KABUL, Afghanistan — It started as a dispute between boys: Naseebullah Barakzai, 13, was irked when a neighbor boy stole fruit and ripped limbs from his family’s pomegranate tree, and he shoved the younger boy to the ground, relatives say. Just two days later, Naseebullah was dead, and his village, in the…
Australia, Tell Us the Places in the World You Love the Most
The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. Some days, I wake up longing for Slovenia. My obsession is somewhat odd, seeing as I never had any particular ambition to visit Slovenia. When I found myself there, as part of a work…
France and Me: A Complicated Dance
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. PARIS — In 2009, when I was writing “La Seduction,” a book about seduction as the key to understanding France, I interviewed the nation’s former president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. I eased into…
Kamala Harris calls Trump’s virus response the ‘greatest failure of any presidential administration.’
At the vice-presidential debate on Wednesday night, Senator Kamala Harris of California wasted no time in prosecuting the case against the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. “The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” she said in her…
U.S. Vice-Presidential Debate, New Zealand, Vladimir Putin: Your Thursday Briefing
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good morning. We’re covering the U.S. vice-presidential debate, New Zealand’s second elimination of the coronavirus and the golden age of newsletters. Harris and Pence go head-to-head ImageSenator Kamala Harris of California and Vice President Mike Pence debated in Salt Lake City on Wednesday.Credit…Ruth…
Trump benefits from treatments most Covid-19 patients lacked.
As a buoyant President Trump emerged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center this week, appeared on a balcony at the White House, and proclaimed on Twitter that the public should have no fear of the coronavirus, many Americans saw few parallels between Mr. Trump’s experience with the virus and their own.…
Trump, U.K. Universities, Germany’s Far-Right: Your Wednesday Briefing
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good morning. We’re covering the fallout from President Trump’s illness, coronavirus outbreaks in British universities and hundreds of episodes of far-right extremism in Germany’s security services. Trump’s illness introduces more chaos into the campaign ImagePresident Trump looks out from Marine One upon…
A senior vaccine scientist who blew the whistle on political interference resigns.
A senior vaccine scientist at the Department of Health and Human Services resigned from government service following a long battle with White House appointees over their interference in his efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Rick Bright served as chief of the department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority until six months…
Top China Critic Becomes Its Defender
WASHINGTON — For decades, Robert E. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, was reliably one of Washington’s toughest critics when it came to China and its trade practices. But since brokering a trade deal with Beijing in January, he has become one of China’s biggest defenders within the administration, emerging as an…
Trump, Coronavirus, Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Your Tuesday Briefing
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good morning. We’re covering President Trump’s departure from the hospital, Britain’s huge data-entry mistake and Kamala Harris’s disco-dancing days in Canada. ImagePresident Trump removed his mask after returning to the White House.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times President Trump leaves the…
The White House blocks new coronavirus vaccine guidelines.
Top White House officials are blocking strict new federal guidelines for the emergency release of a coronavirus vaccine, objecting to a provision that would almost certainly guarantee that no vaccine could be authorized before the election on Nov. 3, according to people familiar with the approval process. Facing a White House blockade,…
Trump, Coronavirus, Sanda Dia: Your Monday Briefing
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good morning. We’re covering the latest on President Trump’s treatment for the coronavirus, a cavalier British attitude toward restrictions and the West’s failure to introduce successful contact tracing. ImagePresident Trump’s supporters outside the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Md., on Sunday. Credit…Oliver Contreras…
Russians ‘Have Committed’ to Not Interfering in Elections, Trump Aide Insists
President Trump’s national security adviser said on Sunday that he had warned his Russian counterpart last week that “there would be absolutely no tolerance for any interference” in the November election, but did not mention that American intelligence officials and a range of private firms had said they already saw evidence of…
Attack at German Synagogue During Sukkot Raises Anti-Semitism Fears
BERLIN — A man wearing army fatigues and wielding a shovel attacked and badly injured a Jewish student coming out of a synagogue in Hamburg on Sunday, less than a year after an assault on a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle turned deadly. Security guards and police officers deployed to…
A Black Belgian Student Saw a White Fraternity as His Ticket. It Was His Death.
GHENT, Belgium — Sanda Dia saw a fraternity as a doorway into a different life. The son of an immigrant factory worker, he was an ambitious 20-year-old Black student at one of Belgium’s most prestigious universities. The fraternity, Reuzegom, was home to the scions of Antwerp’s white elites. Access to that rarefied…
Black Germans Say It’s Time to Look Inward
BERLIN — In June, when Jelisa Delfeld joined a Telegram channel to help organize a silent demonstration against racism in Stuttgart, Germany, she was one of fewer than two dozen members. The next day, that number grew to 100, and the following, about 1,000 people had joined the channel where the protest…
The Best Live Animal Feeds From Around the World
If you spend hours scrolling through cat videos online, there’s a scientific explanation for why that’s a hard habit to kick: A new study has found that watching footage of cute animals can reduce your anxiety, blood pressure and heart rate. The study, led by the University of Leeds in Britain, Singapore…
Germany’s Far Right Reunified, Too, Making It Much Stronger
BERLIN — They called him the “Führer of Berlin.” Ingo Hasselbach had been a clandestine neo-Nazi in communist East Berlin, but the fall of the Berlin Wall brought him out of the shadows. He connected with western extremists in the unified city, organized far-right workshops, fought street battles with leftists and celebrated…
After 30 Years, East and West Germans Wonder: How United Are We?
BERLIN — Robert Hellmundt was born in East Germany in 1989, the year that the Berlin Wall fell. Some two decades later, he decided to quit the East after graduating from university, like so many of his generation looking for brighter futures, and move to the capital of a reunified Germany. But…
Tight New Restrictions in Parts of Quebec as Cases Rise Again
The arrival of autumn has brought along the predicted rebound of coronavirus infections, at least in Quebec and Ontario. On Friday, Ontario set a record for the number of new cases in one day and Quebec reported 1,000 new cases for the first time during the second wave. My colleague Dan Bilefsky…