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If confirmed by the Senate, the defining traits he will bring as the 77th Treasury secretary include a Wall Street pedigree, long relationship with Mr. Trump, and a history of moving fast to seize opportunities that might terrify others

IndyMac was the defining deal of Mr. Mnuchin’s career. He knew that the government needed to sell the failed bank—and he played hardball.

Like other Trump cabinet picks, Mr. Mnuchin has a résumé that is at odds with much of the president-elect’s populist rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Mr. Mnuchin, whose father spent his entire career at Goldman, came of age on Wall Street in the 1980s as the business of slicing loans into securities was booming. As a mortgage banker at Goldman, he saw up close ¾the savings-and-loan crisis and efforts by the government to wind down hundreds of insolvent financial institutions.

The bank, which was renamed OneWest Bank and is now part of CIT Group Inc., is under civil investigation by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for loan-servicing practices.

Mr. Mnuchin is regarded within the Trump transition team’s inner circle as a skilled team player. Mr. Trump’s advisers say Mr. Mnuchin will fuse traditional Republican Party support for lower taxes and less regulation with the president-elect’s populist stances on trade and infrastructure.

Like other partners, he earned tens of millions of dollars when Goldman became a publicly traded company in 1999. He bought a 6,500-square-foot apartment in a famous Park Avenue building. Messrs. Mnuchin and Trump were soon in the same philanthropic and social circles,

Mr. Mnuchin donated to the campaigns of Democrats Barack Obama,John Edwards,John Kerry and Al Gore. The only Republican presidential candidate Mr. Mnuchin gave money to was Mitt Romney in 2012.

It was the second-largest bank failure of the crisis, surpassed only by Washington Mutual Inc. in September 2008.

At the end of 2008, Mr. Mnuchin persuaded the FDIC to sell IndyMac for about $1.5 billion. The deal included IndyMac branches, deposits and assets. The FDIC also agreed to protect the buyers from the most severe losses for years. That loss-sharing arrangement turned out to be a master stroke.

Banks often go out of their way to avoid losses, even when borrowers are in violation of loan terms. The loss-sharing agreement took away some of the disincentives, since future losses would be borne partly by the government.

In July 2014, CIT agreed to buy OneWest for $3.4 billion, a bounty of more than $3 billion, including dividends. Mr. Mnuchin’s take was several hundred million dollars, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Before formally launching his presidential bid, Mr. Trump turned to Mr. Mnuchin for advice over dinner. Mr. Mnuchin helped write a tax-cutting plan and tried to rein in some of Mr. Trump’s populist rhetoric, including his vow to not “let Wall street get away with murder,” people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Trump’s financial agenda, which Mr. Mnuchin would lead as Treasury secretary, has ignited a broad stock-market rally. CIT shares are up about 13%, increasing the value of Mr. Mnuchin’s stake by about $11 million. It is now worth more than $100 million.

Gorbachev's spokesman, Vladimir Polyakovm, said the former leader knew Ukraine was mulling the ban and had earlier brushed it off, saying he did not travel to the country anyway.

saying he would have acted the same way as Russian President Vladimir Putin on Crimea if he were Russia's leader today.

He also accused the United States of "rubbing its hands with glee" over the demise of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev led the Soviet Union from 1985 until his resignation in 1991

The Crimean Peninsula was annexed through a controversial referendum, which returned a large majority in support of joining Russia.

The United States and Europe introduced a wide range of sanctions against Russia in an effort to pressure Moscow to back down from aggressive moves against Ukraine.

Most recently, the two countries bickered over Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian military pilot who was detained by Russia for two years, and two Russian soldiers held in Ukraine

t will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me — no matter how many years from now.”

Ms. Largay, a retired nurse from Tennessee, had survived nearly a month on her own

that Geraldine had a poor sense of direction,” the Warden Service’s investigative report said. “Ms. Lee said that Geraldine had taken a wrong turn on the trail, more than once,” and Ms. Largay “became flustered and combative when she made these kinds of mistakes.”

Her doctor would tell investigators that once she ran out of the medication she took for anxiety, she could suffer panic attacks.

“We cannot substitute for the parties. Our initiative aims at giving them guarantees that the peace will be solid, sustainable and under international supervision,”

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has rebuffed the French initiative, saying a deal can only be reached in direct negotiations.

The Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in 1967

Continued Israeli settlement expansion on occupied lands and several months of renewed Israeli-Palestinian violence have also undermined trust.

“They beat me. They did terrifying things,” he said quietly in a recent interview. “I don’t want to remember that day.”

Martini is, in some ways, typical: mostly apolitical but firmly opposed to Assad’s regime and to the Islamist groups that are vying with other armed opposition groups for control of rebel-held areas.

Now, he lives alone in makeshift quarters in the offices of the aid organization he helped found in this Turkish border town. He heads the group’s relief operations in northern Syria and the Turkish border regions, overseeing the delivery of medical care to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

Martini is deeply skeptical of peace talks scheduled for this month in Geneva, which are supposed to facilitate negotiations between Assad’s government and rebel groups.

“We must keep working. Whether the time is long or short, this regime will fall,” Martini said. “Then we must rebuild our country.”

. Then he crossed the border into Jordan, which aid agencies say shelters more than 563,000 refugees.

When he left Syria, Martini said, he lost everything. The government seized all nine of his houses, along with his bank accounts, a clinical laboratory and 2,000 olive trees. The loss of the olive grove seems to have stung particularly; Idlib is known for its production of the bitter fruit.

In Jordan, the doctor briefly treated patients in the Zaatari refugee camp. Then he fled the difficult conditions to join his wife and youngest child in the United Arab Emirates. His older children escaped Syria, too, and are studying medicine in the United States.

At first, the effort paid for treatment for Syrians in Turkish hospitals. Operations were soon expanded to include the building of a 144-bed medical unit in the city of Antakya, near the Syrian border. Then hostility from Antakya’s Alawites — many of whom support Assad, who is also Alawite — prompted Orient to move the facility to Reyhanli. Alawites are members of a Shiite-affiliated sect.

Orient’s medical ventures expanded into rebel-held areas of Syria, where it now runs 12 hospitals and several rehabilitation centers and employs more than 400 doctors. Facilities in Turkey include a day clinic, a school for displaced Syrians and a sewing workshop that trains and provides work for many Syrian women.

It is an unusual arrangement for an organization of Orient Humanitarian Relief’s size — staff members said Orient programs and facilities helped nearly 400,000 people last year. But the setup offers a strategic advantage. A member of an aid organization working with Orient said it is able to move faster than any of its peers, making quick decisions unhampered by complicated bureaucracies and approval processes.

The many doctors and surgeons in the Martini clan are scattered across Europe and the United States. One uncle founded Martini Hospital in the Syrian city of Aleppo, where fighting between rebels and government forces has been sustained and brutal. Ammar Martini worked at that hospital, now heavily damaged, for 10 years.

When his father died recently in Syria, Martini was not able to return home to attend the funeral.

Mr. Uzumcu also thanked Italy, saying its contributions “exemplify the spirit of cooperation underpinning the vitally important international effort to rid Syria of chemical weapons.”

Withdrawing the invitation was "the right thing to do", Monzer Akbik, the National Coalition's chief of staff, told the BBC.

Meanwhile, CNN and UK newspaper the Guardian are reporting claims that the Syrian regime tortured and killed thousands of detainees.

But Iran issued several statements on Monday rejecting any attempt to place conditions on its attendance at the conference

It is unclear whether Iran will be able to join the talks two days later, when they move to Geneva.

"understood and supported the basis and goal of the conference".

it shows a chilling systematic documentation of the bodies, each of which was photographed several times and given a number.

Some 55,000 photographs showing roughly 11,000 dead detainees were smuggled out of Syria by a defector who served as a military police photographer

In May last year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry agreed to try to bring both sides together.

However, the National Coalition appears resolute that any transitional government will not involve President Bashar al-Assad.

that statement simply acknowledged the reality on the Security Council, where Russia wields a veto and has vowed to block any military action against Syria, its ally. But Mr. Obama’s decision to concede the point early in talks underscored his desire to forge a workable diplomatic compromise and avoid a strike that would be deeply unpopular at home.

Mr. Ban, in comments that he thought were private but that were inadvertently broadcast over an in-house United Nations television channel, said that Mr. Assad had “committed many crimes against humanity” during more than two years of civil war and that there would be a “process of accountability when everything is over.” Mr. Ban said he was “troubled” that the Security Council had not adopted any response, calling it “failure by the United Nations.”

Secretary of State John Kerry said at a news conference in the United Arab Emirates that the Obama administration was not in a “race” to strike a deal.

In the past, the agency has questioned whether the Gachin mine, which produces yellowcake uranium for conversion to nuclear fuel, is linked to Iran’s military. The heavy-water plant at Arak could produce plutonium, which can be used in a weapon, and a key concern is that once the plant is operational, it would be all but impossible to destroy it without running the risk of spreading deadly plutonium. Western officials noted that the agreement gave the atomic agency access to the heavy production plant but not the nuclear reactor, which is under construction there.

lack of in-depth information and inspections of the heavy-water plant have been a particular worry to the West. French officials went further and indicated that they wanted construction halted altogether at the facility, and that Iran’s failure to agree to that was one reason the French were reluctant to endorse a broader deal with Iran this weekend.

The agreement on Monday comprised a four-paragraph statement and six bullet points in an annex of issues to be tackled within the next three months.

“Managed access” is a term used by the United Nations agency to denote the ground rules for inspections that permit host countries to protect information they consider to be proprietary or secret, such as military technology, while still allowing inspectors to garner data they require, officials said.

t claims bugs were introduced to the French Embassy in Washington (under a code name "Wabash") and to the computers of the French delegation at the UN, codenamed "Blackfoot".

The US was worried the French were drifting to the Brazilian side - who were opposed to implementing sanctions - when in truth they were always aligned to the US position, says our correspondent.

"It helped me know... the truth, and reveal other [countries'] positions on sanctions, allowing us to keep one step ahead in the negotiations."

I said again to John Kerry what Francois Hollande told Barack Obama, that this kind of spying conducted on a large scale by the Americans on its allies is something that is unacceptable."

The information he leaked led to claims of systematic spying by the NSA and CIA on a global scale. Targets included rivals like China and Russia, as well as allies like the EU and Brazil.

The NSA was also forced to admit it had captured email and phone data from millions of Americans.

“The drones are like the angels of death,” said Nazeer Gul, a shopkeeper in Miram Shah. “Only they know when and where they will strike.”

Their claims of distress are now being backed by a new Amnesty International investigation that found, among other points, that at least 19 civilians in the surrounding area of North Waziristan had been killed in just two of the drone attacks since January 2012

And on Friday, the drone debate is scheduled to spill onto the floor of the United Nations, whose officials have recently published reports that attacked America’s lack of transparency over drones.

Even when the missiles do not strike, buzzing drones hover day and night, scanning the alleys and markets with roving high-resolution cameras.

In theory, the Pakistani security forces should be in charge.

Unusually for the overall American drone campaign, the strikes in the area mostly occur in densely populated neighborhoods. The drones have hit a bakery, a disused girls’ school and a money changers’ market, residents say.

Here's Horovitz: [Netanyahu] spoke only in Hebrew, and we are in the middle of a mini-war, so his non-directly war-related remarks didn’t get widely reported. But those remarks should not be overlooked even in the midst of a bitter conflict with Gaza’s Islamist rulers; especially in the midst of a bitter conflict with Gaza’s Islamist rulers. The prime minister spoke his mind as rarely, if ever, before. He set out his worldview with the confidence of a leader who sees vindication in the chaos all around. He answered those fundamental questions. It is not that Netanyahu renounced his rhetorical support for a two-state solution. He simply described such a state as an impossibility.  [W]hile [Netanyahu] initially stuck to responses tied to the war against Hamas, its goals, and the terms under which it might be halted, he then moved—unasked—into territory he does not usually chart in public, and certainly not with such candor. For some, his overall outlook will seem bleak and depressing; for others, savvy and pragmatic. One thing’s for sure: Nobody will ever be able to claim in the future that he didn’t tell us what he really thinks. He made explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank. He indicated that he sees Israel standing almost alone on the frontlines against vicious Islamic radicalism, while the rest of the as-yet free world does its best not to notice the march of extremism. And he more than intimated that he considers the current American, John Kerry-led diplomatic team to be, let’s be polite, naive.

The fact that they continue to talk means these are serious discussions. Where this goes, what’s the likely outcome, I think it’s really way too early to predict.”

In contrast to previous rounds of Israeli-Palestinian talks, little has leaked from the negotiating room.

Recent polls show scant optimism on the street. Palestinians are split, with 47 percent supporting the resumption of negotiations and 49 percent opposed, according to a September survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research; 70 percent think they will not lead to an agreement. Sixty-one percent of Israeli Jews back the talks, according to the Israel Democracy Institute’s Peace Index published this month, but 81 percent see no real chance of a deal.

“the negotiations are difficult but they haven’t reached a deadlock.”

“For both sides the current situation is very, very comfortable,” Mr. Beilin said. “All of us are playing the game. Many meetings, very serious, good relationship, all issues are on the agenda, fighting the lunatics on both sides, and it’s beautiful. The only problem is that there will be an end to it in the coming months, and the admission of failure might be devastating.” <img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>

American officials did not publicly acknowledge that “right” in talks with Iranian officials in Geneva last week, but it is clear that the United States and other world powers are willing to explore a deal that is far less stringent than the one Mr. Netanyahu proposed.

The disagreements between the United States and Israel will not be easy to finesse. The United States and other world powers are scheduled to resume talks with Iran in Geneva on Nov. 7.