WASHINGTON — President Trump walked on the muddy, rain-drenched grounds of Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday, finding himself in an unusual position for a voluble man: a solitary figure, as he attended a ceremony to lay wreaths for the fallen. It was a studied contrast, and an implicit atonement, to his decisions last month to […]
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MOSCOW — Ukraine took a major step on Saturday toward establishing its own, autonomous Orthodox Church, setting the stage for increased tensions with Russia by altering a centuries-old religious tradition under which the Kiev church answered to Moscow. Some 190 bishops, priests and other church figures spent the day closeted in St. Sophia’s Cathedral in […]
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HERAT, Afghanistan — It was supposed to be a grand moment for President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan — the opening of a new trade corridor that brought his landlocked country a link to Europe through Central Asia, and promised him some rare positive news as a re-election campaign approaches. But what grabbed the headlines after […]
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MOSCOW — Ukrainian officials have been raising alarms about what they say is a huge buildup of Russian troops, tanks and artillery pieces along their border that could signal preparations for an invasion. While the Russian military presence along the border is undisputed, some analysts have questioned its characterization as a buildup that might telegraph […]
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PARIS — Last Saturday, Thomas Mirallès donned a yellow vest in his hometown in southern France and headed out to protest President Emmanuel Macron and high taxes. Afterward, he and other demonstrators around the country returned home, just as they had done every weekend for the past month. But though they were no longer gathered […]
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LONDON — I’ve recently been struck by how much following British politics reminds me of watching “Lost,” the long-running TV series from the early 2000s. The show was about a group of plane-crash survivors and was built on a bewildering structure of flashbacks, flash-forwards and, by Season 6, flash-sidewayses. It featured mysterious number sequences, a […]
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The Republican Party has recently shown great creativity — and great lack of shame — in seeking to hold on to power at all costs, even after losing elections. Lame-duck Republican legislatures in Wisconsin and Michigan are trying to strip incoming Democratic governors and attorneys general of power. Now, here come the Democrats with their […]
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ISTANBUL — The Turkish president is threatening to mount a new incursion into northern Syria, accusing the United States of failing to tackle the security threats Turkey faces in the region. Turkish commando units were deploying Friday to the border with northeastern Syria, the Turkish news media reported, raising the possibility of an inadvertent confrontation […]
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BRUSSELS — Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain headed home flustered and empty-handed on Friday after a blunt exchange at a European Union summit meeting, where Mrs. May’s entreaties for help to amend a withdrawal deal that would satisfy her Parliament were rejected. The outcome, which the British press described as a humiliation of Mrs. […]
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WASHINGTON — Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, announced Friday that he would resign at the end of the year, again opening up the seat previously held by John McCain and creating a showdown between Republicans in Washington and Arizona over who should replace Mr. Kyl in an increasingly competitive state. In a letter to […]
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NEW DELHI — Sri Lanka’s political crisis appeared to edge toward a resolution Friday when one of the two men claiming to be the country’s rightful prime minister agreed to step down. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa planned to relinquish his claim to be prime minister in an address to the nation on Saturday, according to […]
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FOX CROSSING, Wis. — Scott Walker, rejected by Wisconsin voters in his quest for a third term as governor, has spent recent days trying to define how his eight years in office are remembered. He posted 21 tweets in 25 minutes, each starting with “OUR LEGACY” and listing an accomplishment. Facing angry accusations on Facebook, […]
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DONGGUAN, China — China’s consumers and businesses are losing confidence. Car sales have plunged. The housing market is stumbling. Some factories are letting workers off for the big Lunar New Year holiday two months early. China’s economy has slowed sharply in recent months, presenting perhaps the biggest challenge to its top leader, Xi Jinping, in […]
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Stocks in Asia and Europe fell on Friday, and futures markets suggested shares in the United States would also drop as another week of volatile trading came to a close. In China, disappointing figures for retail sales and industrial output added to the country’s worsening economic outlook. Markets across Asia dropped. The SSE index in […]
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If the British were to follow the German press, they’d find a suggestion in the tabloid Bild that the unofficial motto of British politics has become: “If it’s real then I don’t want to know.” But the hard-core Conservative Brexiteers who decided to try to overthrow Prime Minister Theresa May on the eve of a […]
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An outspoken Chinese pastor and his wife face up to 15 years in prison after being charged with inciting to subvert state power, a sign that Chinese authorities are intensifying a crackdown on religious groups, one of the most serious in recent decades. Wang Yi, 45, who runs the independent Early Rain Covenant Church in […]
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Incoming Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from New York’s 14th Congressional District, has gotten a lot of media attention since her primary win in June. But she seems to be of particular interest to conservative outlets. An unabashed democratic socialist, she has faced scrutiny of her background, her finances, her grammar, her social media use and […]
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BRUSSELS — After winning a confidence vote and saving her job for now, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain on Thursday faced the even tougher task of extracting concessions from European Union leaders to try to salvage her embattled agreement on leaving the bloc. It may prove impossible, given the divisions in the British Parliament […]
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LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May survived a revolt on Wednesday by the hard-line, pro-Brexit parliamentary faction of her Conservative Party. That will give her some time to try to get her plan for leaving the European Union — the same one that spurred the revolt — through Parliament. But the final tally in the […]
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In the past decade, North Carolina has been a central battleground for the partisan fight over voting restrictions. Since their takeover of the state’s General Assembly in 2010, Republicans have devised district maps and pushed through voter identification laws that have prompted a series of high-profile court cases. In a state that retained literacy tests […]
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