Guam drew attention from both candidates, who ran radio advertisements in an effort to scoop up any possible delegates in the final stretch of primaries and caucuses.

But the ownership structure of Iranian corporations is often opaque, making it difficult for European companies to be sure there is not, for example, a Revolutionary Guard Corps interest. Knowing exactly who the customer is may be arduous.

A bank may be located in Europe but unable to demonstrate that a proposed Iran contract does not involve its United States subsidiary at some level.

In an earlier conversation, Biglari told me, “The irony of the nuclear deal is that we did the heavy lifting in terms of the negotiation and then opened it up to European companies to do business with Iran” while blocking American firms.

On the American side, Kerry needs to keep pressing his message encouraging European banks. The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) needs to be aggressive in granting licenses of the kind that has enabled Boeing to hold talks with Iran.

That in turn will put Obama’s biggest foreign policy achievement at risk.

In November, four policemen at a checkpoint in Cairo were killed in a gun attack that was also claimed by the Islamic State

Mr. Sisi’s popularity has also been damaged by public anger over repeated episodes of police brutality, often over trivial matters, that have resulted in the death of ordinary citizens.

The furor over the arrests, which built steadily during the week, was due to be debated in the Egyptian Parliament on Sunday, the state Al Ahram newspaper reported on its website. M

“I think on the committee I’ll have Dr. Ben Carson and some other folks,” Mr. Trump said.

He also questioned why Mr. Kasich, who has been mathematically eliminated from getting the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination

The strategist, Ward Baker, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said conventions were a distracting spectacle every four years,

ndrea Bozek, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said it was up to “each individual campaign” to decide whether to attend the convention.

. In a statement, Mr. Bush said his former opponent lacked the “temperament or strength of character” to serve as president.

The populist Manhattan businessman responded with a statement savaging Mr. Graham, a senior spokesman for the party on national security. Mr. Trump boasted that he had

He has appeared uncertain of how to respond to the prospect of mass defections from inside the Republican Party. He has said in recent weeks that he favors party unity as a practical matter,

“They’re still trying to project this mind-set that they’re blowing up the place, blowing up the institution,”

Mr. Ryan said Thursday that he was not ready to endorse Mr. Trump, a statement widely interpreted as signaling to Republicans that they would face no pressure to close ranks around Mr. Trump

Most Republican campaign contributors face less immediate pressure to count themselves as with or against Mr. Trump, but strategists expect Mr. Trump to face considerable skepticism

In a post on Sunday on Let Us Build Pakistan, a blog where Mr. Zaki was an editor, Ali Abbas Taj, the editor in chief, said that Mr. Zaki was killed because of his unwavering campaign against the Taliban and their Sunni extremist allies.

Human rights groups have strongly condemned the killing.

Mr. Butt said militant groups have started singling out activists who have been campaigning on social media against social injustice and religious intolerance.

ISIS had killed or displaced nearly all the inhabitants, most of whom belonged to Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority.

A lone man with a rifle seemed to know where he was going. We hurried to catch up with him.

hat June, ISIS captured Mosul—the second-largest city in the country, eighty miles to the east—yet most residents still felt safe. But when ISIS moved into Sinjar the peshmerga withdrew. Hundreds of civilians were killed.

living in tents with little food or water, waiting for the day when they could return to their

A crowd had assembled around the entrance to the house.

a group of Iraqi police officers appeared. The mayor hailed them.

That night, we camped in the mountains. Early the next morning, as we navigated the ninety-three hairpin turns that led down to the town, it was easy to appreciate Sinjar’s strategic importance:

There were villages out there, too: vague compounds, water tanks, radio towers.

An explosion erupted nearby, and then gunfire. Soldiers grabbed weapons and ran into a dense collection of buildings behind us.

“He still has a gun!” someone yelled. “He’s still alive!” “Get out of there! He might blow himself up!”

“What will you do now?” I asked. Azad looked around. It was getting dark. “Go back up the mountain,” he said. He turned and walked away.

“Still alive.”

No one seemed to hear.

But Iraq’s northern front has remained relatively static. Tens of thousands of Kurdish troops man fixed positions along six hundred miles of trenches connecting Syria to Iran

When I visited the peshmerga unit on the ridge, its operations officer told me that they could easily take the town below, Bashiqa. But Mosul lies only ten miles farther, and there are numerous villages in between.

U.S. disbanded the Iraqi Army and eradicated the Baath Party, it became famous for producing skilled insurgents. Iraq’s Prime Minister at the time of the American withdrawal, in 2011

Atheel al-Nujaifi, a former governor of Nineveh Province, which includes Mosul and Sinjar, told me last spring.

A few weeks later, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, emerged for the first time in years and delivered a speech—videotaped and published online—from the Great Mosque of al-Nuri. ISIS had proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate

n, Barzani’s chief of staff. “There is one thing that everybody knows,” he told me.

The Saudis fear a rising Iran, and Turkey feels threatened by ethnic Kurds. Yet the Kurds and Iran are fighting against ISIS — and Russia has intervened militarily in Syria to bolster Assad.

Two Republican U.S. senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, reiterated their call for Obama to deploy thousands of U.S. troops to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq, in partnership with “regional” allies.

We need to understand who is going to be critical to what is happening in Syria, itself.

We obviously have some strong allies like France,”

“We will turn to Assad and say, 'You must go,’’’

"Russia and Iran will be on the outside looking in to an entire regional army. … They will fold like a cheap suit.’’

"One minute, 32 seconds — ha! I beat you by one second!" a triumphant Margarita Maluchenkova, an 18-year-old with crimson-tinted hair,

They absently point the muzzle at other club members seated around a table watching the practice

I like handling guns, though it's more interesting when they are loaded,"

She believes Russia stands tall in the world.

Clubs such as Our Army have been cropping up across Russia at a fevered pace amid heightened tensions with the West and with former Soviet republics that have defected from Moscow's orbit.

heir year of compulsory military service.

he military has been experiencing a renaissance in recent years as the government spends billions to modernize and looks to its upcoming conscripts to fend off Western enemies the Kremlin sees as encroaching on Russian borders.

Support from the Kremlin — and Putin — has elevated the image of the military profession, she says.

"You should know your enemy, and, make no mistake, we do consider the Western world an enemy, especially America. That is the most dangerous threat to our future."

"We don't teach hatred, though hatred can be a powerful force," he acknowledges.

Russia has every single one of these features in place," Trudolyubov says. "Being healthy and sporting is good for everyone — there's no argument about that. But in what context does it develop?"

"It used to be that those newly inducted into the army learned how to use a Kalashnikov or drive an armored vehicle in basic training.

when the demoralized Soviet Red Army was mired in a costly and unwinnable war in Afghanistan and military careers were a sentence to poverty and hardship. Respect for the armed services continued to decline after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

It's a normal and natural process when young people understand that the state gives them a free education and the means to make a living, and for that they pay a debt to society by serving in the army.

Vladimir Putin is a star in the eyes of Russian children," she says.

he Crimea gambit has brought the wrath of the democratic world down on Russia in the form of sanctions that have blacklisted dozens of senior Kremlin officials and cronies and deepened an economic crisis brought on by fallen oil prices.

At the Our Army clubhouse, the teens count off into two squads for assault training, the "twos" taking a synchronized step forward, heads snapping to the left, eyes fixed on an unseen point in the distance.

credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance,” constitutional reform and U.N.-supervised elections within 18 months

parties will participate in the conference, while excluding those deemed as terrorist organizations 

“terrorists” and “mercenaries,” as well as the sectarian nature of many rebel factions on the ground.

use of shelling and aerial bombardment against civilians, safe and voluntary refugee transfer, and unfettered access for humanitarian agencies to besieged areas of Syria.

“useful” and that he is “looking forward to the active participation of relevant parties in the Geneva talks.”

“From the government’s point of view, they’re not keen on negotiations anyway,” Rabbani said.

The talks face another stumbling block in soaring tensions between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia,

Iran’s Shiite leadership has backed Assad, a member of the Alawite sect that is related to Shia Islam.

Last week, Saudi Arabia executed an influential Shiite cleric, enraging Iran and leading to a cutoff of diplomatic ties between the two countries.

an has similarly called for calm, while diplomatic efforts from Iraq and Oman continue to encourage a reconciliation between the two countries

Previous attempts at jump-starting peace talks have failed because of what was viewed as the government's intransigence regarding rebel participation.

don’t at all see that the proposed date is a realistic one, especially since on the ground there were no confidence-building measures,”

He cited the situation in Madaya, a town with an estimated population of 40,000 located 25 miles northwest of Damascus that has been besieged by pro-government forces since July.

“The issue of Madaya has become a key point. The Syrian cannot go to negotiations while Syrians are dying of hunger and cold,”

the Syrian government said it would allow aid to enter Madaya in the coming week.

In recent days, Madaya has become a media battleground for the warring parties in Syria.

he furor also has affected the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, an ally of the Assad government, which is accused of perpetrating what Madaya residents have described as a nightmare

Hateet also accused rebel fighters bunkered inside Madaya of holding civilians hostage, barring their exit from the town.

fter the debate finished, Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s former spokesman, estimated on Twitter that Trump now had a sixty per cent chance of getting the nomination. That’s just one person’s opinion, of course, but it reflects a widespread fatalism in the Republican establishment

a loan from Goldman Sachs to help fund his 2012 Senate campaign, during which he had portrayed himself as an enemy of Wall Street and Wall Street bailouts

“If that’s the best the New York Times has got, they better go back to the well.”

Rather than disowning his words, or correcting them to make it clear that he wasn’t trying to insult millions of people, Cruz doubled down, saying

There followed a lengthy interchange, in which Cruz displayed the verbal skills that made him a champion debater in college, and Trump was reduced to claiming he had only brought it up to spare the Republican Party

“I’ve spent my entire life defending the Constitution before the U.S. Supreme Court. And I’ll tell you, I’m not going to be taking legal advice from Donald Trump.”

Unfortunately for him, he appeared to let it go to his head. Trump, as the boxing promoter Don King sagely noted some time ago, is a counter-puncher:

he should have proceeded with caution.

“You know, back in September, my friend Donald said that he had had his lawyers look at this from every which way, and there was no issue there.

And, he said, “Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan. I’m just saying.

New York is a great place. It’s got great people, it’s got loving people, wonderful people. 

u had two one hundred—you had two one-hundred-and-ten-story buildings come crashing down.

And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched, and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.

. One of those clapping for him, the cameras showed, was Cruz. Evidently realizing that he had exposed himself to being cast on the wrong side of 9/11,

This was Trump’s best moment in any of the debates. From then on, Cruz and Trump mostly left each other alone and concentrated on the other candidates. In another notable exchange later in the debate, on immigration and taxes,

First and foremost, this issue has to be now, more than anything else, about keeping this country safe,”

Chris Christie, who may be his main rival for the role of representing the wing of the G.O.P.

aying that he never wrote a check to Planned Parenthood or supported the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

“terrorism is on the run” when he evidently meant to say that it is on the rise.

We’re running for the Presidency of the United States here,” Bush said. “You cannot make rash statements and expect the rest of the world to respond as though, well, it’s just politics.”

So is playing to the prejudices and fears of his supporters, and hinting that dark things are asunder, which justify drastic and possibly authoritarian measures.

“There is something going on and it’s bad,” he said. “We have to get to the bottom of it. We need security.”

To this end, he said that he was willing to give up his businesses and let his children run them.

“But if I become President, I couldn’t care less about my company. It’s peanuts. I want to use that same up here,”

I have Ivanka and Eric and Don sitting there. Run the company kids, have a good time. I’m going to do it for America.”

"Donald is right that China is running over President Obama like he is a child. President Obama is not protecting American workers and we are getting hammered,"

The escalating rhetoric against Obama could, on the one hand, be seen as a natural consequence of a campaign in which virtually nothing is off limits.

which perhaps began with South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's headline grabbing "You Lie!"

And he continued to hammer Obama for what he has described as his "lawlessness."

"This is a guy who just believes that law enforcement are the bad guys,"

“the police refuse to go” because of radicalization.

Scarborough said, “You gotta let us ask questions, you can’t just talk. No, you gotta let us actually ask questions.”

“No, no, Joe, I’m not just talking. Joe, I’m not just talking. I’m giving you the facts,” said Trump, as Scarborough attempted to get him to shut up: “Donald, Donald, Donald, Donald.”

“Go to break then, Joe. All I’m doing is giving you the facts and you don’t want to hear the facts.”

Pressed by Scarborough to identify the zones of Paris where police fear to tread, Trump responded: “I will get you the information.”

“Did the internment of the Japanese Americans violate your sense of American values? Yes or no?”

The Muslim community is not reporting what’s going on. They should be reporting that their next-door neighbor is making pipe bombs and they’ve got them all over the place.

Nobody called the police.”

They would say, ‘Are you Muslim?’ ” responded Trump, in what may be the scariest soundbite yet from the candidate.

“We love you, we want to work with you, we want you to turn in the bad ones. We all want to get along.”

Cuomo pounded the guy again and again, citing falsehood after falsehood.

“Do you have to impress anybody but yourself with these ideas?”

Good Morning America” also brought the accountability to Trump, who, again, didn’t seem to care about the implications of his proposal.

As he did in both the “Morning Joe” and CNN sessions, Trump talked about these no-go zones in Paris, whose existence has been denied by Parisians.

ad stuff, that. But what’s the alternative? Not challenge him on ideas that threaten the Constitution?

"I think I prefer others who have a better grasp in my view of the challenges we face," McCain said, adding that he will stay neutral through the duration of the primary.

suggesting he'd need to separate himself from the top of the ticket. Kinzinger, a Jeb Bush supporter, said he was "very concerned" about the rhetoric from Trump and what it would mean in a general election.

"I think his tone has been bad -- it's not an inclusive tone," said Kinzinger, a leading moderate. "Only 30-something percent, maybe of Americans identify as Republicans,

"What she ultimately is trying to do is talk about how do we have a message that's inspiring, inclusive, hopeful, optimistic and that unites the country," Ryan said.

They want to harness the energy of the grassroots that is powering the candidacies of Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz,

Nowhere is that more urgent than the race for the Senate, where 24 GOP seats are in contention, including in states like Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Florida. To stay in the majority,

Our presidential candidates are out there beating each other up at the moment, and that's going to solve itself at some point during the process,"

McConnell's remarks comments came after the choice of the GOP leader and House Speaker Ryan -- South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley

"We don't want to have another President like this one who divides our country," Ryan told reporters.

North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, a member in the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said Haley was a "very articulate speaker, a very persuasive speaker."

I think the American people don't want that -- whether you are an unaffiliated voter, Democrat of Republican they want it to be about what affects them on Main Street not necessarily what affects those who end up in Washington, D.C."

"If Republicans are afraid to bring their standard-bearer's policies up for votes, Democrats will hold Republicans accountable by seeking floor votes on Trump's policies ourselves," Reid said.

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander," McConnell said.

Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, an ally of party leaders, said congressional Republicans are very mindful that whoever the nominee is "going to be is the most important single factor in whether or not we retain majorities in the Senate and the House."

"telling everyone it's going to be 'awesome or great and huge' is not going to cut it all the way through November."

their own alternative health care reform proposal, a major overhaul of the tax code

But multiple members and aides said no decisions were made about whether the House and Senate will actually vote on new proposals they intend to unveil in 2016 to contrast with Democrats.

Trump would listen to their ideas, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California,

Still, by promoting conservative ideas, they believe, it will be enough to differentiate Republican lawmakers from the likes of Trump.

"What we are trying to do is ensure that our members are well-positioned to make their argument about why we need to continue to have a Republican majority,"

Cruz forcefully responded to Trump's accusations that he isn't eligible to be president because he was born in Canada -- a controversy that Trump has only recently embraced. Read More

"There was nothing to this birther issue."

Rubio slammed his fellow senator for hiding behind the pretense of conservative values.

has repeatedly questioned whether Cruz, whose mother was a U.S. citizen, is a natural born citizen.

Cruz noted that some of the more extreme theories on the topic would conclude that someone can only become president if both parents were born in the United States. Under that standard, Cruz noted

neligible for the presidency because his mother was born in Scotland.

onald, I'm not going to use your mother's birth against you," Cruz said.

"Because it wouldn't work."

"That is not consistent conservatism," he says. "That is political calculation."

"I've said from the beginning, we should take no Syrian refugees of any kind," Christie said.

Trump was more dominant Thursday than in previous debates

Asked to explain what that meant, Cruz said New Yorkers tend to hold "socially liberal" views

"Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan," he said.

"We rebuilt downtown Manhattan and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made."

ut if that's the best hit the New York Times has got, they better go back to the well."

"Unfortunately, Gov. Christie has endorsed many of the ideas that Barack Obama supports," the Florida senator said.

It appears that "same someone has been whispering in old Marco's ear, too," Christie said.

Two years ago, he called me a conservative reformer that New Jersey needed. That was before he was running against me."

Trump said, insisting he would not change his mind on the issue.

"All Muslims? Seriously? What kind of signal does that send to the rest of the world?" Bush said.

While there has been plenty of animosity between Trump and most of his rivals, the billionaire businessman and Cruz have been on largely friendly territory for much of the campaign season.

Christie, meanwhile, blasted the actions as inconsistent with democracy.

Fiorina's candidacy has largely been defined by memorable debate performances. And even though she was dropped from the prime-time stage at the debate, she still delivered. Right out of the gate, she dealt a sharp personal attack on Clinton, the Democratic front-runner.

"Despite Donald Trump's bromance with Vladimir Putin ... Russia is our adversary," she said.

In al-Fouaa and Kefraya, two towns in the country's northwest, about 20,000 have been suffering under a rebel blockade, said Dibeh Fakhr,

Thursday evening, delivering desperately needed food and humanitarian supplies to residents, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

"We now meet the families to talk about their needs," he said on Twitter.

Earlier Thursday, the Madaya-bound convoy of 44 trucks arrived on the outskirts of the city, in a mountainous area 25 kilometers

More than 250,000 Syrians -- mostly civilians -- have been killed, according to the United Nations. About 10.5 million Syrians have fled their homes

in the far abroad.” Russian warplanes began bombing sorties in Syria on Sept, 30.

have been killed in the campaign.

“the experience of our fathers and grandfathers,

their strength of spirit is a great example for us.”

Obama’s former defense secretary let loose on a White House that micromanaged the Pentagon while

contends that the refusal to enforce the chemical weapon red line in Syria “hurt the credibility of the president’s word”

his might be dismissed as sour grapes from a Republican who believes that the White House was eventually out to “destroy” him

“I think when we stepped out of Iraq, in many ways, we created this vacuum in which not a lot of attention was paid to what was happening in Iraq,

by far the most centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen since Richard Nixon.”

When the decision was made in 2010 to surge the number of American troops in Afghanistan,

In one way or another, many of these criticisms concern Syria.

secretary of state, secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, director of the CIA

Obama rejected both. The administration was “consistently behind the curve,

These events have produced more than 250,000 Syrian dead, including more than 10,000 children;

United States as an unreliable strategic partner; and allowed Iran and Russia to make a play for greater regional influence.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad,”

United States with essential intelligence and given the “credible opposition”

The rise of the Islamic State, in other words, is a catastrophic result of negligence in Syria.

They only judge him dramatically wrong on the largest strategic and humanitarian issue of our time.

Moreover, the left was dominated by the Communist Party, and German anti-Semitism

Germans and focusing it on Jews and communists.

conditions are not present in the United States.

“Look at these things. Crazy,” Obama said to the infant. He then dispensed a bit of advice:

he venue — which opened in October, and was festooned with LED banner lights saying “Welcome to Obama”

”It’s still got that new arena smell,” the president joked, prompting applause from the enthusiastic crowd when he recalled that he won one electoral vote in Nebraska during his first White House bid.

it was not pretty. It was not pretty. But I love Nebraska anyway.”

Nebraska boasts a political culture of “civility,” Obama said, “and people treating each other with respect.”

Not Democrat first, not Republicans first, but Americans first. That’s our priority. And, and that’s harder to do during political season. I understand that.”

Alluding to the coming presidential primary contest “across the river” in Iowa, Obama said the ads were filled with “some doom and some gloom.”

That’s not what I see in communities and neighborhoods all across this country.”

where he will hold a town hall Thursday to highlight the newly elected Democratic governor’s plan to expand Medicaid coverage there under the Affordable Care Act.

Just after arriving at Joint Base Andrews, the president went into the lounge for a five-minute meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, who has been visiting Washington this week.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch planned to meet in Boston with current and former inmates to discuss

During his speech, Kerry said the debate over refugees on the campaign trail was “pretty nasty politics,” adding: “People make statements designed to scare people with no basis in the facts.”

“That is who we are. That is what we do. That is how we wrote our history.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Wednesday that the Senate would take up legislation next week to suspend the federal resettlement program for Syrians and Iraqis seeking asylum.

along with any asylum seeker who has visited either Syria or Iraq in the past five years

which has already passed the House. But the fact that the Senate will vote on the proposal

The main thrust of Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night focused on fixing the nation’s broken politics.

institutions of this government and democracy” are functioning, something that has not happened amid all the partisan rancor of the last few years.

e also said that Obama will turn to more intimate settings such as the one scheduled in Omaha on Wednesday.

Pete Ricketts, to accept an invitation to be part of the welcoming party for Obama at the airport, saying he did not have time. After a public flap, Ricketts said he had found time to meet Obama at the airport.

“This democracy is hard work, and we want to make sure it is the American people who were driving that change,

The president believed that it was important that there be an alternative argumentation to rebut the prevailing wisdom in some of the public debate right now,”

Penny Pritzker will head to Denver on Friday to discuss the effect of climate change on the nation’s economic growth.

pisode of the television series “The West Wing” that celebrated the long-forgotten event. Roughly 50 administration officials