China launched military exercises pressing in on Taiwan on Tuesday, sending warships and fighter planes in what Beijing said was a warning to the island democracy’s president, Lai Ching-te, after he called China a “foreign hostile force.” Chinese land, navy, air and missile forces would “approach close” to Taiwan and practice “seizure of overall control,…
The travel agency offered tours aimed solely at men, and that was enough to attract the attention of the police enforcing new Russian laws that restrict the rights of gay people. One night in December, officers stormed the apartment of the agency’s owner and tied him up, he later told a court. “Fifteen people came…
The U.S. fired a new round of sanctions at China on Monday, targeting six high-level Chinese and Hong Kong officials over what it described as acts of transnational repression for their crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and on U.S. soil. The move was the first significant step by the new Trump administration to…
The extremists began by asserting control over women’s bodies. In the political vacuum that has emerged after the overthrow of Bangladesh’s authoritarian leader, religious fundamentalists in one town declared that young women could no longer play soccer. In another, they forced the police to free a man who had harassed a woman for not covering…
Around sunset during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, something remarkable happens in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka. The streets in this city of more than 10 million people, known for its hectic bustle and choking traffic, turn quiet and empty. But for political parties, which know well the persuasive powers of full bellies, sunset is…
Yoon Suk Yeol, the president of South Korea, who was impeached in December over his failed attempt to impose martial law, will learn on Friday whether he will be formally removed from office or returned to power, the nation’s top court said on Tuesday. Suspense was building in South Korea as the country waited for…
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. For months, Selam Gebrekidan, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, would stare at a maze of handwritten diagrams, drawings and charts on a wall inside her Hong Kong apartment. She was trying to…
Last year, Marine Le Pen spoke menacingly of the possible fallout from her trial on embezzlement charges. “Tomorrow, potentially, millions and millions of French people will see themselves deprived of their candidate for the presidency.” After a court disqualified her on Monday from running for public office for five years, those millions of French voters…
When the environmental group Greenpeace lost a nearly $670 million verdict this month over its role in oil pipeline protests, a quarter-billion dollars of the damages were awarded not for the actual demonstrations, but for defaming the pipeline’s owner. The costly verdict has raised alarm among activist organizations as well as some First Amendment experts,…
