When the North Korean men’s soccer team took the field for two 2026 World Cup qualifying matches this month, close observers noticed an important roster change. Han Kwang-song, a high-profile striker, was back, more than three years after vanishing from public view for reasons beyond his control: United Nations-imposed sanctions on North Korean nationals over […]
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When President Biden met President Xi Jinping on Wednesday on the edges of Silicon Valley, there was a subtle but noticeable shift in the power dynamic between two countries that have spent most of the past few years denouncing, undercutting and imposing sanctions on each other. For the first time in years, a Chinese leader […]
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It seemed like a small glimmer of hope for supporters of democracy, after years of authoritarian rule. The election of an opposition candidate to challenge Venezuela’s president, which followed on a commitment from the government to hold free and fair elections next year, led to cautious optimism among Venezuelans and international observers about the possibility […]
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President Biden met with China’s top diplomat on Friday to prepare for Mr. Biden’s planned meeting with President Xi Jinping next month as relations remain strained between Washington and Beijing. Amid cordial talk of cooperation between the United States and China, the official, Wang Yi, wrapped up a visit to Washington. During the three-day trip, […]
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In August 2014, after a serious Israeli-Hamas conflict, ideas were floated about what to do with Gaza, in a confidential options paper provided to The Times. It stated, presciently, that “a return to the status quo ante will produce a new war” and that the Palestinian Authority is “too weak and divided to govern.” The […]
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One million Venezuelans are expected to head to the polls on Sunday to elect an opposition candidate to face President Nicolás Maduro in presidential elections in 2024, a contest that could prove pivotal to the fate of a country that has endured a decade of economic crisis and authoritarian governance. Mr. Maduro came to power […]
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When the Venezuelan government released five political prisoners late Wednesday to cheers from the country’s opposition, it was the most emotional in a rapid series of policy shifts in the South American country that together represent the most significant softening of relations between Venezuela and the United States in years. In a matter of days, […]
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The Biden administration on Tuesday announced additional limits on the kinds of advanced semiconductors that American firms can sell to China, shoring up restrictions issued last October to limit China’s progress on supercomputing and artificial intelligence. The rules appear likely to bring to a halt most shipments of advanced semiconductors from the United States to […]
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Before dawn on Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem sent an email to Americans trapped in Gaza, suggesting they head for the border with Egypt and offering the prospect of escape. It was hardly a promise, though. A weekend of diplomatic talks to open the Egyptian-Gazan border has so far yielded little but confusion, even […]
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The United States imposed sanctions on two shipping companies on Thursday for violating the oil price cap that the Group of 7 nations enacted to starve Russia of energy export revenue, the first such penalties that have been leveled amid growing concerns that the policy has been diminished by evasion and loopholes. The sanctions were […]
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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has long cast himself as a friend of Israel and the Jewish people. He helped establish visa-free travel between Russia and Israel in 2008, presided over the construction of a sprawling Moscow Jewish Museum in 2012 and, side by side with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in 2020, […]
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“Everything needed for the front,” Russia’s finance minister declared, echoing a Soviet slogan from World War II as he talked about the government’s latest spending plans. The government still calls its invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation,” but the new budget figures make clear that the economy is increasingly being restructured around war. Nearly […]
Read MoreInflation has been easing around the world. But what happens next could depend partly on the cost of diesel, a wild card that few analysts have been able to predict well. Higher gasoline prices — lit up on giant signs on streets and highways — are typically the most visible, visceral reminder of inflation to […]
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In June 2014, Dina Esfandiary and Ariane Tabatabai wrote an article in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, making the case that Iran had “genuine and reasonable concerns” about its nuclear fuel supplies and that it would need many more centrifuges to become energy independent. There had to be “a mechanism to guarantee Iranian supply,” […]
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North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, peeked his head into the cockpit of a fighter jet at a factory in the Russian Far East on Friday as he pressed ahead on a multiday tour of Russia that is enticing him at each stop with off-limits military technology. Although Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, hasn’t promised Mr. […]
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The United States on Thursday imposed one of its largest sanctions packages related to the war in Ukraine, penalizing more than 150 companies and individuals that officials said were profiting from Russia’s invasion and their proximity to the Kremlin and President Vladimir V. Putin. The sanctions are part of the U.S. effort “to target Russia’s […]
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President Biden will appoint a former commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker, to be special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery, a new position that signals the Biden administration’s concern about the country’s long-term economic survival even as its war with Russia grinds on. In a statement, Mr. Biden said that Ms. Pritzker “will drive the United States’ […]
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Washington and Moscow flooded the Korean Peninsula with arms and aid as they fueled the war between South and North seven decades ago. Now, in a fateful moment of history turning back on itself, Russia and the United States are reaching out to those same allies to supply badly needed munitions as the powers face […]
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They gazed into the workings of a rocket launchpad. They tucked into crab dumplings, sturgeon and entrecôte. And they lifted their glasses at a flower-lined table in the conference room of a remote Russian spaceport, toasting the Kremlin’s “sacred struggle” against a “band of evil,” otherwise known as the West. The summit between President Vladimir […]
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Following the news lately is enough to make one wonder if coups might be contagious. Military leaders seized power in Gabon on Aug. 30, adding it to a list of at least seven African countries — including Niger just a few weeks earlier — that have experienced military takeovers in the last three years. The […]
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