Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

The Colombian establishment is lining up behind Rodolfo Hernández, a populist businessman with an incendiary streak, to defeat the leftist former rebel Gustavo Petro.

For months, pollsters predicted that Gustavo Petro, a former rebel-turned-senator making a bid to be the nation’s first leftist president, would head to a June presidential runoff against Federico Gutiérrez, a conservative establishment candidate who had argued that a vote for Mr. Petro amounted to “a leap into the void.’’

Rodolfo Hernández, a former mayor and wealthy businessman with a populist, anti-corruption platform whose outsider status, incendiary statements and single-issue approach to politics have earned him comparisons to Donald Trump.

When Boris Johnson hit energy companies with a windfall tax last week as a way of providing more aid for struggling consumers, it was a bittersweet moment for the opposition Labour Party, which had been promoting just such a plan for months.

For once, Labour could claim to have won “the battle of ideas.” But at a stroke, Mr. Johnson had co-opted the party’s marquee policy and claimed the credit.

senior leadership “must bear responsibility” for the failure to follow the rules.

A drone lifted off from Michigan this month and flew across the St. Clair River toward Port Lambton, Ontario. Its spooked pilot aborted the landing after being spotted by a neighbor, leaving the police to later fish the drone out of a tree and discover 11 handguns strapped to it with plastic bags, tape and carabiner clips.

The problem is also glaring on the U.S.-Mexico border. Last August, Mexico sued 10 American gunmakers, blaming them for fueling violence in Mexico.

The spillover across Canada’s border with the United States extends beyond the guns themselves to the shared grief and calls for increased firearms regulations in the wake of mass shootings, including two just this month: 10 people were killed in a racist attack in a Buffalo supermarket on May 14; and 19 students and two teachers were killed on Tuesday at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

The Italian Bishops’ Conference on Friday presented its plan to investigate clerical abuse, but critics say it is insufficient and disappointing.

Seeking to address the concerns about the revelations of abuse that have devastated the church worldwide, the bishops announced that they would commission a report examining cases from 2020-21, to be published in November, as well as a second report that would analyze how clerical abuse had been handled in Italy in the past two decades.

Victims groups and their advocates in Italy have been frustrated by the church’s failure to follow in the footsteps of other countries — including Australia, Ireland and the United States — that have commissioned fully independent investigations carried out by third parties.

Older people who received smallpox vaccinations may yet have some immunity, researchers say. Healthy children and adults generally do not become severely ill.

The answer is reassuring. Most children and adults with healthy immune systems are likely to dodge severe illness, experts said in interviews. But there are two high-risk groups.

One comprises infants younger than six months.

The European Union’s long-delayed deal to embargo Russian oil, finalized late Monday, effectively exempts Hungary from the costly step the rest of the bloc is taking to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

He has also painted Hungary’s interests as being distinct from the West by fanning culture wars and fears of liberal values lapping at Hungary’s borders, speaking in March about “the gender insanity sweeping across the Western world.”

“Hungary is exempt from the oil embargo!” Mr. Orban declared on his Facebook page Monday. He had previously said cutting off Russian oil “amounts to an atomic bomb being dropped on the Hungarian economy.”

“China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,”

“We can’t rely on Beijing to change its trajectory,” he said. “So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open and inclusive international system.”

On Feb. 4, almost three weeks before the invasion, President Vladimir V. Putin met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing as their two governments issued a 5,000-word statement announcing a “no limits” partnership that aims to oppose the international diplomatic and economic systems overseen by the United States and its allies. Since the war began, the Chinese government has given Russia diplomatic support by reiterating Mr. Putin’s criticisms of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories that undermine the United States and Ukraine.

In every country, people get into arguments, hold racist views or suffer from mental health issues. But in the U.S., it is easier for those people to pick up a gun and shoot someone.

But federal laws are lax.

The U.S. is always going to have more guns, and consequently more deaths, than other rich countries. Given the Second Amendment, mixed public opinion and a closely divided federal government, lawmakers face sharp limits on how far they can go.

As Shanghai eased one of the longest, toughest lockdowns anywhere since the pandemic began, many of its 25 million residents celebrated being free to move around. The reopening on Wednesday came after Shanghai’s two-month siege against Covid had set off public anger over shortages of food and medicine as well as the harsh enforcement of quarantine rules.

For now at least, that anger gave way to relief after the government wound back many restrictions. During the day, people — all wearing masks — basked in the novelty of previously mundane pleasures like meeting friends and relatives, strolling in parks, and driving through streets that had been largely empty since early April. Hairdressers were, as in many cities freed from lockdowns, busy. Subway lines were open but quiet.

The uncertainty and anxiety about the future could impede Shanghai’s — and China’s — recovery. Officials have been cautiously lifting some restrictions on residents and selected companies since midway through May.

A navy shirt that read, “Wilmington Friends Quakers” was just right for Ms. Beatty’s needs on a recent thrifting trip to Urban Jungle, a large store with a little yellow submarine sign out front in the East Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. But she needed more than just one perfect T-shirt.

While upcycling has become a more common practice in fashion in recent years, it’s less common to see a brand entirely devoted to it.

The reconstructed look will be priced around $125, a steep premium, but a price that Ms. Beatty thinks is fair, given all that goes into making the garments: sourcing and cleaning the shirts, determining the look (matching shirts based on color tone, size and feel), cutting and sewing the garment.

It all starts with a whistle, said Vladislav Goncharenko, a Ukrainian army sergeant, describing the relentless Russian shelling.“You lie in a trench,’’ he said, waiting in an ambulance packed with other wounded soldiers. “There are very loud explosions. You want to get deeper into the ground. And you have shrapnel whistling above you, like flies.”

The momentum Ukraine generated after pushing Russian forces back from Kyiv, the capital, and Kharkiv, the second-largest city, has given way in the East to weeks of give-and-take over villages, heavy shelling — and a stream of Ukrainian dead and wounded from the battlefields.

“Those people who said that the war would end very soon, that we have already won, that we will celebrate in April, said a dangerous thing,” Ukraine’s national security adviser, Oleksiy Danilov, told Ukrainian media this week.

“This, too, is a decision we have made that ensures Ukraine’s security with the most modern equipment,”

The speed and scale of weapons donations to Ukraine has been a persistent source of criticism for Mr. Scholz both from Ukraine and from inside Germany, even as he has spoken of breaking with decades of pacifist policy.

In addition, Germany has taken in 168 “especially severely wounded” Ukrainian soldiers for medical treatment, Mr. Scholz said.

In emails to workers at SpaceX and Tesla, Mr. Musk said they were required to spend a minimum of 40 hours a week in the office.

“The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence,” Mr. Musk said. “That is why I spent so much time in the factory — so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, SpaceX would long ago have gone bankrupt.”

The issue has become more fraught as coronavirus vaccinations have increased and an abatement of the pandemic seemed to be near. Some companies began saying they expected workers to return to the office. Still, plans have continued to fluctuate. Apple last month suspended its requirement that employees return to the office in May for at least three days a week because of a resurgence of Covid-19 cases. Airbnb recently told its employees that they never had to return to the office.

President Yoon Suk-yeol’s governing party won​ 12 of the 17 races for big-city mayors and provincial governors

The results on Wednesday were a decisive victory for Mr. Yoon, who won the presidential race by a razor-thin margin in March and was inaugurated just three weeks ago. Although this week’s elections were only held at the local level, the results were seen as an early referendum on Mr. Yoon’s performance as leader.

The election​ results were a stunning setback for the Democratic Party. During the last local elections four years ago, it won 14 of the same 17 races for leaders of big cities and provinces.

When the sirens warning of incoming rockets split the skies, Israel’s national blood bank moves into high alert to keep the nation’s blood supply safe. The heavy machinery for blood processing, plasma freezers and centrifuges are transferred to a basement bomb shelter, a cumbersome operation that takes 10 to 12 hours.

By the end of the year, the blood bank will be relocated to a bright, state-of-the-art subterranean facility built to withstand chemical, biological and conventional weapons, including a direct hit from a large missile, as well as earthquakes and cyberattacks.

“It will save the lives of our loved ones, our frontline workers and our soldiers in times of routine emergencies and conflict,”

Instead, Mr. Smith will be hosting an international anti-monarchy conference, and explaining why he thinks Britain should get rid of its royals.

urging Britons to “make Elizabeth the last” monarch.

“I certainly don’t view her with any kind of admiration,” he said, drinking a coffee in the town of Reading, west of London, where he now lives. “There is no achievement in what she’s done.”

As the United States moved to ship ever more advanced weapon systems to Ukraine to aid it in its fight to thwart Russia’s eastern offensive, Moscow said the latest move by President Biden threatened to escalate the war in dangerous ways.

the most powerful provided since the start of the war — was the United States “deliberately and painstakingly pouring gasoline on the fire.”

“What it boils down to is we’re going to probably give Ukraine the most limited of the options as far as range,” Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the retired supreme allied commander for Europe, said at a virtual security event on Wednesday, referring to the rocket system. “That’s unfortunate.”

About $38 billion earmarked for Poland from a coronavirus recovery fund had been blocked over judicial disputes. But relations with the bloc improved over Poland’s strong stance against Russia.

In a major concession to the Polish government, the European Union’s executive arm on Wednesday opened the door for the disbursement of billions of dollars in aid to Poland that had been blocked during a standoff over judicial independence in the country.

“The approval of this plan is linked to clear commitments by Poland on the independence of the judiciary, which will need to be fulfilled before any actual payment can be made,”