Tragedies Hit Iran, Congo Amid Rising Global Tensions

Ali Hosseini Khamenei was an Iranian politician and Shia cleric who served as the second supreme leader of Iran from 1989 until his assassination in 2026. He previously served as the president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. His tenure as supreme leader, spanning 36 years and six months, made him the longest-serving head of state in the Middle East at the time of his death.

Karoline Leavitt is an American political spokesperson who has served as the 36th White House press secretary since 2025. A member of the Republican Party, she was the party's nominee in the 2022 election for New Hampshire's 1st congressional district.

On February 24, 2026, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a 56-year-old blind Rohingya refugee, was found dead after being dropped off near a Tim Hortons by United States Border Patrol agents in Buffalo, New York.

Letitia Ann "Tish" James is an American lawyer and politician from the state of New York. She has served since 2019 as the 67th attorney general of New York (NYAG), having been first elected to the post in 2018. A member of the Democratic Party, James is the first Black person to serve as New York attorney general and is the first Black woman to hold statewide office in New York.

William Henry Gates III is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Following Microsoft's initial public offering in 1986 and the subsequent increase in its stock price, Gates became the world's then-youngest billionaire in 1987, at age 31. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's wealthiest person for 18 out of 24 years between 1995 and 2017, including 13 years consecutively from 1995 to 2007. Gates became the first centibillionaire in 1999, when his net worth briefly surpassed US$100 billion. According to Forbes, as of February 2026, his net worth stood at US$107.7 billion, making him the 18th-wealthiest individual in the world.