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Wednesday Briefing

Nepal, the small Himalayan nation bordering China, was negotiating with Beijing over a major injection of infrastructure financing when the United States stepped in with a lucrative offer. Over five years, the American government would give the country $500 million in grants to expand its electricity grid and improve its roads — a huge sum … Read more

News that the Trump administration had agreed with Russia to try to negotiate a peace settlement for Ukraine, without including Ukraine in the talks, was a revelation that many believed reversed years of efforts to isolate Moscow. But prominent voices in the right-wing media world interpreted the development this week as cause for celebration. “Every … Read more

Pope Francis, who remains hospitalized, has bilateral pneumonia, the Vatican said on Tuesday. The term simply means pneumonia in both lungs, said Dr. James Musser, director of the center for infectious diseases at the Houston Methodist Research Institute. He added that, without examining a patient, he could not say anything specific about his condition. In … Read more

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, was charged Tuesday with overseeing a vast scheme to try to undermine his nation’s trust in the 2022 elections and then overturn that vote even after his allies could not find evidence of fraud. Brazil’s attorney general, Paulo Gonet Branco, indicted Mr. Bolsonaro and 33 other people for a series … Read more

For more than a decade, the West has faced off against the East again in what was widely called a new cold war. But with President Trump back in office, America is giving the impression that it could be switching sides. Even as American and Russian negotiators sat down together on Tuesday for the first … Read more

A man in Florida charged with attempted murder in the shooting of two tourists in Miami Beach on Saturday — he told the police he had thought they were Palestinian — is attributing the violence to a “severe” mental health episode. The man, Mordechai Brafman, 27, was driving when he stopped his truck and got … Read more

Astronomers on Tuesday said that the asteroid designated 2024 YR4 had become the most likely sizable space rock ever forecast to impact planet Earth. The object, first detected in December, is 130 to 300 feet long and expected to make a very close pass of the planet in 2032. Its odds of impacting Earth on … Read more

U.S. and Russia discussed Ukraine, and renewing ties Senior U.S. and Russian officials agreed yesterday not only to work together on ending the war in Ukraine, but also to cooperate on financial investment and re-establishing normal relations. The negotiations were the most extensive in years between the two global powers. The meeting, which took place … Read more

Shortly after the United States’ groundbreaking meeting with Russian officials on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine lashed out at the Trump administration’s negotiating tactics in his harshest terms yet for excluding Ukrainians from talks on their own country’s fate. Speaking after American and Russian officials, meeting in Saudi Arabia, agreed to establish teams to … Read more