Pope Francis has long expressed a desire to visit Russia and China in hopes of healing the church’s historical rifts and ensuring the faith’s future in the populous East. On Friday, he came very close, landing in Mongolia, a country sandwiched between the two geopolitical giants, with a minuscule Catholic […]
Wolrd
The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Natasha Frost, a reporter in Melbourne. Becoming a republic, legalizing same-sex marriage, changing the Constitution to establish an Aboriginal advisory body: To make these changes to […]
After piercing a daunting line of Russian defenses around the southern village of Robotyne, Ukrainian forces are now seeking to take the next step in their arduous counteroffensive, waging a fierce battle a few miles farther to the east, according to Ukrainian military commanders and U.S. officials. The intense fighting […]
Keith Spicer, who as a spirited government official pushed his fellow Canadians to define their national identity and reconcile their bilingual heritage more than two centuries after the British defeated the French to capture Quebec, died on Aug. 24 in Ottawa. He was 89. His death, in a hospital, was […]
As the all-powerful ruler of oil-rich Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba had two passions, music and forests, that forged powerful ties across the world. An accomplished musician, Mr. Bongo recorded a disco-funk album and lured James Brown and Michael Jackson to Gabon. As president, he built a music studio at his […]
They arrived in desperation, unable to find anything better, safer or cheaper in a city with a severe shortage of affordable housing. They settled in a trash-choked building owned and neglected by the city of Johannesburg, paying “rent” to criminals. Hundreds of people lived there, and on Thursday morning, at […]
South Africa’s deadliest residential fire in years At least 74 people, including a dozen children, died yesterday in a fire in Johannesburg that tore through a building where squatters lived, city officials said. It was one of the deadliest residential fires in South Africa’s history. My colleague Lynsey Chutel, who […]
Alphabet’s Google was hit with a lawsuit on Thursday by Danish online job-search rival Jobindex, a year after the latter complained to EU antitrust regulators that the U.S. tech giant unfairly favoured its own job-search service. The Danish Media Association on behalf of Jobindex sued Google at a Danish court […]
The European rights court said Thursday it would hear an appeal by sex workers against a French anti-prostitution law which they say has shattered their livelihoods and driven them underground. Sex workers technically operate legally in France, but the country in 2016 moved against their clients by outlawing the purchase […]
The Texas Supreme Court allowed a new state law banning gender-affirming care for minors to take effect on Friday, setting up Texas to be the most populous state with such restrictions on transgender children. Legal advocates who sued on behalf of the families and doctors, including the American Civil Liberties […]