Last Friday afternoon, in the lobby of a Marriott in downtown Stamford, Conn., attendees of the 47th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the annual confab of word nerds hosted by The Times’s puzzle editor, Will Shortz, joyously convened. Veteran puzzlers greeted old friends with the excitement of a homecoming. First-timers smiled nervously, eyeing others’ name tags…
The Cold War-era airstrip, its asphalt gleaming in the sunlight, stretched toward the coastline on the Horn of Africa. A few miles away, dock workers unloaded cargo at a port on the Gulf of Aden, a vital global shipping route frequently under attack by Houthi rebels from Yemen. These two maritime facilities in Berbera city…
Beijing’s 22 million residents were asked to stay indoors on Saturday, as powerful winds swept across northern China. The winds toppled trees, disrupted travel and sports, and caused dust storms across the region. The winds, which in Beijing reached 101 miles per hour on Saturday afternoon local time, stemmed from a polar vortex in Mongolia…
The Finnish Defense Forces sent out an urgent message: We are being invaded. We need help. Hundreds of American troops — part of a new Arctic division — boarded planes in Fairbanks, Alaska. Their flight curved over the North Pole and landed at Rovaniemi Airport, in northern Finland. The soldiers quickly unpacked their M-4 assault…
When Yona Schnitzer, a marketing writer from Tel Aviv, attended the traditional Passover Seder meal last year, he said a special prayer for the return of all of the hostages still being held by Palestinian militants in Gaza. He had thought their freedom would be secured by Passover 2025, but that did not happen. “It’s…
Until late Thursday, it appeared that Prime Minister Mark Carney might finally make it through a week of the current election without pausing his campaign because of President Trump’s trade attacks on Canada. But instead of shaking hands and making announcements, he was back in Ottawa on Friday to chair a special meeting of the…
President Trump didn’t seem to mind as his worldwide tariffs set off stock market sell-offs and wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth. “Be cool,” he told Americans. Then he blinked on Wednesday afternoon in the face of financial turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields that could shake the dominant position of…
To hear President Vladimir V. Putin tell it, Russia’s economy has thrived despite Western sanctions, becoming more self-sufficient and reorienting toward new markets. But there is one company that Russian officials make no secret about missing: Boeing. The aviation giant’s planes play a critical role in Russia’s economy, connecting its far-flung cities. Until the Russian…
A brief handshake may be the most likely outcome from preliminary diplomatic talks set for Saturday between American and Iranian officials. It would probably be enough to keep the discussions going, and potentially lead to the first official face-to-face negotiations between the two countries since President Trump abandoned a landmark nuclear accord seven years ago….
Since President Trump announced his wave of globe-spanning tariffs, Alex Tang has held morning pep talks with the dozen or so workers at his lathe-making factory in central Taiwan, preparing them for rocky times ahead. His business, like all of Taiwan’s export-dependent manufacturers, could be hit hard. Mr. Trump’s 90-day pause on most of the…
