Vice President JD Vance’s defense of a divisive far-right political party in Germany was the latest jarring example of his willingness to embrace a provocative political issue and showed how hard-line immigration policy has emerged as the thread tightly knitting together a global patchwork of populist movements. The thrust of Mr. Vance’s speech on Friday … Read more
Eleanor Maguire, a cognitive neuroscientist whose research on the human hippocampus — especially those belonging to London taxi drivers — transformed the understanding of memory, revealing that a key structure in the brain can be strengthened like a muscle, died on Jan. 4 in London. She was 54. Her death, at a hospice facility, was … Read more
Five technicians secured by wires worked near the curved top of an arched steel structure that loomed the equivalent of 40 stories high, trying to extinguish the last bits of smoldering insulation left by a drone strike. It was snowing; the temperature was below freezing; the steel was covered with ice. The hole from the … Read more
The top foreign policy official for the European Union had a blunt assessment on Friday of the Trump administration’s apparent willingness to give Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, much of what he wants in Ukraine, even before negotiations to end the three-year war begin. “It’s appeasement,” the official, Kaja Kallas, declared at the Munich Security … Read more
President Trump on Thursday ordered his advisers to determine new tariff rates on America’s trading partners, a move that he said would “correct longstanding imbalances in international trade.” As part of his plan, Mr. Trump has taken aim at the value-added tax, a system used widely in Europe and elsewhere to tax the consumption of … Read more
President Trump’s promise to hit the United States’ trading partners with tit-for-tat tariffs — including penalties for taxes that he claims the European Union unfairly imposes on American imports — could hardly come at a worse time for the continent. Mr. Trump on Thursday signed a memo directing his teams to prepare by April “reciprocal” … Read more
A U.S. official overseeing the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah indicated on Friday that Israel would by next week withdraw from occupied towns in southern Lebanon. But his comments added to the uncertainty over whether Israel would remain in a handful of strategic points within Lebanese territory. In a statement released by U.S. Central Command, … Read more
Vice President JD Vance told European leaders on Friday that their biggest security threat was not military aggression from Russia or China, but their own suppression of free speech — including efforts to block hard-right parties from joining governments. An audience that was largely expecting Mr. Vance to lay out the Trump administration’s priorities for … Read more
On Thursday morning, a 24-year-old Afghan refugee drove into a union demonstration in central Munich, injuring nearly 40 people. The police say they are investigating whether the driver, who confessed to a deliberate attack, acted alone. The attack happened just 10 days before federal elections that have been focused on migration, and the crash could … Read more
Fewer than 6,000 people live in Trevethin and Penygarn, a gritty, deindustrialized district amid the hills and valleys of South Wales, and not many expected drama when a vote was called to elect a member of the local municipality, one of the lowest tiers of British government. But as one candidate, Stuart Keyte, a member … Read more