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WASHINGTON — President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday resuming the admission of refugees to the United States under tighter security screening. But administration officials said they will subject 11 unidentified countries to another 90-day review for potential threats.The order lifted a suspension on new refugee admissions that Mr. Trump first imposed shortly after taking office in January. At the time, it was part of a broader effort to limit the flow of foreigners admitted to the United States on the grounds of security, an initiative that has generated one of the sharpest legal and political debates of his nine-month-old presidency.

It was not clear whether the new screening procedures would significantly diminish the chances for many applicants. While refugees who were vetted and approved before Mr. Trump took office have been allowed into the country this year, no new applications have been processed or approved since June. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Trump has already moved aggressively to scale back the nation’s refugee program, imposing a limit of 45,000 — the lowest in more than three decades — on the number of people fleeing persecution that can be resettled in the United States over the fiscal year that started on Oct. 1. The action announced on Tuesday, while restarting the admissions process halted earlier this year, could result in new roadblocks or even outright bans for refugees from the 11 countries, potentially narrowing the pool even further.

The White House said that both reviews — the one that has been completed and the new, 90-day one — both aim to secure the United States from a clear danger from terrorist groups seeking to infiltrate the country. “The review process for refugees” required by the president “has made our nation safer,” the new order said.

Peele draws a straight line from his past, conducting laughs, to his present, conducting dread: “People who have done live comedy and who have written comedy develop a real sense of how an audience is going to react. It’s a skill that continues to sharpen, and in my directing career, it’s left me obsessed with riding the audience like a wave.”

“I do like to give the audience enough to figure it out, if they were to watch the movie enough, but I feel similarly to David Lynch in that I don’t think the audience needs to know everything. The key for me, as a director, is that I need to know everything, because the audience can sense it if I don’t. The beauty of Lynch’s work is that you can leave fulfilled and, at the same time, clueless as to what it was about.”

Peele wants social critiques to intertwine with his scares. “When you look at the great horror directors—George Romero, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Alfred Hitchcock—they’re all talking about something without talking about it,

For Italy and its neighbors, that call could not have come at a worse time.

Only days earlier, Prime Minister Mario Draghi reassured Italians who had become wary of the AstraZeneca vaccine. “There is no clear evidence, clear correlation, that these events are linked to the administration of the vaccine,” he said.

lest public opinion punish them if they seemed incautious by comparison, and for the sake of a united European front.

YouTube, citing "the ongoing potential for violence," has suspended President Trump's account for at least a week

The social media platform is the latest to take action against Trump following a riot at the U.S. Capitol last week organized by the president's supporters.

As the nation prepares for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next week, law enforcement officials have said there are credible threats of more acts of violence from supporters of Trump.

On the other side of the world in Washington, two deep-pocketed organizations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, vowed to spare poor countries from desperation. Their economists warned that immense relief was required to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and profound damage to global prosperity. Emerging markets make up 60 percent of the world economy, by one I.M.F. measure. A blow to their fortunes inflicts pain around the planet.

The shutdown of tourism has punished many developing countries.

$11 billion going to low-income countries.

Some are predicting that these debates will shatter records for viewership, so this year, capturing students’ interest may be less of an issue than it has ever been.

President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday resuming the admission of refugees to the United States under tighter security screening

no new applications have been processed or approved since June

a limit of 45,000 — the lowest in more than three decades

BERLIN—Germany’s Social Democrats agreed to prolong their unpopular ruling coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, ending a period of political uncertainty unprecedented in the country’s recent history.

The vote lifted the last hurdle for Ms. Merkel to start her fourth, and likely last, term as leader of Europe’s largest economy nearly half a year after an inconclusive general election left the country without a clear ruling majority.

Party officials said a new government would now be formed by March 14, replacing the caretaker administration that has govern the country since last September.

Thirteen states sued the Biden administration Wednesday to end a suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal land and water and to reschedule canceled sales of leases in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska waters and western states.

The suit specifically seeks an order that the government go ahead with a sale of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico that had been scheduled for March 17 until it was canceled; and a lease sale that had been planned for this year in Alaska's Cook Inlet.

Biden and multiple federal agencies bypassed comment periods and other bureaucratic steps required before such delays can be undertaken, the states claim in the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in the federal court's Western District of Louisiana.

Lt. Ivan Molchanets peeked over a parapet of sand bags at the front line of the war in Ukraine. Next to him was an empty helmet propped up to trick snipers, already perforated with multiple holes.In other spots, his soldiers stuff straw into empty uniforms to make dummies, and put logs on their shoulders to make it look like they are carrying American antitank missiles — as a scare tactic.“This is just the situation here,” he said, shrugging as he held the government’s position. “The enemy is very close.”

the war in Ukraine has killed 13,000 people, put a large part of the country under Russia’s control and dragged on for five years almost forgotten by the outside world — until it became a backdrop to the impeachment inquiry of President Trump now unfolding in Washington.

Ukraine, politically disorganized and militarily weak, has relied heavily on the United States in its struggle with Russian-backed separatists. But the White House abruptly suspended nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in July and only restored it last month after a bipartisan uproar in Congress.

Twitter said on Friday that it had permanently suspended President Trump from its service “due to the risk of further incitement for violence,” effectively cutting him off from his favorite method of communicating with the public and capping a series of actions by mainstream sites to limit his online reach.

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

It concluded that Mr. Trump’s tweets since Wednesday’s attack were “likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on Jan. 6, 2021, and that there are multiple indicators that they are being received and understood as encouragement to do so.”

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said Wednesday he is suspending "all efforts to collect reimbursement"

following outrage from veterans and their families over attempts to recover the money 10 years after it was disbursed.

"While some soldiers knew or should have known they were ineligible for benefits they were claiming, many others did not.

He displayed flashes of sardonic wit, anger and palpable disdain, especially toward the Americans and Europeans but also toward the leaders of a country, Ukraine, he made clear was a political neophyte, unable to govern itself.

paramount leader for more than 14 years, at last broke his studied silence on the political upheaval in Ukraine on Tuesday during a 66-minute news conference that sought to justify Russia’s actions and policies.

“The only thing we had to do, and we did it, was to enhance the defense of our military facilities because they were constantly receiving threats and we were aware of the armed nationalists moving in,”

“Increasingly, democratisation and authoritarianism are going hand in hand, and not just in Turkey.”

Erdogan’s ambition to institute an enhanced presidency with himself as a new “sultan” now looks unlikely to succeed after his imperious response to the protests over the development of Gezi Park

For the first time, Erdogan, who had confidently steered Turkey through choppy waters, seemed at a loss

Rwanda has placed an indefinite suspension on BBC broadcasts in the county’s most common language in the wake of the row over a documentary on its 1994 genocide.

Nine years later, the main fact of our lives is the overwhelming force of unreason. Evidence, knowledge, argument, proportionality, nuance, complexity, and the other indispensable tools of the liberal mind don’t stand a chance these days against the actual image of a mob burning an effigy, or the imagined image of a man burning a mound of books. Reason tries in its patient, level-headed way to explain, to question, to weigh competing claims, but it can hardly make itself heard and soon gives up.

One man in Gainesville who represents next to nobody triggers thousands of men around the globe who know next to nothing about it to turn violent, which triggers more violence, which Fox and Al Jazeera air relentlessly, which makes people in front of TVs around the world go crazy.

Crazy, murderous violence hasn’t spread across the land. But unreason, cheered on by cable news, has won the day. We have undeniably gone sour on interfaith tolerance. We have turned inward in sullen exhaustion.

one-third of those they surveyed in 2010 have listened to an audio book, and the percentage of listeners in the 18-24 age group is increasing because of the iPod and the ease of adapting audio (and podcasts) to MP3s

31 percent of audiobooks are mysteries, thrillers, and suspense; 21 percent are bestsellers (presumably books such as Bossypants); 20 percent are general fiction; and 15 percent are history.

the demise of Borders, which featured CDs prominently, and a general reduction in bookstore shelf-space means there is less room for the packaging of boxed recordings. Libraries, however, continue to favor CDs, and a significant portion of audio listeners prefer to borrow rather than buy CDs. So, the domain of CD listenership is increasingly composed of library patrons.

Russia's status as a sports superpower and its participation in track and field events at next year's Olympics came under threat Monday after a report accused the Russians of widespread, state-supported doping reminiscent of the darkest days of cheating by the former East Germany.

The findings by a commission set up by the World Anti-Doping Agency were far more damaging than expected. It means that two of the world's most popular sports — soccer and track and field — are now mired in scandals that could destroy their reputations.

The WADA investigation's findings that Russian government officials must have known about doping and cover-ups, with even its intelligence service, the FSB, allegedly involved, threatened to severely tarnish President Vladimir Putin's use of sports to improve his country's global standing. Russia hosted the last Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014 and will hold the next World Cup in 2018.

Wheaton College, a prominent evangelical school in Illinois, has placed a professor on administrative leave after she posted on Facebook that Muslims and Christians “worship the same God.”

The official school statement Tuesday about associate professor of political science Larycia Hawkins’s suspension said Wheaton professors should “engage in and speak about public issues in ways that faithfully represent the College’s evangelical Statement of Faith.”