Many critical issues were left uncertain — including the fate of Ukraine — at the end of Europe’s first encounter with an angry and impatient Trump administration. But one thing was clear: An epochal breach appears to be opening in the Western alliance. After three years of war that forged a new unity within NATO, … Read more
No international body is searching for hundreds of Yazidi women and girls still held captive by the Islamist terrorists. Instead, their fates depend on a ragtag army of activists, relatives and armchair detectives. Feb. 16, 2025 The investigator’s eyes dart between the two photographs. In one, a young girl, maybe 10, is wearing a colorful … Read more
A British couple who had been on a motorcycle tour around the world were detained in Iran, Britain’s foreign office said on Saturday. The couple, Craig and Lindsay Foreman, were last heard from on social media in early January. But this week, Iranian state media reported that two British nationals had been detained on suspicion … Read more
Soon, Irene Mekel will need to pick the day she dies. She’s not in any hurry: She quite likes her life, in a trim, airy house in Castricum, a Dutch village by the sea. She has flowers growing in her back garden, and there is a street market nearby where vendors greet villagers by name. … Read more
Hostile to Russia ever since Soviet tanks appeared near her childhood home in 1968 in what was then Czechoslovakia, the now grandmother was delighted to have her photograph taken with a soldier who was fighting Russian invaders in Ukraine. “He was a hero to me,” Lucia Stasselova, 66, said of the soldier, whom she met … Read more
Secretary of State Marco Rubio prepared for meetings on Sunday in Jerusalem as political chaos rippled across the Middle East over President Trump’s insistent proposals to seize the devastated Gaza Strip and force out its Palestinian residents. The trip is Mr. Rubio’s first to the region as secretary of state, and comes as Israel and … Read more
Three decades ago, he was a scrappy campaigner roaming the world’s corridors of power with a dream to win independence for his tiny homeland. Today, at 75, José Ramos-Horta is both the president and a relentless salesman for East Timor. He asked China’s president, Xi Jinping, to “help us resolve the problem of agriculture, food … Read more
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shocked the audience at the annual security conference in Munich in 2007 by demanding the rollback of domineering American influence and a new balance of power in Europe more suitable to Moscow. He didn’t get what he wanted — then. Nearly two decades later, during the very same conference, … Read more
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, during a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, rejected an offer by the Trump administration to relinquish half of the country’s mineral resources in exchange for U.S. support, according to five people briefed on the proposal or with direct knowledge of the talks. The unusual deal would have granted the United States … Read more
Hamas freed three more Israeli hostages on Saturday as Israel released 369 Palestinian prisoners, prolonging a fragile cease-fire in the Gaza Strip that appeared to be teetering only days ago. The hostages — Alexander Troufanov, 29, known as Sasha; Iair Horn, 46; and Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, one of the few Americans still held in Gaza … Read more