounts. It has been granted six years to pay the fine in instalments.

“When a river is alive, it has a sound,” Angela Ortigara, a senior adviser at WWF Netherlands, told CNN. “You hear it trickling down the rocks. You see vegetation around it. It is this flow of life.” And, said the broadcaster, “across Europe, that sound is now beginning to return”.

Environmental coalition group Dam Removal Europe has calculated that a record-breaking 603 dams were removed across the continent last year as countries embarked on a “broader reassessment of how rivers function in an era of climate extremes”.

The removals allow waterways to “resume their natural course” as part of a “global trend to restore rivers to help wildlife thrive”, said The Guardian. The damming of rivers “disrupts ecosystems, hinders the transport of sediments” and is believed to have contributed to a 75% fall in Europe’s freshwater migratory fish population over the past 56 years.

However, the wide-scale dismantling of dams and water barriers has been criticised by some farming groups and policymakers, who have raised concerns about potential impacts on land use and rural livelihoods. A study published last year found that the presence of dams could slow the spread of invasive species, while barrier removals may also allow new threats to travel from one part of a river to another.

But “with careful preparation, monitoring and long-term management, these risks can be minimised”, Ellen Dolan, a biologist at Queen’s University Belfast and lead author of the riverine barrier removal study, told The Guardian.