SEOUL — North Korea has long maintained that all six of its nuclear weapons tests were conducted safely. But on Tuesday, a Seoul-based human rights group warned that radioactive contamination may have spread through groundwater from the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, potentially jeopardizing the health of people in North Korea and neighboring countries. The […]
Month: February 2023
In Biden’s Unannounced Visit to Kyiv, a Preview of an Increasingly Direct Contest With Putin
WARSAW — President Biden’s sudden appearance in Kyiv’s presidential palace on Monday morning was intended first as a morale booster for shellshocked Ukrainians in the midst of a bleak winter of power outages and a bitter war of attrition. But it was also the first of several direct challenges on this trip to President Vladimir […]
Biden’s Kyiv Visit Lifts Spirits of War-Wary Ukrainians
KYIV, Ukraine — When Russian forces invaded Ukraine a year ago and sent millions fleeing Kyiv and other cities for safety, traffic jams in the capital spoke to the chaos and uncertainty gripping the nation. But on Monday, when the streets of the capital were snarled to the point of immobility, the traffic was a […]
Russia-Ukraine War News: Live Updates
Bristling against U.S. claims that Beijing may be poised to send “lethal support” to help Russia’s war in Ukraine, China accused the Biden administration on Monday of spreading lies and defended its close partnership with Russia. Later the same day, China’s most senior foreign policy official arrived in Moscow for talks, according to Russian state […]
Despite War, Ukrainian Dance Group Returns for the ‘America’s Got Talent’ Finale
The Light Balance Kids, a Ukrainian youth dance group, wowed viewers with a high-octane performance last month on the first episode of ‘America’s Got Talent: All-Stars.’ The dancers bobbed and wove through an upbeat arcade game-inspired routine, dressed in costumes illuminated by LED lights and acting as players inside a supersized video game. Their performance […]
How Climate Change Is Making Tampons (and Lots of Other Stuff) More Expensive
When the Agriculture Department finished its calculations last month, the findings were startling: 2022 was a disaster for upland cotton in Texas, the state where the coarse fiber is primarily grown and then sold around the globe in the form of tampons, cloth diapers, gauze pads and other products. In the biggest loss on record, […]
Despite Help for Venezuelans in South America, Many Still Head to U.S.
Food shortages triggered by Venezuela’s economic collapse pushed Victor Rojas onto a bus and across the border to Colombia. But soon after arriving, he was in a state of shock. He had quickly gone from studying music at a university in Caracas and performing in orchestras to playing violin for tips on the streets of […]
One Year Into War, Putin Is Crafting the Russia He Craves
A nationwide campaign urging children to make candles for soldiers has become so popular, he said, that anyone questioning it in a school chat group might be called a “Nazi and an accomplice of the West.” At the same time, he argued, daily life has changed little for Russians without a family member fighting in […]
Why Milan’s Duomo Cathedral Is Still So Adored
MILAN — Even in a city with La Scala, the glorious opera house, Milan’s cathedral unquestionably reigns as the most beloved landmark in Italy’s fashion and financial capital. But the Duomo, as it’s known, has also been an extraordinarily high maintenance icon for six centuries, demanding constant care essentially since construction began in 1386. The […]
Blinken Has Tense Meeting With Chinese Official Amid Spy Balloon Furor
The meeting on Saturday night came two weeks after Mr. Blinken abruptly canceled a long-planned trip to Beijing intended as a step toward soothing relations between the United States and China that have been inflamed in recent years, with some analysts worried about the growing potential for future military conflict. The canceled trip and subsequent […]