World

Jérôme Bayle had spent seven nights on a major French highway, leading a group of aggrieved farmers in protest, when the prime minister arrived, dressed in his Parisian blue suit and tie, to thank them for “making France proud” and announced he would meet their demands.Before camera flashes and outstretched microphones, Mr. Bayle told Prime Minister Gabriel Attal that he had seen the standoff as a match between two teams — the revolting farmers, led by Mr. Bayle, and the government, led by Mr. Attal.“I don’t like losing,” said Mr. Bayle, dressed decidedly more casually, with a baseball hat on his head, turned backward. The thick crowd around him chuckled. It was clear his team had won.Mr. Bayle, 42, a former professional rugby player, is widely credited with sparking a national protest mov...

Gangs have taken over entire neighborhoods in Haiti’s capital, and killings have more than doubled in the past year, but for the organizers of the Port-au-Prince Jazz Festival, the show simply had to go on.So while judges an ocean away deliberated on whether to send a contingent of officers to pacify Haiti’s violence-riddled streets, festival organizers made do by shortening the length of the event to four days from eight, moving the acts from a public stage to a restricted hotel venue and replacing the handful of artists who canceled.As 11.5 million Haitians struggle to feed their families and ride the bus or go to work because they fear becoming the victims of gunmen or kidnappers, they also are pushing forward, struggling to reclaim a safe sense of routine — whether or not that comes wi...

A ruling on Friday by the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide against Israel had deep historical resonance for both Israelis and Palestinians. But it lacked immediate practical consequences.The World Court did not order a halt to fighting in the Gaza Strip and made no attempt to rule on the merits of the case brought by South Africa, a process that will take months — if not years — to complete.But the court did order Israel to comply with the Genocide Convention, to send more aid to Gaza and to inform the court of its efforts to do so — interim measures that felt like a rebuke to many Israelis and a moral victory to many Palestinians.For many Israelis, the fact that a state founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust had been accused of genocide was “one hell of a symbol,” ...

In Haiti, as the number of murders soar and kidnappings rise, even the police are fleeing.With no elected president in office and a prime minister widely seen as illegitimate, calls for the government’s ouster are now being heard from an unlikely source: a brigade of armed officers ostensibly responsible for protecting environmentally sensitive areas.Armed uniformed members of the brigade clashed with government forces in northern Haiti this week, heightening tensions in an already volatile nation where gangs have seized control over large swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and are wreaking havoc in rural areas.The environmental group, the Brigade for the Security of Protected Areas (known as B-SAP), became angry after the prime minister fired its leader. On Wednesday, the group’s offi...

A large Russian military transport plane crashed on Wednesday in the Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine, state news agencies said, citing a statement by the Russian Defense Ministry.The ministry said that the plane carried 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were being transferred to the region to be exchanged for Russian service personnel. The claim could not be independently verified. The plane also carried six crew members and three other individuals, the ministry said, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency.The Defense Ministry did not say whether there were any survivors.The Ukrainian military intelligence agency said that it could not immediately comment. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that it was looking into the situation and declined to comment, according to S...

The gift and the book itself are fictional. The 2021 film, directed by Pablo Larraín, is too, proceeding from the idea that where there’s a martyr there must be a monster. Elizabeth is a freeze-dried witch, Charles a snarling prig. Perhaps to avoid accusations of defamation, the filmmakers identify their story, in a prefatory caption, as “a fable from a true tragedy.”A fable and a tragedy I grant you: The famous outline of Diana’s story, if not its unknowable guts, is Grimm indeed.But the word “true” doesn’t belong anywhere near “Spencer.” No reputable history has suggested, for instance, that the princess ate a bowlful of pearls emancipated from a Flintstones-size necklace given to her by her unfaithful husband. Nor is she known to have hallucinated Boleyn, who urged her toward self-harm,...

President Biden pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Friday to agree to the creation of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza is over and raised options that would limit Palestinian sovereignty to make the prospect more palatable to Israel.Hoping to overcome Mr. Netanyahu’s strenuous resistance, Mr. Biden floated the possibility of a disarmed Palestinian nation that would not threaten Israel’s security. While there was no indication that Mr. Netanyahu would ease his opposition, which is popular with his fragile right-wing political coalition, Mr. Biden expressed optimism that they may yet find consensus.“There are a number of types of two-state solutions,” the president told reporters at the White House several hours after the call, their first in nearly a month amid ...

A man was arrested in Brazil on Thursday in connection with the killing of Brent Sikkema, a New York art dealer who was found with 18 stab wounds in his Rio de Janeiro apartment this week.The man, Alejandro Triana Trevez, knew Mr. Sikkema and was believed to have stolen cash from the scene before fleeing, said Detective Alexandre Herdy, head of the city’s police homicide unit. The police believe that Mr. Sikkema had brought over $40,000 to spend on furnishing a new apartment in Rio.Officers recovered a bloodied knife from the apartment.“He staked out on the street,” Detective Herdy said. “He comes from São Paulo in the morning, goes straight to the place where the crime took place, to the victim’s street. Parks the car and stays there for several hours.”Mr. Trevez, a Cuban national, was ap...

The Biden administration will designate Yemen’s Houthi militia as a terrorist organization, partly reimposing penalties it lifted nearly three years ago on the Iran-backed group whose attacks on regional shipping traffic have drawn a U.S. military response.Beginning in mid-February, the United States will consider the Houthis a “specially designated global terrorist” group, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement on Wednesday, blocking its access to the global financial system, among other penalties. But Biden officials stopped short of applying a second, more severe designation — that of “foreign terrorist organization” — which the Trump administration imposed on the Houthis in its final days. The State Department revoked both designations shortly after President Biden to...

Despite staunch resistance from his opponents in the government, the anticorruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo was inaugurated early Monday morning as Guatemala’s president, a turning point in a country where tensions have been simmering over widespread graft and impunity.His inauguration had been scheduled for Sunday, but members of Congress delayed it, and concerns persisted about whether it would happen at all. But after an international outcry and pressure from protesters, Mr. Arévalo was sworn in shortly after midnight, becoming Guatemala’s most progressive head of state since democracy was re-established in the 1980s.His rise to power — six months after his victory at the polls delivered a stunning rebuke to Guatemala’s conservative political establishment — amounts to a sea change in...