GOP braces for energized Dems — As national Republicans dig in to defend their majorities in Congress in the midterm elections, party leaders across the country have grown anxious about losses on a different front: state legislatures. Over the last decade, Republicans have dominated most state capitals, enacting deep tax cuts, imposing new regulations on labor unions and abortion providers and drawing favorable congressional maps to reinforce their power in Washington. Yet that dominance appears to be fraying. National strategists in both parties see the landscape of legislative races expanding, especially in areas around major cities where President Donald Trump has stirred an insurrection among liberals, and college-educated voters and white women have recoiled from Republicans.

New Orleans Carnival season — For this year’s Carnival season in New Orleans, the pre-Lent revelry period, Régine Chassagne, a founder of rock group Arcade Fire, and her husband, Win Butler, the band’s frontman, will highlight their adopted city’s Haitian connections with the kind of primer its residents understand: a raucous procession by their Haitian-themed Mardi Gras troupe. It is likely to be the loudest love song to Haiti to emanate from New Orleans in decades, at a time when many are still stinging from a coarse insult from President Donald Trump and the end of a humanitarian program that allowed more than 45,000 Haitians to live and work in the United States.

Paul Ryan deletes tax tweet — House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., faced a backlash Saturday after he pointed to a secretary’s $1.50 weekly increase in take-home pay as a sign of the Republican tax plan’s success. The article describes a high school secretary, Julia Ketchum, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as “pleasantly surprised” that her pay went up $1.50 a week, or $78 a year, more than enough to cover an annual Costco membership. Ryan deleted the Twitter post in hours, however, after lawmakers and social media users criticized him for appearing to be out of touch. “That tweet about the $1.50 a week is not a PR mistake,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, wrote on Twitter. “It is really what they think.”

Pyeongchang’s Olympics fame — Pyeongchang, a mountain backwater in South Korea’s poorest province, near one of the world’s most dangerous and heavily armed borders, is hosting the Winter Games, which begin Friday. The town’s bid for the 2010 Games failed, as did a bid to host in 2014, but the International Olympic Committee finally gave Pyeongchang, population 43,000, the nod for the 2018 spectacle. “Before we started our Olympic campaign, few South Koreans, much less any foreigners, even knew we existed,” said Lee Ji-seol, a 22-year-old resident.

Israel carries out airstrikes in Egypt — The jihadis in Egypt’s Northern Sinai had killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and briefly seized a major town. Egypt appeared unable to stop them, so Israel, alarmed at the threat just over the border, took action. For more than two years, unmarked Israeli drones, helicopters and jets have carried out a covert air campaign, conducting more than 100 airstrikes inside Egypt — and all with the approval of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Once enemies in three wars, Egypt and Israel are now secret allies in a covert war against a common foe.

Afghans and books — At a time when book publishers in many countries are struggling, those in Afghanistan have been flourishing — despite the country’s chronically low literacy rates: Only 2 out of 5 Afghan adults can read. But those who can seem to be doing it with remarkable regularity, both despite and because of the country’s cyclonic violence, especially recently. Unsurprisingly, Afghanistan’s book publishers have capitalized on this. Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan with a population of more than 5 million, has 22 book publishers, many with their own presses. Scores of others are scattered throughout the country’s 34 provinces.

Opioid woes in Britain — There was something different in the batches of heroin that circulated through the English port city of Kingston Upon Hull over the summer, but most addicts had no idea what it was until their friends and fellow addicts, 16 in all, had died of overdoses. The new kick came from fentanyl, an opiate painkiller 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, that was mixed in with the heroin. Britain already has Europe’s highest proportion of heroin addicts, and last year, drug-related deaths hit a record high 3,744 in England and Wales. British authorities fear that fentanyl could become the country’s next most dangerous drug.

How much longer should Zuma stay? — In December, Cyril Ramaphosa was elected leader of the African National Congress and, given the party’s pre-eminence, became South Africa’s president-in-waiting. That left President Jacob Zuma still in charge. Under South Africa’s constitution, the parliament elects the president. That leaves the ANC with two options if it wants to recall Zuma before the end of his term in 2019: Order him to step down and avoid bringing the matter to parliament; or allow the anti-Zuma camp to join forces with opposition lawmakers to impeach him. Ramaphosa’s allies are pressing Zuma — whose corruption-plagued eight years in office have damaged South Africa’s economy and reputation — to step down as early as possible.