BUSINESS

Friday Briefing

Since being hospitalized with acute pneumonia for two weeks, Pope Francis has signed off on the appointment of 20 bishops, accepted the resignations of at least four and approved moving five people along the road to sainthood, according to the daily bulletin on the Vatican website. Some of the events noted were more esoteric, like … Read more

After World War I, Germany, which had invaded Belgium, had to fork over billions to cover the damages the war had caused. The end of World War II saw Japan, after invading the Philippines, forced to pay reparations. But as President Trump tries to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he has flipped traditional U.S. foreign … Read more

Boris Spassky, the world chess champion whose career was overshadowed by his loss to Bobby Fischer in the “Match of the Century” in 1972, died on Thursday in Moscow. He was 88. His death was announced by the International Chess Federation, the game’s governing body, which did not cite a cause. He had been sick … Read more

Fearful that their son was becoming entangled in a gang and having failed to change his behavior, two London parents tricked him into traveling to Ghana, where they enrolled him in a strict boarding school and left him. A judge ruled on Thursday that they were acting in his best interest. The boy, now 14, … Read more

While sitting beside Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom in the Oval Office on Thursday, President Trump said repeatedly that he trusted Vladimir V. Putin of Russia not to violate the terms of whatever peace deal that might soon be reached to end the war in Ukraine. “I think he’ll keep his word,” … Read more

Rose Girone was eight months pregnant and living in Breslau, Germany, in 1938 when her husband was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. She secured passage to Shanghai, only to be forced to live in a bathroom in a Jewish ghetto for seven years. Once settled in the United States, she rented whatever she could … Read more

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia lauded the Trump administration on Thursday for its efforts to mend ties with the Kremlin. Speaking in Moscow at the annual meeting of Russia’s intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, Mr. Putin praised the new U.S. administration for “pragmatism, a realistic worldview” and “discarding many stereotypes, so-called ‘rules’ and … Read more

On the face of it, the Russian actor Yura Borisov was an unlikely actor to land an Oscar nomination in 2025. Just a few years ago he played a guileless soldier in a Kremlin-sponsored movie that celebrated a Soviet tank model. Later, he starred in a biopic of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the man who invented the … Read more

The mother of a jailed British Egyptian activist has been hospitalized and is at risk of sudden death, a doctor has said, as her hunger strike to demand her son’s release reached 151 days. Laila Soueif, the mother of Alaa Abd El Fattah, one of Egypt’s best-known political prisoners, has survived since late September on … Read more