After the fall of Communism, Russia ushered in capitalism by selling off billions of dollars in state assets. Now, 30 years later, the Russian government is stepping up a wartime campaign to do the opposite: seizing private businesses, this time in the name of national security. In the last month, courts have ordered Russia’s largest … Read more
After an intensive search, the police in Germany detained a suspect in a Friday stabbing attack at Berlin’s iconic Holocaust memorial that left one person seriously injured. The attack, two days before a pivotal national election, occurred in the labyrinth of concrete stelae that make up the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located … Read more
Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House official and conservative podcast host, was wrapping up a speech to a right-wing audience outside Washington on Thursday when he made a gesture that some observers, including a far-right French leader, likened to a Nazi salute. Suggesting that President Trump pursue a constitutionally prohibited third term, Mr. Bannon … Read more
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukraine will work “swiftly and very sensibly” on an agreement granting the United States access to its natural resources, in an apparent overture to tamp down tensions that had flared with President Trump over the deal. Kyiv has focused on strengthening its negotiating position as the United States … Read more
The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously ruled against a group of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, saying they could not sue Hungary in the United States to recover the proceeds of property stolen by its state-owned railway. The company robbed hundreds of thousands of Jews before sending them to Nazi death camps in 1944. The … Read more
At a Senate hearing soon after President Trump’s first election eight years ago, Marco Rubio had a simple question for the next U.S. secretary of state: “Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?” Mr. Rubio, then a Florida senator, posed the question to the Texas oilman Rex Tillerson at his confirmation hearing in January 2017. He … Read more
Pope Francis’ complex lung infection is not immediately life-threatening, his doctors said Friday, from the Rome hospital in which he has been treated for the past week, but they warned he is “not out of danger.” The 88-year-old pontiff, who had part of a lung removed in his youth, would remain in the hospital for … Read more
A watercolor by Egon Schiele, “Boy in a Sailor Suit,” is scheduled to be sold next month in London at Christie’s after the auction house brokered a settlement between the consignor and the heirs of a Viennese cabaret performer who owned the work before he was killed in a Nazi concentration camp. The 1914 portrait, … Read more
As the United States and Russia begin talks to end the war, Moscow is pressing its advantage on the battlefield by closing in on Dnipropetrovsk, one of Ukraine’s largest regions and one with a major industrial base. Russian troops are now less than three miles from the region’s border, and they have been pushing forward … Read more
The Swedish authorities said on Friday that they were investigating a new cable break in the Baltic Sea, the latest example of damage to underwater infrastructure in the region. The Swedish Coast Guard said that it had been informed of the cable break on Thursday and was en route to the area, off the eastern … Read more