World

"Russian and Chinese military aircraft probed South Korean and Japanese air defenses last week, leading the South Koreans to fire more than 300 warning shots before the intruders departed. This was just the latest manifestation of a deepening..."

"The London-born photographer Mark Neville is best known as a documenter of discrete communities, whose circumstances and concerns he records with an activist energy. In 2004, in Port Glasgow, he completed a series of photographs that was..."

"Daily headlines tell the story of China’s mass internment of Uighurs in its Xinjiang province, along with the closing and destruction of Uighur mosques and the demolition of their neighborhoods. But the press largely ignores other aspects of..."

"The United Kingdom has a new prime minister, again, roughly three years after Theresa May took over to clean up David Cameron’s Brexit mess. The new PM is Boris Johnson, one of the many European politicians to be portrayed as a local equivalent..."

"Boris Johnson, Britain's next prime minister, is a pragmatist, and having been born in the United States, understands America as well as perhaps no other politician since Winston Churchill. He recognizes the paramount importance of the post..."

"The rebuff from Berlin may have been rough, but at least it marked a new age of clarity. Not only did the German government decline a recent American request to send ground troops to Syria to fight the remnants of ISIS, but it didn’t even..."

"Fredrik Andersson’s family has run a farm in Arboga, Sweden, for three generations. It’s only in recent years that the seven-decade-old farm, now 450 hectares, has had to face up to climate change–induced extreme weather, he says. But for the..."

"On July 4, 1982, a car with diplomatic plates carrying senior Iranian envoys was stopped outside of Beirut by members of a right-wing Christian militia. Among the four passengers was Ahmad Motevaselian, the military attaché at Iran’s Embassy in..."

"The likely successor to British Prime Minister Theresa May, Boris Johnson, has plans to subsume the government department overseeing development aid into the foreign office, effectively eliminating it. That will destroy a post-Brexit United..."

"As Europe moved toward war in the summer of 1914, two battleships were being built for the Ottoman Empire in British shipyards. Worried about signs of an Ottoman-German alliance, Winston Churchill, then first lord of the admiralty, seized the..."

"Brazilian officials claim that they can do whatever they want to “their” Amazon. At a time when the world is more aware than ever of the imminent threat posed by climate change, the need to resist this approach is obvious."

"India’s water crisis offers a striking reminder of how climate change is rapidly morphing into a climate emergency. Piped water has run dry in Chennai, the southern state of Tamil Nadu’s capital, and 21 other Indian cities are also facing the..."

"Joe Biden just made his foreign policy pitch to the American people: If you elect me, I will try to undo all the damage Trump has done. The 2020 Democratic frontrunner unveiled his foreign policy platform in a nearly hour-long speech at the City..."

"The past two weeks has seen a surge in reporting on how U.S. Customs and Border Protection treats immigrants as they enter the country. On Monday, July 1st, lawmakers toured border-patrol facilities in El Paso and Clint, Texas, and spoke with..."

"What had motivated Inoue and his band to undertake their terrorist acts? After all, neither Zen nor Buddhism is known for its involvement in terrorism. Following his father’s death in 1926, Emperor Hirohito had ascended the throne at a time of..."

"Hong Kong is not Beijing. And July 1, 2019, is not June 4, 1989. First of all, in 1989, the violence in China came almost entirely from the side of the government; the weeks of demonstrations in Beijing and other cities had remained remarkably..."

"Once upon a time, there was a brutal and reckless dictator of an oil-rich Arab country who, despite his well-documented excesses, was stroked and supported by the United States and other Western governments. His crimes were terrible, went the..."

"Vyacheslav Molotov served in senior positions in the Soviet Union for more than a quarter century, including 10 years as Stalin’s foreign minister. He was dismissed in 1949 when he fell out of favor with Stalin, but he found his way back in to..."

""When the German politician Walter Lübcke was found shot in the head outside of his home near Kassel on June 2, commentators were quick to assert that a right-wing extremist was the most likely culprit. Even the police seemed half-hearted in their "

"A couple of weeks ago, a “lighter side of the news” story broke that was compelling in a way that transcended virality, breaking loose into the realm of metaphysics: there is a Norwegian island called Sommarøy, and it wants to “erase the concept..."

"Sometime in the third century b.c., an earthquake struck the eastern Mediterranean. In Thonis-Heracleion, past its peak but still one of Egypt’s greatest ports, the ground began to shake, and the soil gave way. The city had been built upon low..."

"The G20 is supposed to be the time and place for multilateral consensus. Instead, it's become more of a display of the tantrum diplomacy leaders have embraced -- whoever screams the loudest or bullies the hardest is permitted to get their way."

"Shortly before President Trump departed Washington to attend the G20 Summit in Japan, he proclaimed that “Europe treats us worse than China” during a television interview. Yet the existence of the summit itself, and especially the president’s..."

"On June 23, Erdogan and his party suffered a historic debacle in the rerun of the mayoral race in Istanbul. Binali Yildirim, an AKP heavyweight who ran as the candidate of the People’s Alliance between the AKP and the Nationalist Movement Party..."

"President Trump’s Iran policy over the weekend was both erratic and masterful. Doves and isolationists, panicked by what they see as the administration’s inexorable drift toward war, rejoiced when Mr. Trump announced that a military strike had..."

"The meeting was fixed for nightfall at one of Gaza City’s beachfront restaurants. The place is almost empty. Sami (not his real name) sits at a table, looking hesitant. He only starts speaking after the waiter has left us. “I had to get married..."

"The stone wall that runs along the lower boundary of Honen-in temple, on Kyoto’s hilly eastern edge, marks a striking boundary in this ancient center of Buddhist practice. To the right, a jumble of clay-tiled roofs, garden walls, and alleyways..."

"Attacks on international shipping passing through the Strait of Hormuz pose a threat to the world economy, and add more fuel to an already incendiary region. Regardless of the culprit, the United States, Iran, and other players must not overreact."

"And then there were two. Britain’s ruling Conservative Party has spent this month whittling leadership candidates down from an extraordinary 10 — these times need heroes — to Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt. Mr. Johnson is the British Donald Trump."

"In Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, lying — willfully, methodically, shamelessly — is the default response to any accusations of wrongdoing. Russia did not meddle in American elections. Accusations of systematic Olympic doping are malicious..."