As a newly minted U.S. citizen, Ramona Matos, once a doctor in Cuba, did not hesitate when deciding whom to vote for last year.

She chose Donald J. Trump, the candidate who promised to be tough on Cuba’s communist government.

She hoped he would help free the Cuban people and, in particular, put an end to a tool the government in Havana has used to soften its image around the world — one that Ms. Matos found particularly repugnant for personal reasons.

For decades, the Cuban government has sent thousands of health professionals to work in remote villages and cities in dozens of countries, where they get just a fraction of what the countries pay Cuba for their services.

“Those doctors are slaves to the Cuban dictatorship,” said Ms. Matos, 63, who, after posts at Cuban medical missions in Bolivia and Brazil, is a factory worker in South Florida.

Beginning on his first day in office, Mr. Trump has started tightening the screws on Cuba, including on its global medical program.

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As Ukraine contends with a war raging on its eastern front and Russian attacks on its cities, one lawmaker is working on something that he says could help the nation: legalizing pornography.

Yaroslav Zhelezniak, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s finance committee, is leading a push to ditch what he sees as outdated Soviet-era legislation that bans the possession, production and distribution of pornography.

Doing so, he said, would remedy what he and people making pornographic content say is an unfair contradiction.

Violations of Ukraine’s laws on pornography — Article 301 of the criminal code — are punishable by three to five years in prison. But Ukraine’s financial authorities have been collecting taxes from creators on websites known for adult content like OnlyFans.

That means that people who pay taxes on the pornography they produce can be prosecuted for it. “It’s absurd,” Mr. Zhelezniak said, especially “in the midst of a full-scale war.”

He also sees another benefit for Ukraine in changing the law. It would increase tax revenue, he said, since more pornography creators would be willing to declare their earnings — a boost for an economy struggling under the demands of a war that has ground on for over three years.

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Half the board of directors of a seniors club perished, as did the president of the Lion’s Club, a high school teacher and the owner of a trucking company. Tony Blanco, a retired major league baseball player who died in the disaster, was a native son.

So was Rubby Pérez, the merengue singer whose concert drew more than 400 people — many from his hometown.

In the wake of a nightclub roof collapse that killed hundreds of people, the Dominican Republic is brimming in grief. That heartbreak is perhaps most palpable in Haina, an industrial city outside the capital that lost more than two dozen people in the tragedy, including community leaders and cultural heroes.

A gritty municipality best known for its bustling seaport and a legacy of lead pollution that once gave it the unwelcome moniker “the Dominican Chernobyl” now has another undesirable distinction. When the roof of the Jet Set disco came crashing down last Tuesday morning, killing 226 people, it dealt a heavy blow to the small city.

Twenty-five people from there were among those who died.

“God has a way of communicating with us, and sometimes it is difficult to understand,” the former Red Sox player David Ortiz, better known as Big Papi, said Sunday. Mr. Ortiz used to live in Haina, and traveled there to help bury its dead.

Inside a centuries-old monastery atop a mountain in western Syria, a priest swung an incense holder on a chain, led his flock in melodic chants and delivered a timeless sermon on the importance of loving one’s neighbor.

But when the congregation gathered for coffee after the service, their current worries surfaced, about how peaceful Syria’s future would be.

Would the Islamist rebels who ousted the strongman Bashar al-Assad in December ban pork and alcohol, impose modest dress on women or limit Christian worship? Would the new security forces protect Christians from attacks by Muslim extremists?

“Nothing has happened that makes you feel that things are better,” said Mirna Haddad, one of the churchgoers.

Elsewhere in the historic town of Maaloula, its Muslim minority had different concerns. Like their Christian neighbors, they had fled their homes here early in Syria’s 13-year civil war. But unlike the Christians, they had been barred from returning by the Assad regime and a Christian militia it supported.

“The problem is the majority,” meaning the town’s Christians, said Omar Ibrahim Omar, the leader of a new local security committee. He had come home to Maaloula only after Mr. al-Assad’s fall, after being kept out for more than a decade.

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As Canada barrels through one of the stormiest periods in its history toward an April 28 federal election, there’s a name that’s not on the ballot but is on people’s minds: Danielle Smith.

Ms. Smith, the premier of Alberta, the Western province often called the Texas of Canada because of its oil, ranches and conservative politics, is referred to as “divisive” by supporters and critics alike: People love her, people hate her, people love to hate her.

An unapologetic MAGA-aligned conservative, she has riled Canadians across the country by speaking admiringly of President Trump and focusing on her province’s fortunes, particularly its oil exports, even as the U.S. administration menaces Canada.

Ms. Smith, 54, has been premier for the past two and a half years, having spent the past two decades dipping in and out of politics.

“I keep getting fired,” she chuckled in an interview with The New York Times in Calgary, Alberta, in February.

She has also worked as an economist, a lobbyist and a radio host of a popular call-in show in which she honed her folksy, affable but sharply ideological raconteur style.

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African music lost one of its titans last week with the death of Amadou Bagayoko, a guitarist who recorded with American rock stars, performed at the Nobel concert for Barack Obama, and became a national icon in his home, Mali.

With his wife, the singer Mariam Doumbia, Mr. Bagayoko composed the duo Amadou & Mariam, which rose to international fame in the 2000s and 2010s with hits like “Beautiful Sundays.”

Mr. Bagayoko was 70 when he died last week, of complications from a malaria infection. He and his wife, who is 66, were scheduled to perform across Europe next month. And while their fame has faded in the United States since the peak of their global success, they remained huge celebrities in Europe and in West Africa, where their music inspired generations of artists.

We asked relatives and friends of Mr. Bagayoko for their favorite songs by Amadou & Mariam, and the significance of the guitarist and his music — a blend of blues riffs, guitar solos, and djembe — to them.

‘Toubala Kono’

Cheick Tidiane Seck, a keyboard player who knew Mr. Bagayoko since the guitarist was 14, was in neighboring Ivory Coast for a concert last week when Mr. Bagayoko died.

Mr. Seck opened the concert with “Toubala Kono,” a song he wrote with Mr. Bagayoko, whom he called a “brother.”

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