President Bashar al-Assad, who wielded fear and force over Syria for more than two decades, fled the country under the cover of night — and a fake political address.
In the West African nation of Niger, killings by insurgents have surged since the military seized power in a coup, expelled U.S. and European troops and stopped negotiations with Islamist groups.
The Israeli military said several people were lightly injured after its air defenses failed to intercept the projectile, which struck a playground in the city.
The Russian president, in a marathon annual news conference, said that he had not yet met with Bashar al-Assad, the ousted Syrian leader who fled to Moscow, but that he planned to.
The ancient city, an early stronghold of opposition to Bashar al-Assad’s oppressive regime, was ravaged by a government crackdown. New York Times correspondents in Homs spoke to people who were reacting to his fall with smiles and tears.
Ukraine’s forces are steadily losing ground on the battlefield. The assassination of a top general in Moscow won’t improve their war effort, analysts and Western officials say.
The president-elect’s call for Taiwan to spend more on its own defense and his complaints about its semiconductor dominance may herald a tenser relationship.
A second Donald J. Trump presidency would almost certainly mark a return to an era of foreign policy decrees, untethered to any policy process, at a moment of maximum international peril.
The Pentagon needs what the company offers to compete with China even as it frets over its potential for dominance and the billionaire’s global interests.