It started in the spring of last year. The Kremlin added a new rhetorical weapon to its regular barrages against President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. “We are aware that the legitimacy of the current head of state has expired,” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said of the Ukrainian leader in May 2024, two months … Read more
In a wooded cemetery in Munich, a white sticker with a puzzling QR code appeared on a gravestone late last year. Then, over the next few weeks, more and more stickers mysteriously appeared, until more than 1,000 graves were marked like goods in a supermarket. “It’s really strange,” Bernd Hoerauf, who oversees the management of … Read more
When Russian forces crashed over the borders into Ukraine in 2022 determined to wipe it off the map as an independent state, the United States rushed to aid the beleaguered nation and cast its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a hero of resistance. Three years almost to the day later, President Trump is rewriting the history … Read more
Souleymane Cissé, an award-winning writer and director who became the first Black African filmmaker to win the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, died on Wednesday in Bamako, Mali. He was 84. His death was confirmed by François Margolin, a French film producer and a close friend of Mr. Cissé’s. Mr. Cissé had just … Read more
Elon Musk’s role as President Trump’s cost-cutting czar and his immersion in right-wing politics appears to be diverting his attention from Tesla at a perilous moment for the electric car company. Tesla’s car sales fell 1 percent last year even as the global market for electric vehicles grew 25 percent. Mr. Musk has not addressed … Read more
Hamas handed over on Thursday what it said were the remains of four Israeli hostages abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, including a woman and her two young children whom Israelis saw as symbols of the viciousness of the Hamas assault. Crowds of Palestinians gathered near the southern Gaza city of … Read more
Trump Wants Greenland. But What Do Greenlanders Want?
Even though many Greenlanders said they are not fans of Mr. Trump, they enjoy watching him push Denmark around. In interviews, they expressed confidence that this would ultimately help them get a sovereign state of their own — something no other Inuit community has achieved — unless America swallows them first. “Everyone I know is … Read more
Friedrich Merz, the man favored to be Germany’s next chancellor after elections on Sunday, is a conservative businessman who has never been a minister and was forced out of government years ago for challenging then-Chancellor Angela Merkel. As a Christian Democrat and committed trans-Atlanticist, he has been considered a potentially better match for President Trump … Read more
Last August, a hotel room in Europe priced at 200 euros was about $224. Today, travelers spending American dollars would pay only $208. On the rise since last autumn, the dollar is strong compared with a number of foreign currencies, including the euro, the Japanese yen and the Canadian dollar. And President Trump’s tariff threat … Read more