Emergency workers are racing to rescue survivors on Monday from the wreckage of homes, schools and businesses in Mayotte, a French territory off the eastern coast of Africa that was devastated by Tropical Cyclone Chido over the weekend.

At least 14 people were killed and more than 250 were injured in Mayotte, France’s poorest territory, according to preliminary figures, and there were fears that the death toll could be higher.

“I think that there will be several hundred” deaths, François-Xavier Bieuville, France’s top-ranking representative on the archipelago, told a local news channel.

“Maybe we will be closer to a thousand, maybe several thousand,” added Mr. Bieuville.

France’s interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, said from Mayotte’s main island on Monday that it would take days to establish a death toll, although the ministry said that it was likely that they be unable to count all the victims.

Many residents are Muslims, who in keeping with tradition try to bury their dead within 24 hours. And about a third of the territory’s 320,000 people are undocumented, the ministry said, adding to the challenge of compiling an accurate toll.

“These elements mean that the number of deaths that are officially counted will probably be much lower than reality,” the ministry said.

French news outlets described “an unrecognizable island,” and officials were warning of an impending humanitarian catastrophe, as people on Mayotte struggle to get basic supplies. President Emmanuel Macron has convened an emergency meeting for Monday evening.

Chido was the worst storm in 90 years to hit the territory, which is in the Indian Ocean, according to forecasters. The forecasters said that wind gusts exceeded 124 miles per hour.

Mayotte lies between Mozambique and Madagascar. It has the highest population density of France’s overseas territories, with a total area of 145 square miles.

As families dug through the wreckage of their homes to try to find loved ones and posted desperate pleas on a Facebook page for residents trying to get information. Many end posts with a statement of solidarity, as they search together: “Force à tous,” or stay strong.

France has started aid flights from Réunion, another French territory about 900 miles away in the region. Sébastien Lecornu, the armed forces minister, called the flights an “air bridge” in a post on X.

Families in Mayotte have lost almost everything. Videos and photos posted by news agencies showed mass destruction: Homes were destroyed, garbage was strewn across hillsides and trees were ripped apart.

Mobile and internet networks are disrupted, according to local news reports, and outages caused by the storm kept Mayotte almost entirely offline for more than 36 hours, according to NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group.

“The health system is seriously affected and access to care has been seriously degraded,” Geneviève Darrieussecq, the outgoing French health minister, wrote in a LinkedIn post on Sunday. She gave the official death toll in a television interview on Monday morning.

The storm, which has been downgraded to a depression, has continued to move southwest. On Monday afternoon, Chido had left Malawi and had crossed into Mozambique, where it killed at least three people, according to an early estimate of the death toll, local officials told the French news agency Agence France-Presse.

It is expected to dissipate by Tuesday. Wind speeds have dropped to 30 miles per hour. Now, the main threat is rainfall, which could cause flash floods or dangerous mudslides. Some areas in the storm’s path could receive as much as 11 inches of rain by the end of Tuesday.

Although the death toll in Mozambique was relatively low, it also suffered serious damage after Chido made landfall there on Sunday, with winds equivalent to those of a Category 3 hurricane, according to the United States military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Several buildings were destroyed, officials said. The region also experienced telecommunications outages, NetBlocks said on Sunday.

Officials at aid agencies, including UNICEF and the Red Cross, said they were on the ground in Mozambique ahead of the storm, and boats were prepared for search-and-rescue operations.

Guy Taylor, the spokesman in Mozambique for UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, said he saw significant damage in Pemba, the capital of the northernmost province, Cabo Delgado.

“We saw many roofs torn off buildings, electricity and communications infrastructure out of action,” he said in a text message. “And the situation is likely to be significantly worse in surrounding rural areas, where homes and other buildings are very rudimentary.”

UNICEF had already brought large quantities of supplies like medication, water purification tablets and flashlights to the province before the storm, Mr. Taylor said.

Now that the storm has passed, he said, UNICEF teams were traveling to rural areas throughout the northern part of Mozambique on Monday to assess the situation. The organization fears that many of those communities — which already had low access to clean water and sanitation — would be susceptible to cholera outbreaks.

John Eligon and Nazaneen Ghaffar contributed reporting.

The 13-year civil war between Syria’s government and rebel fighters has ended. But the peril is not over for Syria’s Kurdish minority.

A number of armed factions are still jostling for control after the collapse of the Assad regime. They include the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which have allied with the United States to combat the extremist Islamic State, and the Syrian National Army, a militia backed by Turkey, which is hostile to the Kurdish forces.

For more than a decade, the Kurdish-led soldiers have been America’s most reliable partner in Syria, liberating cities seized by the extremist group and detaining around 9,000 of its fighters.

But Turkey, which shares a border with Syria, has long considered the Kurdish group to be its enemy. The Turkish government believes the Kurdish fighters in Syria are allied with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which has fought the Turkish state for decades.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who backs the rebel groups that toppled the Assad regime, appears eager to seize the opportunity created by the momentous political shift in Syria to pursue his own agenda against the Kurdish fighters.

Turkey’s new dominance leaves the Kurds exposed

The shape of the new Syrian government, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is still being determined. But American officials and Middle East analysts agree: Turkey will have an outsized influence.

That means Kurdish groups’ foothold in the northeast looks increasingly “tenuous,” said Wa’el Alzayat, a Syria expert and former American diplomat. Turkey “will have the biggest leverage in what’s happening, and will happen, in Syria for the foreseeable future,” he said.

As Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies seized control from President Bashar al-Assad, “they brought with them a tide of Turkish power and influence over the future of Syria,” said Nicholas Heras, a senior analyst at the New Lines Institute.

The high stakes for the Kurds, and for Western forces determined to prevent a renewed ISIS threat, were illuminated earlier this past week. Even as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies took over, Turkish-backed rebels attacked the Syrian Democratic Forces, supported by Turkish airstrikes and artillery fire.

The commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, told The New York Times he had to divert fighters who were defending the prisons that house accused ISIS members to fight off the Turkish-backed militants.

Now, Mr. Heras predicted, Arabs who had joined the Syrian Democratic Forces to fight the Islamic State could disband or defect to other rebel groups, under pressure from Turkey and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. That would further weaken the Kurdish forces.

A best-case scenario for the Kurds, officials and experts said, might see them receive enough support from the United States to secure the territory they hold in northeast Syria. That could give them leverage with the new government in Damascus to pursue a fully autonomous state, something minority Kurds in Syria have long sought.

At worst, the Kurds could face an inflamed conflict with Turkish-backed fighters, be forced to cede control of at least some of their oil-rich territory and, if President-elect Donald J. Trump decides to withdraw U.S. troops, lose vital help on the ground.

America’s role will be pivotal

“There really needs to be some kind of cease-fire/peace agreement between the Turks and the Kurds that both sides can agree with,” said Natasha Hall, a Syria expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The Biden administration is racing to negotiate just that before it leaves office next month.

Following meetings in Turkey last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Saturday that “making sure that ISIS was in a box” remained an urgent priority in Syria. He said the Kurdish fighters were “playing a critical role in pursuing that mission.”

But the diplomatic balancing act he faced was clear: His meetings in Turkey included talks with the foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who earlier last week said that “any P.K.K. extension in Syria cannot be considered a legitimate partner.”

And on Friday, Mr. Fidan pointedly cited the P.K.K. as he described efforts to keep terrorist organizations from exploiting the political chaos in Syria.

Yet there are signs that American diplomacy is having an impact. Last week, an American commander, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, visited northeast Syria, where 900 American troops are stationed. Hours later, a cease-fire between the Kurdish forces and a Turkish-backed rebel group known as the Syrian National Army was announced in the northern city of Manbij, where the two sides have frequently clashed.

General Abdi, the Kurdish commander, said on X that the cease-fire was brokered with American help. Under the agreement, he said, Kurdish forces would withdraw from Manbij, a majority Arab city which they seized from the Islamic State in 2016 but that has since become a flashpoint among battling factions for control. But he and other Syrian ethnic Kurds are increasingly worried that their retreat from Manbij is just the beginning.

The city of Kobani could be the next flashpoint

Last Tuesday, a senior Hayat Tahrir al-Sham officer said that local tribes allied with his group had wrested control of the eastern city of Deir al-Zour from Kurdish fighters who had taken over as Mr. al-Assad’s forces collapsed just days earlier.

And in the days since, the Turkish-backed rebels have repeatedly battled with Kurdish forces in the region around the Euphrates River.

Mr. Heras, the New Lines analyst, said he thought those skirmishes could be military preparations for an invasion of Kobani, a majority Kurdish city.

The city, just south of the Turkish border, holds deep emotional significance for the Kurdish forces, who fought with American troops to reclaim it after a four-month Islamic State siege that began in late 2015.

General Abdi now appears to be bracing for a possible invasion by Turkey’s allied fighters. Mr. Heras said residents were fleeing Kobani by the thousands despite a shaky truce agreement this past week that aimed to buy time for negotiations.

“Turkey is taking advantage of the crisis in Syria to destabilize the region and seize our land, while claiming they are fighting terrorists,” said Sinam Sherkany Mohamad, the head of the Kurdish fighters’ political wing in Washington, in a statement. “But we are not terrorists, we are democratic U.S. allies.”

James F. Jeffrey, a former American ambassador to Turkey who was a chief Syria envoy during Mr. Trump’s first administration, said any invasion of Kobani would violate a 2019 agreement that the U.S. negotiated for a détente, “and whether by the Turks, or Syrian forces associated with the Turks, it makes no difference.”

In the meantime, General Abdi has sought to shore up the Kurdish fighters’ relationship with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, saying he is seeking direct relations with the group’s leaders.

Officials and experts said Turkey may wait until its interests are locked in with the new Syrian government before deciding whether to launch a full-bore military offensive against the Kurdish forces. It may also watch to see whether Mr. Trump withdraws American troops, and how his administration deals with Mr. Erdogan, a like-minded strongman whose relationship with the United States has often been tempestuous.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, warned in a statement on social media that he was prepared to push for economic sanctions against Turkey if it attacked the Kurdish forces, which he said would “set in motion an ISIS jailbreak.” He added: “If Turkey takes military action against Kurdish forces in Syria, it will jeopardize America’s interests dramatically.”

Safak Timur contributed reporting from Istanbul.

After seven years of medical school in Myanmar, May finally achieved her goal of becoming a doctor. But a month after she graduated and found a job, her dreams started unraveling.

In February 2021, Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup, and the country’s economy, already hammered by the pandemic, started to buckle. Prices soared and May’s paycheck, the equivalent of $415 a month, evaporated even faster. With her father suffering from kidney disease, she grew more and more desperate.

Then she met “date girls,” who were making twice as much as her. The money was enticing — even if it involved sex with men.

“It’s difficult to accept that, despite all my years of study to become a doctor, I’m now doing this kind of work just to make ends meet,” said May, 26, who has been working as a prostitute for over a year in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city. She, like others who spoke for this article, asked not to be identified by her full name because her family does not know how she earns money and prostitution is illegal in Myanmar.

The coup and ensuing civil war have ravaged Myanmar’s economy. Inflation soared to 26 percent this year as power shortages crippled factories, unseasonal rain flooded farms and fighting in areas near China and Thailand decimated cross-border trade. The currency, the kyat, has lost two-fifths of its value against the dollar this year. Nearly half of Myanmar’s people now live in poverty, according to the World Bank.

This calamity has forced a new cadre of women in Myanmar into sex work: doctors, teachers, nurses and other educated professionals.

It is hard to track how many women are involved in the trade, but women plying the streets have become much more apparent. In interviews, half a dozen women — four white-collar workers who have turned to prostitution and two rights activists — said that more educated women are now having sex with men to make a living.

Following the coup, women were at the forefront of protests. They marched on the streets and hung up their sarongs as a hex against soldiers. There was a flicker of hope over dismantling Myanmar’s deep-rooted patriarchy. But the rise in prostitution is another blow to the status of women, who have been sexually abused by the military for decades.

There is no end in sight to this misery — the junta has lost a lot of ground to the rebels but still controls Myanmar’s cities, where prostitution has increased in brothels, karaoke bars, nightclubs and hotels.

Zar was a nurse at a private hospital in Mandalay, which was shut down by the military government because its doctors had joined the protest movement.

Then a friend pitched her a way to make money. Just be a date girl, her friend said.

Before her first day on the job, Zar, 25, said she watched some pornography to try to figure out what to do. She said her first client was a Chinese man who looked around 40 and spoke little Burmese and no English. At one point, he tried to have sex without a condom, but she insisted that he had to use one.

“It lasted about 20 minutes, but to me, it felt like an eternity,” she said. “It was pure hell.”

On a recent Tuesday, her phone buzzed with a terse message on the Telegram app with details of her next encounter. A name, contact number, venue and time.

She put on a pink dress and checked that her purse had condoms. That night, she earned $80, the equivalent of what she made in a month previously.

“I feel a bit ashamed doing this job,” she said. “It’s not that I enjoy this work, it’s just a necessity.”

This desperation is forcing women to break the law by selling sex. Those detained by the police often have to pay bribes to secure their release, adding another layer of jeopardy.

Myanmar, with a population of about 55 million, has a long history of military regimes. But when civilian rule took hold in 2011, a middle class started to thrive. Now that group has shrunk by 50 percent, according to the United Nations Development Program.

In Mandalay, Su, who was a doctor, said she used to be part of that community. She tells of vacations to Singapore, India and Nepal, and dining in malls with her friends.

But after the coup, prices of goods like eggs and toothpaste tripled. She had to deplete her savings and skip meals.

Her daily trials are well known in Myanmar, where the cost of a typical meal has surged 160 percent, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

In 2023, Su, 28, said she decided to send naked pictures of herself to a madam who connected her with clients. When she has an appointment with a client, her parents think that she is heading to a night shift at a hospital.

“I wanted to be a pediatrician and help children, but the coup and my family’s financial situation left me with no other options,” she said. “It’s far from the life I dreamed of.”

Women have borne the brunt of the economic crisis. They already earn less compared with their male counterparts — a study from April to June 2024 showed female daily-wage workers make an average of about $5, while men could earn as much as 40 percent more doing the same job. And the unemployment rate for women remains far higher than that for men.

Garment factories were once a lifeline for women from Myanmar’s villages and were projected to employ 1.6 million workers by 2026. Many of these are now shut and their companies have pulled out of Myanmar after the coup.

Mya, 25, a single mother, said she tried to find a job in a garment factory after her husband was shot and killed by soldiers during a protest in 2021. But no one was hiring. She said she sold everything of value and finally turned to prostitution to provide for her 3-year-old daughter.

“People might judge me, but they don’t understand what it’s like to be hungry, to watch your child go hungry, and to have nothing,” she said. “Every day, I pray for a way out.”

Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister who led Canada’s response to the first Trump administration, resigned on Monday from her cabinet role as finance minister, according to her resignation letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The letter is a stinging rebuke of Mr. Trudeau’s policies, marking the first open dissent from any member of his cabinet and throwing into question his ability to remain as leader of his party.

The revelation came hours before she was scheduled to outline the government’s commitments to improve border security with the United States.

President-elect Trump has warned that he would impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico unless those two countries did more to curb the flow of undocumented migrants and drugs across their borders with the United States.

In her resignation letter, Ms. Freeland indicated that Mr. Trudeau attempted to force her out of the position on Friday. Ms. Freeland had been playing a prominent role in formulating Canada’s response to the incoming Trump administration, leading a team of government officials preparing for the transition to a new president.

She had successfully renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement with the first Trump White House.

“For the last number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada,” Ms. Freeland wrote to the prime minister.

She also described Mr. Trump’s threatened tariffs “a grave challenge.”

“How we deal with the threat our country currently faces will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer,’’ Ms. Freeland sad.

Recent spending decisions by Mr. Trudeau apparently made to boost the Liberal Party’s popularity, including a sales tax holiday and send checks to taxpayers, Ms. Freeland said, would undermine Canada’s economic ability to deal with the Trump threat.

This is a developing story.