President Donald Trump’s commutation of the prison sentence of longtime advisor Roger Stone last Friday night was entirely predictable, and shocking at the same time. It was entirely predictable in that anyone who’s paid much attention to the subject has seen it coming for months. President

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St. Petersburg, Florida With the United States grappling with the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world, Florida hit a grim milestone Sunday, shattering the national record for a state’s largest single-day increase in positive cases. Deaths from the virus have also been

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WASHINGTON President Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of his longtime political confidant Roger Stone, intervening in extraordinary fashion in a criminal case that was central to the Russia investigation and that concerned the president’s own conduct. The move came Friday, just days

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The Supreme Court ended its term on Thursday with two principles-heavy opinions that were something of a clinic in introductory constitutional law. The opinions, both decided by 7-2 majorities, held that President Donald Trump can’t block subpoenas seeking years of his personal financial

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They’ve served as teachers, activity planners, housecleaners, and disciplinarians, all while trying to bring in income and without regular support systems. After months of trying to do it all on their own, a number of parents are waving a white flag and asking for help. These mothers and

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Almost uniformly over the past week, Mexico’s intellectuals and media elite have lamented the spectacle of a Mexican president ingratiating himself with an American president that 7 of 10 Mexicans strongly dislike. But what many Mexicans say with a shrug is that they also know their country is

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Nearly one year ago, New Delhi stripped Kashmir of its special status, carving it into two union territories ruled directly by the capital. For many months, Kashmir lived under a lockdown, with communication services cut off, which officials argued was needed to maintain order. And yet

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Eight years have passed since award-winning writer and professor Lysley Tenorio debuted his stupendous collection, “Monstress.” Born in the Philippines, Tenorio now lives in San Francisco, where he completed his highly anticipated first novel, “The Son of Good Fortune,”  which was

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Washington On a day meant for unity and celebration, President Donald Trump vowed to “safeguard our values” from enemies within — leftists, looters, agitators, he said — in a Fourth of July speech packed with all the grievances and combativeness of his political rallies. Mr. Trump watched

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Post-coronavirus values I just spent 30 minutes analyzing Peter Grier’s cover story “5 ways COVID-19 will change America” from the April 27 & May 4 Monitor Weekly, and I must say, I came away impressed. I have an antagonistic relationship with news sources. I assume they have a hidden

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Boston When Mahdi Hashemian was looking for a bicycle for his 7-year-old daughter Zeynab last week, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, resident decided to skip his local cycle shops in favor of a Black-owned one a few miles away in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. At Spokehouse, a bike shop

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New York There is little evidence that the protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death caused a significant increase in United States coronavirus infections, according to public health experts. If the protests had driven an explosion in cases, experts say, the jumps would have started to

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President Donald Trump has had very little to say about reports Russia was paying a bounty to the Taliban to kill U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, other than that he was never briefed on the issue. White House officials do not deny that the intelligence reached the Oval Office, but say it

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Amid a fraught and polarizing election year, Monday’s ruling upholding abortion rights represents another example of legal principle outweighing legal politics. That’s particularly true for Chief Justice John Roberts, the ideological center of a Supreme Court with a narrow but deeply

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June’s spike in coronavirus cases has put the spotlight on states whose Republican governors ballyhooed their decisions to reopen ahead of meeting federal guidelines. They include Govs. Ron DeSantis in Florida, Doug Ducey in Arizona, and Greg Abbott in Texas. “Unfortunately when we cracked open

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Sacramento California on Sunday ordered some bars to close, the first major rollback of efforts to reopen the economy in the most populous U.S. state as cases nationwide soar to record levels day after day. Governor Gavin Newsom’s order for bars to close in Los Angeles and six other

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1. United States The United States has confirmed the first African American leader of a military branch. In June, the Senate unanimously approved the nomination of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as chief of staff of the Air Force. General Brown has flown 3,000 hours, including combat missions, and

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After the collapse last year of the second summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, North Korea retreated to the background of the world stage. The North ultimately balked at the U.S. demand for full denuclearization before economic sanctions relief. But North Korea “does not like

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Islamabad Pakistan’s state-run airline said on Thursday it will ground 150 pilots, accusing them of obtaining licenses by having others take exams for them, an accusation that followed a probe into last month’s crash that killed 97 people in Karachi. Abdullah Hafeez, a spokesman for Pakistan

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Pristina, Kosovo Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and nine other former separatist fighters were indicted on Wednesday on a range of crimes against humanity and war crimes charges, including murder, by an international court investigating their actions against ethnic Serbs and others during and

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