President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in Sochi, Russia, on Monday, in a photo released by the Turkish president’s office.Credit…Murat Cetinmuhurdar/PPO, via Reuters President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia restated his opposition on Monday to the internationally backed Black Sea grain deal, a …
Read More »Russia-Ukraine War: Russian and Turkish Leaders Meet Amid Push to Revive Grain Deal
The Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, center, attended a court hearing in Kyiv on Saturday.Credit…Sergei Chuzavkov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The arrest over the weekend of Ihor Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s richest men, has been seen as a sign of Ukrainian authorities’ drive to root out corruption and curb the influence …
Read More »Zelensky Says He’ll Replace Oleksii Reznikov as Ukraine’s Defense Minister
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that he was replacing his minister of defense, in the biggest shake-up in Ukraine’s war effort since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February last year. The fate of the defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, had been the subject of increasing speculation in Ukraine as financial improprieties …
Read More »Parisian Pools, Up Close and Personal
I slip into the water and push off quickly before the man swimming like a breast-stroking porpoise gets any closer. Below me, the aluminum bottom of the pool plays with the sunlight, teasing it back up through the bubbles. I breathe to the right one last time before doing a …
Read More »Turkey’s Women’s Volleyball Team Inspires Pride
As the volleyball game neared its end, thousands of fans watching on giant screens in an Istanbul park rose to their feet and fell silent. The ball soared, a Turkish player set it up near the net, and her teammate spiked it. Her Italian opponents blocked the shot but knocked …
Read More »In Italy, Rape Cases Seize Attention and Expose Cultural Rifts
Shattered glass surrounds the abandoned swimming pool, along with dilapidated benches, broken tiles and a single dirty mattress. Local police officers have identified the forsaken spot as one of the places where they say two young girls were repeatedly raped by a gang of their peers, all residents of the …
Read More »China to Its People: Spies Are Everywhere, Help Us Catch Them
Beijing sees forces bent on weakening it everywhere: embedded in multinational companies, infiltrating social media, circling naïve students. And it wants its people to see them, too. Chinese universities require faculty to take courses on protecting state secrets, even in departments like veterinary medicine. A kindergarten in the eastern city …
Read More »New Evidence in 2014 Mass Kidnapping of Students in Iguala, Mexico
It is perhaps Mexico’s most notorious cold case — 43 college students shot at by the police, forced into patrol cars, handed over to a drug cartel and never seen again. The mystery has haunted the nation for nearly a decade. How could a relatively unknown gang pull off one …
Read More »Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Pushes Forward, Village by Village
The mission for the Ukrainian unit was to take a single house, in a village that is only a speck on the map but was serving as a stronghold for Russian soldiers. Andriy, a veteran marine, had waited for three days with his small assault team — none of whom …
Read More »Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine’s Offensive Makes Progress
Russian authorities confirmed on Sunday that the 10 people killed in the crash of a private plane north of Moscow on Aug. 23 were those that had been listed on the jet’s manifest. The most prominent was Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, 62, the businessman and leader of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, …
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