AnewZ Morning Brief - 26 February, 2026
Start your day informed with AnewZ Morning Brief. Here are the top news stories for the 26th of February, covering the latest developments you need to...
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers announced on Wednesday (February 25) that he will retire from teaching at Harvard University at the end of the academic year, amid scrutiny over his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year,” Summers said in a statement.
Summers, who also served as president of Harvard, has faced criticism since the U.S. House Oversight Committee released documents detailing ongoing personal correspondence between him and Epstein.
No evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Summers has emerged.
He paused teaching and went on leave in November from his role as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School while the university conducted a review of individuals named in the Epstein files.
A Harvard spokesperson, Jason Newton, said Summers’ resignation from the leadership post had been accepted, and he would remain on leave until formally retiring at the end of the school year.
Summers also stepped down from the board of OpenAI in November following the announcement of the review.
At the time, he expressed being “deeply ashamed” of his connections with Epstein and said he would step back from public commitments to “repair relationships with the people closest to me”.
A Democrat, Summers served as Treasury Secretary under former President Bill Clinton and as director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama. His decision to retire comes as Harvard continues to examine ties between the faculty and Epstein.
The Taliban in Kabul has rejected Russian claims that more than 23,000 militants from around 20 international terror groups are currently operating within Afghanistan.
Four years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war can be measured not only in lives and territory, but in money. In Part One, the war’s cost was measured in casualties and kilometres. In Part Two, it is measured in billions of dollars.
Thailand and the United States, alongside 28 partner nations, began Southeast Asia’s largest and longest-running military exercise, the 45th Cobra Gold, on Tuesday (24 February) in Rayong province, Thailand.
Seven people were killed after gunmen ambushed a police patrol in Kohat, a district in Pakistan’s north-west near the Afghan border, on Tuesday, in an attack that comes amid rising militant violence and heightened tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Torrential downpours have triggered deadly mudslides and widespread flooding in southern Peru, leaving at least seventeen people dead - including fifteen killed in a military helicopter crash - as hundreds of districts across the country remain under a state of emergency.
Start your day informed with AnewZ Morning Brief. Here are the top news stories for the 26th of February, covering the latest developments you need to know.
Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies has approved an historic free trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union, moving the long-delayed pact closer to implementation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he expects the next round of trilateral talks on ending the war to pave the way for a leaders’ meeting after speaking by phone with U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday (25 February).
The U.S. has warned that Iran’s refusal to address its ballistic missile programme complicates efforts to secure progress at a new round of indirect nuclear negotiations in Geneva.
House lawmakers are set to question former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Chappaqua, New York near their main residence, on Thursday (26 February) and Friday as part of Congress’s investigation into disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
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