Rubio Is Pressing to Open Sanctions Investigation Into Harvard

Rubio Is Pressing to Open Sanctions Investigation Into Harvard

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is pushing to investigate whether Harvard University violated federal sanctions by collaborating on a health insurance conference in China that may have included officials blacklisted by the U.S. government, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. …

Read more

Americans Describe Being Detained as Hostages in a Venezuelan Prison

Americans Describe Being Detained as Hostages in a Venezuelan Prison

The guards wore name tags that read “Hitler” and “Demon” and covered their faces with ski masks. The Americans in the Venezuelan prison were confined to cement cells, beaten, pepper-sprayed and subjected to what one prisoner called “psychological torture.” Three months into their capture, the Americans were so filled with …

Read more

Plan to Return Russian Diplomats to U.S. Poses Espionage Risk

Plan to Return Russian Diplomats to U.S. Poses Espionage Risk

As it moves to transform U.S. relations with Russia, the Trump administration is talking with Moscow about readmitting potentially scores of Russian diplomats into the United States after years of expulsions. But the good-will gesture, which would be reciprocated by Moscow, could be a kind of Trojan horse, experts and …

Read more

A Quick, Quiet Trip to Belarus Signals a Turn in U.S. Policy

A Quick, Quiet Trip to Belarus Signals a Turn in U.S. Policy

The senior American diplomat slipped quietly into Belarus, a police state run by a strongman reviled for decades in the West, traveling by car across the border for meetings with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko and the head of his KGB security apparatus. It was Mr. Lukashenko’s first meeting with a …

Read more

U.S.A.I.D. Workers Brace for the Worst

U.S.A.I.D. Workers Brace for the Worst

The thousands of people who work for the U.S. government’s main agency for humanitarian aid and disaster relief have been on the front lines of efforts to fight famine, contain virulent infectious diseases like H.I.V. and Ebola, and rebuild infrastructure in impoverished and war-torn countries. On Friday evening, just hours …

Read more

U.S. Spy Chief Took on Role of Negotiator in Gaza War

U.S. Spy Chief Took on Role of Negotiator in Gaza War

For his first three years as the head of the C.I.A., William J. Burns was relentlessly focused on tripling the agency’s resources devoted to understanding China, and on countering Russia and its mysterious partnerships with Iran and North Korea. But in the last 16 months of his tenure, the diplomat-turned-spy …

Read more