BERLIN — Germany’s defense minister announced Wednesday that she would partially disband the most elite and highly trained special forces in the country, saying it had been infiltrated by far-right extremism. The defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said one of four fighting companies inside the special forces had become so infested with far-right extremism that it […]
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ImageA police officer in Hong Kong on Tuesday standing guard near protesters opposing Beijing’s new national security legislation for the city. The law criminalizes, among other things, threats to China’s national unity, including calls for Hong Kong to become independent from the mainland.Credit…Vincent Yu/Associated Press After many years of rejecting the people of Hong Kong’s […]
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Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device: Via Apple Podcasts | Via Spotify | Via Stitcher A New York Times investigation has revealed evidence of a secret Russian operation to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan — and of the failure of the Trump administration to act on that intelligence. As lawmakers from […]
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TAIPEI, Taiwan — China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has long tried to convince Taiwan that unification was a historical inevitability, alternately enticing the democratic island with economic incentives while bluntly warning that any move toward formal independence would be answered with military force. Now, the incentives are gone and the warnings seem more ominous following Mr. […]
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WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday designated the Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE as national security threats, cutting them off from billions of dollars in federal broadband subsidies. The agency voted unanimously last year to bar telecommunications manufacturers it deemed to be threats from receiving money meant to expand internet access to underserved […]
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When a major explosion lit the skies on the edge of Tehran last week, the Iranian government was quick to dismiss the episode as a gas explosion at the Parchin military base, which was once the focus of international nuclear inspectors. It turned out that was false: Satellite photographs show the explosion happened at a […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — Confronting a surge of cyberattacks attributed to the Chinese government, Australia moved to bolster its defenses on Tuesday, promising to recruit at least 500 cyberspies and build on its ability to take the battle overseas. The investment of 1.35 billion Australian dollars ($930 million) over the next decade is the largest the […]
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WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. assailed President Trump on Saturday for failing to punish Russia for offering bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, while the White House denied that Mr. Trump had been briefed on the months-old classified intelligence assessment about Russia’s activities. Citing officials briefed on […]
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WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter. The United States concluded months ago that […]
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BANGKOK — Three Thai dissidents went missing in Laos for months. Then, last year, two of their bodies turned up on the banks of the Mekong River, their limbs bound and bellies filled with concrete. Another three Thai activists who fled to Vietnam have not been seen for more than a year, ever since they […]
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In the same week that Chinese and Indian soldiers engaged in a deadly brawl, one of China’s submarines cruised through the waters near Japan, prompting a scramble of aircraft and ships to track its furtive movements. Chinese fighter jets and at least one bomber buzzed Taiwan’s territorial airspace almost daily. With the world distracted by […]
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BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Seven Colombian soldiers have been charged in the rape of a 13-year-old Indigenous girl, an announcement that has alarmed many in a nation already grappling with the military’s long record of abuse, including illegal killings and accusations of sexual assaults. The charges, brought on Thursday by Attorney General Francisco Barbosa, accuse six […]
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AL JIFTILIK, West Bank — Hamdan Saeed rises at 5:30 each morning to sell hot coffee to Palestinian and Israeli motorists along Route 90, the main highway through the Jordan Valley, a resource-rich borderland in the occupied West Bank. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push to annex the area has him worried that he could […]
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SEOUL, South Korea — One of North Korea’s favorite geopolitical strategies has long been compared to dipping alternately in pools of scathingly hot and icy cold water in a public bathhouse. Just a week ago, Kim Yo-jong, the only sister and key aide of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, threatened to kill the country’s agreements […]
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KONGOUSSI, Burkina Faso — Market day was in full swing when soldiers sped into the northern town of Taouremba, firing in the air, as their drone buzzed overhead. They herded the men into the central marketplace, residents said, letting the women run home. A soldier began reading names from a tablet computer, and those who […]
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NEW DELHI — Tensions between Indian and Chinese troops have simmered since early May in the remote, high Karakoram mountains that separate India’s northern Ladakh region from the alkaline desert of Aksai Chin, which is claimed by India but controlled by China and abuts its Xinjiang province. It is a forbidding landscape of cold deserts, […]
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NEW DELHI — An Indian government minister has called for Chinese restaurants to be closed. Other Indian officials have suddenly put contracts to Chinese companies under review. And crowds of men are now smashing Chinese-made televisions in the street. A wave of anti-Chinese anger is cresting across India as the nation struggles to absorb the […]
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Vera Lynn, who sang the songs that touched the hearts and lifted the spirits of Britons from the bomb-blitzed streets of London and Coventry to the sands of North Africa and the jungles of Burma during World War II, died on Thursday at her home in Sussex, England. She was 103. Her death was confirmed […]
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MOSCOW — In the 13 months since the swashbuckling Russian sociologist was kidnapped by terrorists in the Libyan capital, he has been tortured, starved and tormented with mock beheading by sadistic Islamists. Through it all, he stoutly rejected demands that he confess to being a Russian spy. That at least is Russia’s big-screen version of […]
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India broke his silence on Wednesday over the 20 Indian soldiers killed this week by Chinese forces along the nations’ disputed border, warning that his country was capable of “giving a befitting reply.” In a short televised speech, Mr. Modi said that “the sacrifice of our soldiers will not be […]
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The killing of 20 Indian soldiers at the hands of Chinese troops armed with rocks and wooden clubs along a disputed border high in the Himalayas was a startling culmination of years of skirmishes between military forces from both countries. But the burst of deadly violence — the first in the region in more than […]
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Twenty Indian soldiers were killed by Chinese troops late Monday in a clash along the disputed India-China border, the first such episode in decades, military experts said. The violence is a continuation of a decades-old dispute between the two nuclear powers over the precise location of their Himalayan border. What is the ‘Line of Actual […]
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NEW DELHI — An Indian Army officer and two soldiers were killed by Chinese troops late Monday in clashes along the disputed India-China border, Indian officials said, raising tensions between the world’s two most populous nations. Preliminary reports on Tuesday indicated that the soldiers had not been shot, but had been killed in a rock-throwing […]
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BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Bashar al-Assad, who has mostly won Syria’s civil war, now faces an acute economic crisis that has impoverished his people, brought about the collapse of the currency and fueled a rare public rift in the ruling elite. Government salaries have become nearly worthless. Protests against falling living standards have broken out […]
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GOTHENBURG, Sweden — The 2009 meeting in Shanghai between the Swedish union leader and the “Chinese Henry Ford” started in a minibus ride and ended in one of the financial capital’s most opulent hotels. There, the men struck an unlikely alliance to save the struggling Swedish carmaker Volvo. The president of Geely Auto Group, Li […]
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President Trump oversold his administration’s military record in a commencement speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Saturday. Here’s a fact-check of his claims. What Was Said “To ensure you have the very best equipment and technology available, my administration has embarked on a colossal rebuilding of the American armed forces, […]
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CAIRO — The United Nations chief expressed horror at the discovery of at least eight mass graves in Libya in recent days and called for a prompt and transparent investigation into possible war crimes. The graves were uncovered after fighters loyal to Khalifa Hifter, whose 14-month campaign to capture Tripoli collapsed in recent weeks, retreated […]
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MAKESHIFA, Iraq — The assailants came at dusk, creeping on foot through the dusty palm groves near the Tigris River, armed only with a rocket-propelled grenade, a light machine gun and Kalashnikovs. They had laid roadside bombs to kill anyone who rushed to help the unsuspecting local guards, who were in their sights. When the […]
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The threats are swirling around the president: Deaths from the virus in Brazil each day are now the highest in the world. Investors are fleeing the country. The president, his sons and his allies are under investigation. His election could even be overturned. The crisis has grown so intense that some of the most powerful […]
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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said on Tuesday that it would cut off all communication lines with South Korea, including military hotlines, as it vowed to reverse a recent détente on the Korean Peninsula and start treating the South as an “enemy.” North Korea made the decision when its top officials in charge of […]
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China and India have stepped back from a tense confrontation along their shared border high in the Himalayas, pledging to resolve disputes over territory through diplomatic and military channels, India’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. The announcement came a day after military commanders from the two sides met near Chushul, a border village at the […]
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