In the months leading up to a pivotal presidential election for Taiwan, candidates have focused on who can best handle the island democracy’s volatile relationship with China, with its worries about the risks of war. But at a recent forum in Taipei, younger voters instead peppered two of the candidates with questions about everyday issues …
What the Displacement in Gaza Looks Like in Maps, Charts and Photos
Source: Satellite image by Maxar Technologies Up to 1.8 million Gazans — around 80 percent of the population — have been forced to leave their homes since Israel began its bombardment in response to Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7. That number is expected to rise after Israel issued a new evacuation order on Saturday for …
U.S. Is Pressing Israel and Hamas to Resume Negotiations, Kirby Says
The U.S. government is making an intense effort to persuade Israel and Hamas to resume negotiations so they can once again pause hostilities and release more hostages, a White House spokesman said on Sunday. “We are still working it really hard, hour by hour, to see if we can get the sides back to the …
Munich Airport Resumes Operations After Major Snowfall
The airport in Munich resumed limited operations Sunday morning after being closed for nearly a day because of record snowfall that disrupted transportation across the region. About 17 inches of snow fell in parts of southern Germany on Saturday, an unusually large amount for early December, and what local news media reported was the biggest …
Israel Orders Evacuations Amid ‘Intense’ Attacks on Southern Gaza
The Israeli military heavily bombarded southern Gaza on Saturday and ordered residents of several Palestinian border towns in the area to leave their homes, appearing to set the stage for a ground invasion in the south as hostilities resumed after the collapse of a weeklong truce with Hamas. The intensity of the renewed bombing — …
Why Don’t We Dance More?
Remember Snowball, the sulphur-crested cockatoo whose fancy footwork to the Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” brought him viral fame in 2007? I recently rewatched the video, and it holds up. Here is this bird, perched on the back of a chair. As the song opens, he appears to be sketching out his moves, getting a …
Cindy McCain, Head of World Food Program, Faces Staff Revolt Over Gaza Conflict
As the truce in the Israel-Hamas war was ending on Thursday, Cindy McCain, the executive director of the United Nations’ World Food Program, met virtually with her staff to address an internal uproar over accusations that she was not leveraging her position to speak out against the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Many of …
A Russian Village Buries a Soldier, and Tries to Make Sense of the War
A cold wind was blowing across the steppe, but Sapura Kadyrova didn’t see the point in bundling up. She was waiting to greet her son, who was arriving home from the war in a crimson government-issued casket. “So maybe I won’t be warm,” Ms. Kadyrova, 85, moaned. “Then just let me die.” All day long, …
A Back Door to Taylor Swift’s Australia Tickets? Not if You’re in Australia.
The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Natasha Frost, a reporter with the Australia bureau. Australian Swifties cannot purchase tickets to the Sydney or Melbourne dates of Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” for love nor money — unless they …
An Alleged Plot’s Burning Question: Why Would India Take the Risk?
In page after page of fly-on-the-wall detail, the indictment unsealed in New York this week describes a chilling plot: A criminal operative, on orders from a government official in India, tried to arrange the killing of a Sikh American on U.S. soil. As the scheme unfolded, court documents said, it grew only more brazen. When …