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Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced legislation on Wednesday that would bar government and local law enforcement agencies from purchasing the location data of U.S. citizens without a warrant. The “Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act” [PDF] would also criminalize the police use of “illegitimately obtained” data from technology brokers such as Clearview AI, a biometrics firm that has scraped and sold billions of photos from social media and other websites

Facebook announced that it had broken up two separate Palestinian hacker groups—one with alleged ties to the Palestinian Preventive Security Service (PSS), the intelligence service of the Palestinian Authority, and the other, known as Arid Viper, with reported links to the Hamas militant group.

the PSS-backed hackers are believed to be based in the West Bank and target entities primarily in Palestine and Syria, with a lesser focus on Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Libya. Their targets include journalists, critics of the Palestinian government, human rights activists, and military groups such as the Syrian opposition and Iraqi military.

As the Islamic State's self-declared caliphate collapsed in Syria, tens of thousands of men, women and children who had lived in it ended up in squalid camps and crowded prisons run by the Kurdish-led militia that had partnered with the United States to defeat the jihadists.

But now that a military incursion by Turkey against Kurdish forces has set off a new wave of violence and weakened their control over the area, uncertainty has grown over the fate of the huge population of people who survived the toppling of the Islamic State and have been warehoused since then in prisons and detention camps.

Most of their home countries have refused to take them back,

their governments have instead chosen to leave them in the custody of a Kurdish-led force that lacks the resources to house, feed and protect them, much less to investigate the adults and provide the children with education and rehabilitation.

The detention crisis in northeastern Syria is a bleak byproduct of the war against the Islamic State.

Mr. Polat’s prison is a converted industrial institute that now holds more than 5,000 people. One-quarter of them are Syrians, the rest hailing from 29 other countries, including Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, the Netherlands and the United States.

Most of the 400 men in a vast medical ward wore them. Many of them were sick or wounded. Men with metal braces holding broken bones in place lay on thin mattresses, while others shuffled to the bathroom on crutches or dragged their legs on the ground behind them. A few were so emaciated that their cheekbones stuck out and their legs were as thin as arms. When one man made the call to prayer, many of the prisoners prayed sitting down because they were too injured or ill to stand.

The Kurdish guards assumed that most of the men had been fighters and still followed the Islamic State’s ideology, but the prisoners themselves played down their roles in the world’s most fearsome terrorist organization.A Palestinian man with a broken leg said he had come to Syria because he “wanted to help.” A mechanic from Trinidad said he had not fought because he had been too busy fixing cars. A tall, muscular Russian said he had been a cook — in an elementary school.In dozens of interviews in two prisons, no one admitted to being a fighter.

The boys in prison said they received almost no services.“The situation is pretty bad here, so if they could hurry up and decide,” said a 16-year-old boy from Mauritius. “Months like this without knowing what is going to happen, people could start going crazy. They could say these guys were terrorists before with ISIS, but they are still human.”

King Djoser asked Imhotep, an architect, priest and healer, to design a funerary monument for him; the result was the world’s first major stone building, the Step-Pyramid at Saqqara, near Memphis. Egyptian pyramid-building reached its zenith with the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo.

During the third and fourth dynasties, Egypt enjoyed a golden age of peace and prosperity. The pharaohs held absolute power and provided a stable central government; the kingdom faced no serious threats from abroad; and successful military campaigns in foreign countries like Nubia and Libya added to its considerable economic prosperity

until about 2160 B.C., when the central authority completely dissolved, leading to civil war between provincial governors. This chaotic situation was intensified by Bedouin invasions and accompanied by famine and disease.

The kingdom also built diplomatic and trade relations with Syria, Palestine and other countries; undertook building projects including military fortresses and mining quarries; and returned to pyramid-building in the tradition of the Old Kingdom. The Middle Kingdom reached its peak under Amenemhet III (1842-1797 B.C.); its decline began under Amenenhet IV (1798-1790 B.C.

The controversial Amenhotep IV (c. 1379-1362), of the late 18th dynasty, undertook a religious revolution, disbanding the priesthoods dedicated to Amon-Re (a combination of the local Theban god Amon and the sun god Re) and forcing the exclusive worship of another sun-god, Aton. Renaming himself Akhenaton (“servant of the Aton”), he built a new capital in Middle Egypt called Akhetaton, known later as Amarna. Upon Akhenaton’s death, the capital returned to Thebes and Egyptians returned to worshiping a multitude of gods.

In 525 B.C., Cambyses, king of Persia, defeated Psammetichus III, the last Saite king, at the Battle of Pelusium, and Egypt became part of the Persian Empire.

The last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt–the legendary Cleopatra VII–surrendered Egypt to the armies of Octavian (later Augustus) in 31 B.C. Six centuries of Roman rule followed, during which Christianity became the official religion of Rome and the Roman Empire’s provinces (including Egypt). The conquest of Egypt by the Arabs in the seventh century A.D. and the introduction of Islam would do away with the last outward aspects of ancient Egyptian culture and propel the country towards its modern incarnation.

including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory, psychology, and zoology.

some of his work remained unsurpassed until the 19th century.

But he is, of course, most outstanding as a philosopher.

Within the Academy, however, relations seem to have remained cordial. Aristotle always acknowledged a great debt to Plato; he took a large part of his philosophical agenda from Plato, and his teaching is more often a modification than a repudiation of Plato’s doctrines.

Aristotle was born on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern Greece.

Many of Plato’s later dialogues date from these decades, and they may reflect Aristotle’s contributions to philosophical debate at the Academy.

It is possible that two of Aristotle’s surviving works on logic and disputation, the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations, belong to this early period.

During Aristotle’s residence at the Academy, King Philip II of Macedonia (reigned 359–336 bce) waged war on a number of Greek city-states.

His writings in ethics and political theory as well as in metaphysics and the philosophy of science continue to be studied,

When Plato died about 348, his nephew Speusippus became head of the Academy, and Aristotle left Athens.

While in Assus and during the subsequent few years when he lived in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, Aristotle carried out extensive scientific research, particularly in zoology and marine biology.

The scope of Aristotle’s scientific research is astonishing.

The myriad items of information about the anatomy, diet, habitat, modes of copulation, and reproductive systems of mammals, reptiles, fish, and insects are a melange of minute investigation and vestiges of superstition.

In 343 or 342 Aristotle was summoned by Philip II to the Macedonian capital at Pella to act as tutor to Philip’s 13-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great.

By 326 Alexander had made himself master of an empire that stretched from the Danube to the Indus and included Libya and Egypt.

Most of Aristotle’s surviving works, with the exception of the zoological treatises, probably belong to this second Athenian sojourn.

Aristotle’s works, though not as polished as Plato’s, are systematic in a way that Plato’s never were.

Aristotle divided the sciences into three kinds: productive, practical, and theoretical.

When Alexander died in 323, democratic Athens became uncomfortable for Macedonians, even those who were anti-imperialist.

Aristotle’s writings fall into two groups: those that were published by him but are now almost entirely lost, and those that were not intended for publication but were collected and preserved by others.

Time cannot be composed of indivisible moments, because between any two moments there is always a period of time.

Motion (kinesis) was for Aristotle a broad term, encompassing changes in several different categories.

For Aristotle, extension, motion, and time are three fundamental continua in an intimate and ordered relation to each other.

Change, for Aristotle, can take place in many different categories.

Mr. Trump, who aides said had on his mind the specter of the 2012 attacks on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, became increasingly angry as he watched television images of pro-Iranian demonstrators storming the embassy. Aides said he worried that no response would look weak after repeated threats by the United States.

When Mr. Trump chose the option of killing General Suleimani, top military officials, flabbergasted, were immediately alarmed about the prospect of Iranian retaliatory strikes on American troops in the region. It is unclear if General Milley or Mr. Esper pushed back on the president’s decision.

The option that was eventually approved depended on who would greet General Suleimani at his expected arrival on Friday at Baghdad International Airport. If he was met by Iraqi government officials allied with Americans, one American official said, the strike would be called off. But the official said it was a “clean party,” meaning members of Kataib Hezbollah, including its leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Mr. Trump authorized the killing at about 5 p.m. on Thursday, officials said.

Under term limits, Putin left the presidency for four years in 2008 in a tumultuous period during which Russia fought a war in Georgia, faced growing anti-Kremlin protests, and failed to block a Nato intervention in Libya. By 2012, Putin was back, and his temporary replacement, Dmitry Medvedev, no longer seen as a viable successor in the long term.

Putin also has options to be speaker of the Duma (parliament) or leader of its main party, United Russia, thereby exercising power behind the scenes in the manner of Jaroslaw Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s Law and Justice party.

The accompanying, enforced resignation of the entire government, including the prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev, is Putin’s attempt to reset his administration before Duma elections next year. Analysts say he feared Medvedev’s unpopularity – he has been accused of corruption – was beginning to rub off on him.

Although these changes are dressed up as desirable constitutional reforms, they clearly serve one common purpose: establishing Putinism in perpetuity. By showing he has no intention of retiring, Putin hopes to nip a possible succession battle in the bud.

Yet it appears Putin does not want to emulate out-and-out dictators in other countries by making himself president-for-life – the path chosen by China’s Xi Jinping. He values a veneer of democratic legitimacy.

The continuing drag on Russia’s development caused by western sanctions, imposed after the illegal annexation of Crimea, symbolises the broader, negative aspects of perpetual Putinism.

Putin is in cahoots with Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his campaign against pro-western Kurds in north-east Syria. More recently, he has inserted Russian mercenaries into the war in Libya, backing rebels against the UN-recognised government in Tripoli.

And speaking of poison, who doubts that Putin and his henchmen were behind the unpunished attempt to assassinate Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury and last year’s murder of a Chechen separatist in Berlin?

The prospect of Putin prolonging and strengthening his nihilistic reign is a terrible one. Putin’s is the face of the enemy. Henceforth he must be recognised as such.

More people than ever before are reading and supporting our journalism, in more than 180 countries around the world. And this is only possible because we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

None of this would have been attainable without our readers’ generosity – your financial support has meant we can keep investigating, disentangling and interrogating. It has protected our independence, which has never been so critical. We are so grateful.

“You don’t grant immunity to individuals unless you are getting something from them — and we wouldn’t be here.”

Six months earlier, Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general who ran the department from November 2018 until Mr. Barr arrived in February 2019, rejected a request from Mr. Berman for permission to file criminal charges against the bank, two lawyers involved in the investigation said. Mr. Whitaker blocked the move shortly after Mr. Erdogan repeatedly pressed Mr. Trump in a series of conversations in November and December 2018 to resolve the Halkbank matter.

Mr. Erdogan had a big political stake in the outcome, because the case had become a major embarrassment for him in Turkey.

And Mr. Trump’s sympathetic response to Mr. Erdogan was especially jarring because it involved accusations that the bank had undercut Mr. Trump’s policy of economically isolating Iran, a centerpiece of his Middle East plan.

Former White House officials said they came to fear that the president was open to swaying the criminal justice system to advance a transactional and ill-defined agenda of his own.

the administration’s bitterness over Mr. Berman’s unwillingness to go along with Mr. Barr’s proposal would linger, and ultimately contribute to Mr. Berman’s dismissal.

It predated Mr. Trump’s election but came to encompass a broad cast of players, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor; Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser; and Brian D. Ballard, a lobbyist and fund-raiser for the president.

he investigation of Halkbank, Mr. Erdogan claimed, was a “big conspiracy” instigated by his rival Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Muslim cleric. Mr. Gulen left Turkey in the late 1990s and moved to Pennsylvania, where, in Mr. Erdogan’s telling, he plotted an unsuccessful coup attempt just a month earlier, according to a summary of the conversation provided to The Times by the Biden aide.

Mr. Erdogan asked Mr. Biden to remove Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. That office was in the early stages of an investigation into Halkbank and had already indicted a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab, for helping to orchestrate the sanctions-evasion scheme.

Mr. Erdogan also wanted the Obama administration to remove the judge overseeing Mr. Zarrab’s case in Manhattan, the Biden aide said. And he wanted Mr. Zarrab released and allowed to return to Turkey.

“If the president were to take this into his own hands, what would happen would be he would be impeached for violating the separation of powers,” Mr. Biden said

“Top leadership in Turkey felt that Trump would be a tough-minded businessman, but a businessman they could work with,” Robert Amsterdam, a lobbyist for Turkey, recalled.

The National Security Council asked the Education Department about a network of charter schools, partly funded with federal money, that were said to be linked to Mr. Gulen, the Erdogan rival who was living in Pennsylvania. The agency was then asked if the money could be blocked, one official involved in the conversations said. But Education Department officials resisted, saying they did not have the legal authority to stop the funding.

But the investigation by the federal prosecutors in Manhattan ground ahead. By early 2018, it had led to the indictments of nine defendants, including Turkey’s former economy minister and three Halkbank officials, on charges such as bank fraud and money laundering related to the sanctions-evasion scheme.

ut Mr. Mnuchin raised concerns about how large a fine might be imposed on Halkbank. The French banking giant Société Générale agreed that same year to pay U.S. authorities more than $2 billion to resolve charges that it had violated U.S. sanctions against Cuba and bribed officials in Libya, among other accusations

A fine on that scale would threaten the future of Halkbank, lobbyists and lawyers for the bank argued, as did top Turkish officials in conversations with members of the Trump administration

Mr. Erdogan made clear that he was frustrated with the continued pestering by Southern District prosecutors concerning Halkbank, and he wanted Mr. Trump to intervene to help wrap up the investigation, Mr. Bolton said in the interview

Mr. Trump also told Mr. Erdogan that he wanted to replace the prosecutors in Mr. Berman’s office in Manhattan, whom Mr. Trump considered to be holdovers from the Obama era.

Mr. Rosenstein was convinced that the evidence was compelling, perhaps even more so than in other sanctions-evasion cases in which the United States had charged banks, lawyers familiar with the investigation said. The memo from the prosecutors also noted that the actions Halkbank was accused of taking were helping to support Iran’s economy, which was antithetical to Mr. Trump’s foreign policy goal of tightening economic pressure on the country.

Mr. Rosenstein urged Mr. Berman to come to Washington to present the Southern District’s argument to Mr. Whitaker. The goal was not to file charges immediately against the bank. Instead, the plan was to give the Southern District more leverage to squeeze Halkbank to accept a deferred prosecution agreement that included an admission of wrongdoing.

Discussions between Halkbank and the Southern District continued, according to lawyers involved in the case. But the bank maintained its refusal to admit to wrongdoing and insisted on a deal that would end investigations and drop existing charges.

At times, the prosecutors were left with the impression that bank officials felt they had all the leverage because of the relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan.

The suggestion that the Justice Department would offer Turkish officials protection from criminal charges, even without their agreement to assist in the investigation, was unacceptable and unethical, Mr. Berman argued, according to lawyers close to the investigation.

Mr. Barr sought to persuade Mr. Berman that the so-called global settlement would enforce U.S. sanctions law and avert a rift with an ally in a volatile part of the world.

“That is the biggest prize that Erdogan could ever receive,” Mr. Erdemir said. “Erdogan was not trying to save the bank. He was trying to save his ministers and save himself.”

ust how idiosyncratic became more apparent last October, when Mr. Erdogan sent troops into Syria. Mr. Trump, who had initially given Mr. Erdogan the green light to do so, then faced an intense bipartisan backlash, leading him within days to take a tougher line with Turkey, threatening economic reprisals.

On Oct. 15, the Justice Department gave the prosecutors in Manhattan approval to file charges against Halkbank, a direct slap at Mr. Erdogan.The prosecutors rushed to present evidence before a grand jury and secured a six-count indictment that same day charging Halkbank with money laundering, bank fraud and conspiracy to violate the Iran sanctions. So far, no additional individuals have been charged.

The effects of rising food prices have been felt unevenly around the world. Asia has been largely spared because of a plentiful rice crop. But parts of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America that are more dependent on imported food are struggling.

Joseph Siegle, the director of research at National Defense University’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, estimated that 106 million people on the continent are facing food insecurity, double the number since 2018.

In the United States, food prices rose 6.3 percent in December compared with a year ago, while the price of restaurant meals rose 6.0 percent and the price of meat, poultry, fish and eggs jumped 12.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But economists and agricultural experts say that while these efforts help at the margin, there may be little the government can do to combat a phenomenon that is both complex and global.

Overloaded shipping companies have been refusing to send their steel boxes to the Midwest to pick up agricultural products, instead preferring to ship them back to Asia to carry more lucrative cargo.

With both their costs and their sales prices increasing, many farmers are making similar margins to what they earned before, Mr. Edgington said. But “huge swings” in the price of corn, soybeans and fertilizer were still putting their finances at risk.