Spotless uniforms, stalled cranes: Inside Venezuela’s faltering quake rescue effort
LA GUAIRA, Venezuela | Angelica Mundrain wants the bodies of her son, niece and nephew to be pulled from the rubble of her flattened beachfront apartment. She has spent every minute of the past six days waiting for the heavy machinery needed to remove the slabs of concrete and twisted metal that trapped them. So […]
Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries plunge Russia into a summer fuel crisis
The lines are growing at Russian gas stations — and so is the frustration and uncertainty as several months of Ukrainian attacks have set oil refineries ablaze and choked supplies for motorists across the vast country. Fuel rationing has been introduced in many regions, with hourslong queues of cars snaking beside roads. Social media videos […]
As the Pentagon stays quiet, AP reconstructs a US strike that killed over 100 Iranian children
JERUSALEM | It was the deadliest reported strike in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Most of the victims were children. In almost any other conflict, these haunting truths would be seared into national memory. Yet more than 120 days since at least one U.S. missile struck an Iranian primary school, there remains no final accounting […]
Defying Pope Leo XIV, traditionalists go ahead with bishop consecrations in Switzerland
ECONE, Switzerland | A group of traditionalist Catholics directly defied Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday by consecrating four bishops without his consent, dismissing the resulting excommunications and saying the break with the church was necessary to defend the Catholic faith. The Society of St. Pius X, which opposes modernizing reforms in the Catholic Church, went […]
Victor Willis, who co-founded the Village People and co-wrote ‘Y.M.C.A.,’ dies at 74
NEW YORK | Victor Willis, who co-founded the Village People, co-wrote the disco group’s classic hits “Y.M.C.A.,” “Macho Man” and “In the Navy,” and delighted crowds while dressed as the band’s helmeted and mustachioed police officer, has died. He was 74. “We are profoundly sad to announce the death of Victor Willis, lead singer of […]
EDITORIAL: Primary is over. Voters need to know how candidates will stop, reverse damage by Trump
Now that the Colorado Primary Election is in the rear-view mirror and party candidates are reshaping their campaigns for November, Job One for almost every candidate is to explain to voters how they would right the U.S. government ship that President Donald Trump has run aground. Any candidate for Congress, governor or even county commissioner […]
Heat forces yodelers at annual Swiss festival to sing in fountains
BASEL, Switzerland | City fountains became impromptu rehearsal spaces this weekend as yodelers at a festival in Basel, Switzerland, squeezed in last-minute practice while cooling off during Europe’s June heat wave. At one fountain, a folk band dipped their toes in the water on Saturday, as festivalgoers clapped along or cooled their hands under the […]
How some in Palestinian diaspora find connection, identity and resilience in traditional embroidery
Decades later, Samar Kabouli still fondly recalls gathering with women in her family and sipping cardamom-spiced coffee as they embroidered fabric with colorful threads in traditional Palestinian patterns. Born in Lebanon to Palestinian refugees, Kabouli had never seen her parents’ homeland. But more than just making pretty designs, the threads in her needle were stitching […]
A Jefferson for every era, from Lincoln to Trump, and the contradictions that endure
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. | He’s a prize-winning presidential historian who wrote an entire biography of Thomas Jefferson. But even Jon Meacham needs to think for a moment before defining what it means to be a “Jeffersonian.” “Well for a long time, before the civil rights movement, it meant to be more inclined toward states’ rights and […]
Movie Review: Sex is on the menu in Olivia Wilde’s dinner party comedy of manners ‘The Invite’
Soufflé is for dinner but much more is on the table in Olivia Wilde’s deliciously entertaining chamber comedy, “The Invite,” about a couple whose marriage is on the rocks who invite their upstairs neighbors over for an impromptu get-together. Such a gathering is, of course, a standby setup of stage and screen, alike. Faster than […]