U.S. figure skater Maxim Naumov carried the memory of his late parents with him to the Olympics on Tuesday night, delivering an emotional, heartfelt short program at the Milan Cortina Games that fulfilled a dream they had long shared together.

His parents, former pairs world champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, were among the 67 people killed — more than two dozen of them members of the figure skating community — when American Airlines Flight 5342 crashed into a military helicopter on approach to Ronald Reagan National Airport and fell into the icy Potomac River on Jan. 29, 2025.

One of the last conversations Naumov had with his parents was about what it would take to make the Olympics.

“I’ve been inspired by them since day 1, ever since we stepped on the ice together,” said Naumov, who brought an old photograph of that moment to the kiss-and-cry at the Milano Ice Skating Arena, the little tyke standing between his parents as he stepped foot on the ice for the first time, the three of them all smiling for the camera.

“It’s not necessarily thinking about them specifically,” Naumov said, “but their presence. Feeling their presence. With every glide and step that I made on the ice, I couldn’t help but feel their support, almost like a chess piece on a chess board.”

What made one of the feel-good stories of the Winter Games even more special was the performance.

While a long shot to make the top 10 at the Olympics, much less land on the podium, the 24-year-old Naumov nevertheless had one of the best short programs of his career. He opened with a quad salchow as his godmother, Gretta Bogdan, watched from the stands, and he followed up with a triple axel and a triple lutz-triple toe loop to finish out the program.

As the last notes of “Nocturne No. 20” by Frederic Chopin reverberated through the arena, and the crowd rose to its feet, Naumov slid to a stop on his knees and looked to the sky, telling his parents: “Look at what we’ve done.”

“I didn’t know if I was going to cry, smile or laugh,” he said afterward, “and all I could do was look up at them. And man, I still can’t believe what just happened. I think it’s going to take me a few hours or maybe a few weeks to know.”

His score of 85.65 was enough to make it through the short program, giving him another opportunity to perform when the men’s free skate takes place Friday night.

The plane carrying Naumov’s parents also had aboard 11 young skaters, two other coaches and several family members who had been attending a development camp in Wichita, Kansas, following the 2025 national championships.

Naumov’s parents were coaches at the Skating Club of Boston, which lost six members in the midair crash.

Naumov had flown out earlier, shortly after he had finished in fourth place for the third consecutive year.

“I can’t describe how difficult it was at the very beginning, and through month after month of really just trying my hardest to keep a positive mindset, and focus on day to day, thankfully, skating became a tool that actually helped me overcome that,” Naumov told CBS News Boston last month during his Olympic training at the Skating Club.

The idea of fulfilling the Olympic dream he harbored with his parents pushed him on. And when he finished third at the U.S. championships in January, his spot was all-but secured.

“To be honest,” Naumov said Tuesday night, “I wasn’t thinking about executing anything perfectly or anything like that. I wanted to go out there and just give my heart out. Leave everything out there. Have no regrets. And that’s exactly what I felt.”

“To deal with the tragedy that he’s dealt with, and like he said, get up and do the day. And that’s what he’s done. He’s done one day at a time,” Katharine Steeger, the skating club’s director of membership services, told CBS Boston. “To have Max start us off with such an amazing skate for him, it’s just, there’s really no words.”

This marks the first time since 2014 that the Skating Club of Boston has sent athletes to the Olympics. Along with Naumov, they also sent figure skating pair Emily Chan and Spencer Akira Howe.

In the crowd Tuesday, dozens of American flags waved when Naumov’s program came to a conclusion. At one end of the arena, a fan held up a big flag that read, “Tomorrow’s Champions,” and carried the logo of the Skating Club of Boston — “Tomorrow’s Champions” is the name of the skating school there that his parents founded and Naumov now oversees.

“From the time that my name was announced in the warm-up to right before the skate,” Naumov said, “I felt it — just the crowd, the energy, the roar. It’s like a buzz, you know? In your body. I couldn’t help but just embrace it. Embrace that love.”

DHAKA, Bangladesh — When Tarique Rahman, the son of a former prime minister of Bangladesh, returned to the country in December after 17 years of self-imposed exile, he declared to his supporters: “I have a plan.”

Rahman returned at a time of upheaval. Bangladesh was seemingly adrift under an interim administration as it inched closer to a nationwide poll. Many Bangladeshis felt his return offered the country a new chance. His fiercest rival, the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, would be absent from the election after being toppled by a violent student-led revolt in 2024.

Barely two months later, Rahman is widely seen as the front-runner in Thursday’s election. He restated his ambitions at a campaign rally in Dhaka on Monday, arriving at the podium under heavy security as supporters spilled into a public park, dancing and cheering.

“The main goal and objective of this plan is to change the fate of the people and of this country,” he told the crowd.

That task will not be easy for whoever wins.

The election in Bangladesh follows a tumultuous period that has been marked by mob violence, rising religious intolerance, attacks on the press, the rise of Islamists and the fraying of the rule of law. A fair election will be a major challenge. Governing in its aftermath may prove an even sterner test for democratic institutions weakened by more than a decade of disputed polls and shrinking political space.

“An election with relatively little violence in which people are able to vote freely and all sides accept the outcome would be a significant step forward,” said Thomas Kean of the International Crisis Group, a think tank devoted to resolving conflicts. Yet he cautioned that the restoration of democracy, after facing severe strains under Hasina’s rule, would be a long-term challenge.

That process, Kean said, has “only just started.”

Rahman — the 60-year-old son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia — has been promising job creation, greater freedom of speech, law and order, and an end to corruption. His campaign seeks to portray him as a bulwark of democracy in a political landscape long dominated by entrenched parties, military coups and vote rigging.

Though Rahman never held office in his mother’s governments, many Bangladeshis saw him as wielding considerable influence within her Bangladesh Nationalist Party until her death in December.

BNP’s main opponent is an 11-party coalition led by Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s foremost Islamist party, still shadowed by its collaboration with Pakistan during the 1971 war of independence. On Monday, its chief Shafiqur Rahman told supporters at a rally that the alliance has come together “with the dream of building a new Bangladesh.”

With Hasina’s Awami League party absent from the poll and calling on its supporters to stay away, Jamaat-e-Islami is seeking to expand its reach. The conservative party claims it would govern with restraint if elected to power, but its ascent has sparked unease, particularly over its views on women. The party chief has said women are biologically weaker than men and should not work eight hours a day like men, raising fears it could restrict the fundamental rights of women.

Anxieties over Bangladesh’s future are echoed particularly by those who were part of the uprising that paved the way for the election.

When Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus assumed office three days after Hasina’s ouster, there was optimism among many. Later, student leaders of the uprising launched a new political outfit, the National Citizen Party, styling itself as a clean break from the old political order.

That promise faded after the party joined the Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance, leading to disillusion among some leaders, several of whom quit.

Tasnim Jara, a public health expert who resigned from the NCP and is running as an independent candidate, said the uprising had “opened a window” for people like her to enter politics and help reshape its culture. But that hope faded once the NCP aligned itself with the Islamists.

She said it became hard for her to see how a genuinely new political culture that many in Bangladesh have long sought could emerge from such an arrangement.

“I struggled to see how a new political culture could genuinely thrive within that framework,” she said.

Arafat Imran, a student at Dhaka University, said he joined the uprising expecting change, but feels that the aspirations that led to the protests “have not been realized.”

Imran noted that though the uprising brought new political faces, the core machinery of the state — the military, police and bureaucracy — remains largely unchanged.

True reform or meaningful change, Imran said, would require overhauling the entire system, adding that “holding elections every five years alone cannot sustain democracy.”

“Alongside elections, it is essential to guarantee the rule of law and civil rights. Had these been ensured, there might have been grounds for satisfaction regarding the elections,” he said.

Worries have also spilled into other areas crucial to a healthy democracy.

Roksana Anzuman Nicole, a popular Dhaka talk-show host, became a rare media voice during the uprising, challenging security forces as hundreds were killed on the streets.

After Hasina’s ouster, hopes that such freedoms would expand also faded. Nicole is now off air, confined to her home, and fearful for her safety after a heated debate with a guest defending mob attacks led to threats against her, her family and colleagues.

“A major pillar of that movement was the belief that everyone would be able to speak freely, that people would enjoy freedom of expression. Sheikh Hasina left on August 5, and just 10 days later, my dreams collapsed,” she said.

Her experience is shared by others too. In December, a pro-uprising cultural activist was shot dead in central Dhaka, and protesters set fire to the offices of the country’s two largest newspapers, trapping staff inside. Last week, 21 journalists from an online outlet reporting critically on the military were briefly detained.

Many journalists told The Associated Press they have curtailed their movements or stopped going to work altogether. Many have lost their jobs as they have been branded by pro-uprising activists as collaborators of Hasina. Global human rights groups have expressed their concerns over press freedom under the Yunus-led administration.

“A free press is vital for a flourishing democracy,” said Catherine Cooper of the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, one of the groups observing the election. “Protecting freedom of expression should be a top priority.”

Many Bangladeshis are putting their trust in the election. The vote will also include a referendum for political reforms that include prime ministerial term limits and stronger checks on executive power.

There is, however, uncertainty over how the nation’s democracy would look in the years to come.

Iftekhar Zaman, a Bangladeshi political analyst, said for the first time in 16 years, Bangladeshis will have a genuine chance to vote, after three elections under Hasina were marred by allegations of rigging or opposition boycotts. He described the poll as “extraordinary,” but warned that reinforcing democratic institutions would take time.

Kean of the International Crisis Group said while some of the proposed reforms are “significant and meaningful,” they won’t be enough.

“The political culture has to change as well, and we are only seeing the first signs of that,” he said.