Here’s what you need to know: ImageJewish families arriving in freight trains at Auschwitz, the concentration camp where the Nazis exterminated Jews during World War II.Credit…Sovfoto/UIG, via Getty Images Leaders from around the world descend on Jerusalem. Jerusalem is being swarmed by Western presidents, premiers and potentates, all descending on the Holy City to recall […]
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Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device:Via Apple Podcasts | Via Spotify | Via Stitcher After nearly 12 hours of vicious debate, the Senate voted early Wednesday to adopt the rules that will govern the rest of the impeachment trial. But in a Republican-controlled chamber, why weren’t they the rules that Senator […]
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We have long celebrated the ascent of the middle class — from China to the Arab world — as a critical piece in the emergence of open societies and a liberal world order. Scholars and pundits have reassured us that economic liberalization will give rise to powerful middle classes, which will eventually bring about democratic […]
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Here’s what you need to know: Video A debate is under way in the Senate over the ground rules the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, has proposed for President Trump’s trial.CreditCredit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times The Senate’s historic trial of President Trump begins in earnest with a bitter fight. The Senate convened shortly after 1 […]
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BEIJING — When officials in an eastern Chinese city were told to root out “uncivilized behavior,” they were given a powerful tool to carry out their mission: facial recognition software. Among their top targets? People wearing pajamas in public. On Monday, the urban management department of Suzhou, a city of six million people in Anhui […]
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MOSCOW — Nobody knows what’s going on inside the Kremlin right now. And perhaps that’s precisely the point. President Vladimir V. Putin announced constitutional changes last week that could create new avenues for him to rule Russia for the rest of his life. But will they? How? And will he? Mr. Putin’s new prime minister […]
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BEIJING — A former senior Chinese police official who also served as president of Interpol was sentenced on Tuesday to 13 and a half years in prison for bribery, in a case that his wife has denounced as stemming from a political vendetta. When the official, Meng Hongwei, was elected president of Interpol, the French-based […]
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SINGAPORE — When the ruling People’s Action Party (P.A.P.) passed a new law against “fake news” last year, it claimed to want to protect both free speech and national security. Falsehoods, the government said, “have been weaponized, to attack the infrastructure of fact, destroy trust and attack societies.” Since the law came into force in […]
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Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman and the daughter of Angola’s former president, is under scrutiny by her bank and the Angolan government after a leak of more than 700,000 documents showed how she exploited the country’s wealth to enrich herself. EuroBic, a Lisbon-based arm of a bank where Ms. dos Santos is the biggest […]
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia submitted constitutional amendments on Monday that empower a previously toothless advisory council as a powerful policy arbiter, setting up what could be a future role for himself as Russia’s long-term paramount leader. Short on vital details, the proposed changes shed little light on Mr. Putin’s exact plans […]
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PARIS — The reckoning for France’s longest-ever transport strike is not yet in, even as the action itself is losing steam. On Monday, the national rail company said traffic was “near normal” on much of its network, although the strike is not officially over. But when the winners and losers are tallied, one man previously […]
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MUMBAI, India — Jeff Bezos’ ownership of The Washington Post has complicated business for his much bigger company, Amazon, in Trump-era Washington. Now the same thing could be happening in New Delhi under India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, who has increasingly sought to rein in both the international news media and foreign technology companies. Last […]
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BERLIN — Russia, Turkey and a dozen other international powers with competing interests in oil-rich Libya called Sunday for a cease-fire and an arms embargo, committing to end their own interference on the ground to give Libyans space for a political reconciliation. Sunday’s gathering, hosted by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, offered a small glimmer […]
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RICHMOND, Va. — The capital of Virginia is bracing for the arrival on Monday of busloads of demonstrators from across the state and around the nation who are angry over a series of gun-control measures making their way through the state Legislature. Along with mainstream gun-rights activists, the event is also expected to attract white […]
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Communities across the United States are starting to ban facial recognition technologies. In May of last year, San Francisco banned facial recognition; the neighboring city of Oakland soon followed, as did Somerville and Brookline in Massachusetts (a statewide ban may follow). In December, San Diego suspended a facial recognition program in advance of a new […]
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ESSEN, Germany — Growing up in the 1990s in Berlin, the writer Max Czollek remembers, he and classmates occasionally unearthed human bones when they were playing outside their school. Years later, he learned that the site had been used as a deportation center during the Holocaust. “This was a place where Nazis gathered Jews and […]
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MARACAIBO, Venezuela — Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, defied a travel ban and crossed into Colombia on Sunday to round up greater international support for regime change in Venezuela. Mr. Guaidó, who is recognized by the United States and more than 50 countries as Venezuela’s president, and his fellow opposition members are facing increased repression, […]
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AL MUKALLA, Yemen — The death toll in a drone and missile attack on a government military training base in central Yemen rose to at least 76 on Sunday, representing an escalation bound to complicate international efforts to end the country’s prolonged war. The attack targeted soldiers gathered Saturday near a mosque in the central […]
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LISBON — It was the party to be seen at during the Cannes Film Festival, where being seen was the whole point. A Swiss jewelry company had rented out the opulent Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, drawing celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Campbell and Antonio Banderas. The theme: “Love on the Rocks.” Posing for photos at the […]
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CIUDAD TECÚN UMÁN, Guatemala — After days of walking and hitchhiking, a crowd of migrants rushed a bridge at Guatemala’s border with Mexico on Saturday and clashed with Mexican police who used pepper spray and closed the crossing’s large metal gates to keep them out. More than 1,000 migrants were trying to cross the bridge […]
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Old autocrats rarely resign, nor do they just fade away. So when Vladimir Putin slipped proposals for a few changes to the Russian Constitution into his annual state-of-the-nation talkathon last Wednesday, followed immediately by the resignation of the entire government, the presumption was that the president, who is 67, was laying the groundwork to extend […]
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“The E.U. has been a very positive actor in the development of gender equality policies in the U.K.” — Roberta Guerrina, a professor and researcher at Bristol University If all goes to plan, on Jan. 31, at exactly 11 p.m. (midnight in Brussels), after almost four years of bitterly divisive negotiations, three failed withdrawal plans […]
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In recent days both this newspaper and The Wall Street Journal have carried reports on one of the most important geopolitical facts of the 21st century: The world’s great rising power, the People’s Republic of China, is headed for a demographic crisis. Like the United States and most developed countries, China has a birthrate that […]
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