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Dow Closes Above 19000 for First Time

. It was Nov. 4 when the blue-chip index last closed below 18000. Since then, a rally following the U.S. presidential election has benefited, in particular, the shares of industrial companies and banks, bolstering the Dow.

In January, worries about slowing economic growth in China and its possible spillover effects sent the blue-chip index to its worst-ever five-day start to a year.

The prospects for James N. Mattis to serve as secretary of defense in the Trump administration received a boost on Tuesday when two experts in military policy recommended that an exception be made so Mr. Mattis, a retired four-star general, can assume the top Pentagon post.

Military officers are barred by law from serving as defense secretary unless they have been retired for seven years.

John McCain, the Arizona Republican who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee and has strongly supported General Mattis’s nomination

“In an ideal situation, we would repeal and replace Obamacare simultaneously, but we need to make sure that we have at least a detailed framework that tells the American people what direction we’re headed,”

vote gives Senate and House committees until Jan. 27 to write legislation that would repeal major provisions of the health care law.

convinced Mr. Trump to leap into the fray. Not only did he try to steel Republican spines, but he threatened Democrats who might stand in his way, saying he would campaign against them,

Thousands of people showed up in freezing temperatures on Sunday in Michigan to hear Sen. Bernie Sanders denounce Republican efforts to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law, one of dozens of rallies Democrats staged across the country to highlight opposition.

"I'm going to get really sick and my life will be at risk," said Bible, an online antique dealer.

When Theresa May stands up Tuesday to make a major speech on Brexit, her words will be as closely scrutinized around the world as anything said by a British prime minister for many years.

By insisting that the U.K. would reclaim full control of its borders, ending the automatic right of EU citizens to live and work in Britain and by rejecting the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the U.K., she implicitly ruled out British participation in the EU’s single market and customs union, committing herself to what has become known as a hard Brexit.

Besides, the political opportunities to stop the Brexit juggernaut once Mrs. May has formally triggered the start of the two-year window to negotiate an exit deal are likely to be limited.

Even if a welfare program like the Trade Readjustment Allowance were amped up, it’s not likely that this population would become meek and grateful. They’re aware that the socioeconomic élite—lawyers, financiers, and consultants—profited mightily from the economic changes by which they were dispossessed over the past couple of decades, and I suspect that they don’t want to be the objects of such people’s charity. They want their dignity back. They want to be what they once were: workers, an independent source of economic value, ambivalently regarded by and even somewhat menacing to the upper class. As I wrote on my personal blog in May, they’d rather, if there’s no other choice, be “bad.”

These are the people who have voted into the most powerful office in the world a brittle, vindictive racist with a streak of authoritarianism. It is hard to feel generously toward them at the moment, but they need help as badly as do the people whom they have put in danger.

I suspect that working- and lower-middle-class whites feel abandoned, if not sold out, by the élites.

US election 2016: New York primaries crucial for Clinton and Trump

New York is holding presidential primaries seen as key for both Republican and Democratic front-runners after their recent defeats.

Wins will put Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump closer to securing their nominations.

John Kasich, last Republican Trump rival, quits race

Ohio Governor John Kasich has dropped out of the presidential race after struggling to gain traction against Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

"As I suspend my campaign today I have renewed faith, deeper faith that the Lord will show me the way forward,"

n a demonstration of support for Ukraine’s fledgling government, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here on Tuesday with an offer of $1 billion in American loan guarantees and pledges of technical assistance, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday.

The United States will also send technical experts to help Ukraine’s national bank and finance ministry, provide advice on how to fight corruption and train election monitors to help establish the legitimacy of Ukraine’s coming election.

Economic sanctions to punish Russia for its military intervention in Crimea, the senior official said, are likely to be imposed within days.

“Blood has been spilled in Ukraine again,” wrote Mr. Medvedev, once favored in the West for playing good cop to the hard-boiled president, Vladimir V. Putin. “The threat of civil war looms.”

It is an extraordinary propaganda campaign that political analysts say reflects a new brazenness on the part of Russian officials. And in recent days, it has largely succeeded — at least for Russia’s domestic audience — in painting a picture of chaos and danger in eastern Ukraine, although it was pro-Russian forces themselves who created it by seizing public buildings and setting up roadblocks.

In a report released Tuesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said that threats to ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, cited repeatedly by Russian officials and in the Russian news media as a potential rationale for Russian military action, were exaggerated and that some participants in the protests in the region came from Russia.

ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused Iran last month of trying to “dominate the region” through its proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, suggesting to some that Turkey was shifting toward confrontation with its neighbor and joining a Saudi-led coalition to push back against Iranian influence across the Middle East.

Yet it was all smiles and handshakes in Tehran on Tuesday, as Mr. Erdogan was welcomed by Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, at the start of a one-day visit that had been long planned but was put in jeopardy after some Iranian lawmakers called for it to be canceled after Mr. Erdogan’s comments.

In a joint news conference broadcast live on state television, Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Rouhani pledged to work together to calm regional crises. “The region is burning in a fire,” Mr. Erdogan said. “So far, more than 300,000 were killed in Syria. All were Muslim. We do not know who is killing whom. We have to get united and block the killing and bloodshed.”

bound Amtrak train that derailed and overturned late Tuesday, killing six people, injuring dozens more, and disrupting train service for thousands of riders in the Northeast region.

The train had at least seven cars, including the engine, which separated from the rest, officials said. Six cars overturned. At least one looked as bent as a crumpled soda can, and parts of the damaged cars were so badly mangled that firefighters had to use hydraulic tools to rescue people trapped inside.

On Wednesday, Temple University Hospital said it had received 54 people from the wreck. Herbert E. Cushing, the chief medical officer, said one person died overnight from a massive chest injury, and 25 remained in the hospital, including eight people in critical condition.

Cuban President Raul Castro told President Barack Obama that normalizing relations between the two countries could best be achieved by returning land currently occupied by the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay and lifting economic sanctions, Cuban officials said on Tuesday.

The two leaders met with on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday — the first such sit-down between leaders of the two countries on American soil since the Cuban revolution.

In a statement the White House said the president "also highlighted steps the United States intends to take to improve ties between the American and Cuban peoples, and reiterated our support for human rights in Cuba."

One of Britain’s highest-ranking intelligence officials on Tuesday castigated the giant American companies that dominate the Internet for providing the “command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals” and challenged the companies to find a better balance between privacy and security.

the accusation went beyond what United States officials have said about Apple, Google and others that are now moving toward sophisticated encryption of more and more data on phones and email systems.

But the companies, saying they are responding to demand from their users, show no signs of backing down. Recently the chief executive of Apple, Tim Cook, said governments that want data should deal with the users of the technology, not with the providers of the hardware and services.