The Justice Department charged President Biden’s son after the collapse of an earlier plea deal and amid an impeachment investigation by House Republicans.
Desperate for munitions for the war in Ukraine, the U.S. and Russia have turned to their allies in South and North Korea, which kept stockpiling arms for decades after their own conflict.
A 7-year-old boy, his mom and grandparents tried to flee Hawaii’s deadliest wildfire in over a century, and ran into impossible challenges.
The movie about the daring mission to rescue American diplomats from Tehran portrayed a single C.I.A. officer sneaking into the Iranian capital. In reality, the agency sent two officers.
In Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s latest novel, Kidnapped, Soviet bureaucracy is made all the messier by maternal desperation.
Kidnapped: A Story in Crimes by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz
Some months ago I was having dinner with a writer from Moscow. I told him I was thinking of reviewing a new translation of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s Kidnapped, a Bollywood-inspired novella that pays homage to the Soviets’ love of Indian cinema. “Don’t do it,” he—a friend of hers—warned me. “If she doesn’t like what you write, she will turn you into a character in one of her stories—the stupid girl in New York who doesn’t know anything.” Being a longtime admirer of Petrushevskaya, I wasn’t too worried: realism is not her thing.
Away from the front, life appears to be the same, but the country has undergone profound changes.
On August 8 I went to the Jellyfish Museum in Kyiv. During my previous visits to the city, it had been closed because of the war. Now it has reopened. In the gloom the fantastical creatures drifted about in their tanks while couples, friends, and families drifted about happily looking at them. In Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine close to the Russian border, the Half an Hour café, where I wrote for a couple of days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, has also just reopened.
The Globalist Podcast (September 14, 2023) – Humanitarian efforts ramp up as the death toll from flooding in Libya rises.
Plus: a look at China’s ‘interconnected living’ plan for Taiwan, Brazil begins the first trials of pro-Bolsonaro rioters who stormed the country’s centres of power in January and a flick through today’s papers.
“We walked out barefoot and saw our friends and neighbors dying,” said a woman from the hard-hit city of Derna. More than 5,000 are reported dead and 10,000 more are believed to be missing.
Moscow’s missile production now exceeds prewar levels, officials say, leaving Ukraine especially vulnerable this coming winter.
The Perelman Performing Arts Center, a glamorous $500 million project, may yet turn the World Trade Center into a neighborhood, our critic writes.
The former commissioner, Eric Ulrich, pleaded not guilty, as did five other men, several of whom raised money for the campaign of Mayor Eric Adams.
The Globalist Podcast (September 13, 2023) – The US House of Representatives opens an impeachment inquiry into president Biden. Our Washington correspondent Christopher Cermak has the details.
Also in the programme: why Germany is buying more oil from India, president Macron’s plan to transform what critics call “ugly France” and how a severe lemon shortage is affecting Peruvians.
In a catastrophe recalling Hurricane Katrina, a heavy storm burst through dams to unleash their waters on the city of Derna, sweeping away entire neighborhoods.
The move against President Biden, which Speaker Kevin McCarthy had been signaling for weeks, comes as some far-right House Republicans are irate over spending and threatening to depose him.
Israelis are deeply split about what kind of country Israel should be. Four encounters at four recent protests show how that division plays out in daily life.
A “striking fist” in the North, and river crossings in the South. Along a jagged 1,000-mile front, the fighting is multifaceted — and relentless.
The Globalist Podcast (September 12, 2023) – Kim Jong-un reportedly arrives in eastern Russia for arms talks with Vladimir Putin, as Moscow seeks to replenish its dwindling stockpile. Who has the upper hand and how will the meeting be portrayed for home audiences?
Plus: Israel’s supreme court prepares to rule on its own future and we discuss the British parliamentary researcher accused of spying for China.
Beijing’s influence campaign using artificial intelligence is a rapid change in tactics, researchers from Microsoft and other organizations say.
The people of a village high in the Atlas Mountains erupted in anger when the Moroccan government left them alone for three days to dig out and bury their loved ones.
As its universe of dining guides expands to new places, the company is asking those regions to help pay the bill. And some chefs fear the honors are fostering a world of restaurant clones.
Officials say the future of wildfire detection is cameras. But in northwest Montana, solitary humans on mountaintops still do more than machines alone can offer.
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