Donald Trump (L) and Russia’s Vladimir Putin arrive to attend a joint press conference after a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. Yuri Kadobnov | Afp | Getty ImagesU.S. President Donald Trump said he has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone about ending the war in Ukraine, the New York Post reported, the first known direct conversation between Putin and a U.S president since early 2022.Trump, who has promised to end the war in Ukraine but not yet set out in public how he would do so, said last week that the war was…
Author: usaeverydaylife
His father, Daniel Utoni Nujoma, and his mother, Mpingana-Helvi Kondombolo, worked the land. As a boy, Mr. Nujoma said in his memoir, he tended the family cattle and goats, carrying a baby on his back to free his mother to work in the fields. With only modest formal education, Mr. Nujoma moved at age 17 to the coastal enclave of Walvis Bay, where he worked at a general store and a whaling station before relocating to Windhoek as a cleaner on the railroad system. After hours, he studied English at night school. In 1956, he married Theopoldine Kovambo Katjimne. They…
China’s consumer inflation accelerated to its fastest in five months in January while producer price deflation persisted, reflecting mixed consumer spending and weak factory activity.Deflationary pressures are likely to persist in China this year, analysts say, unless policymakers can rekindle sluggish domestic demand, with tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump on Chinese goods adding pressure on Beijing to spur growth in the world’s second-largest economy.The consumer price index rose 0.5% last month from a year earlier, quickening from December’s 0.1% gain, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Sunday, above the 0.4% rise estimate in a Reuters poll…
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said negotiating with the United States was “unwise, unintelligent, and not honorable,” just days after President Trump said he was willing to revive negotiations with Tehran.But Mr. Khamenei stopped short of ordering Iran’s government, which for months has sent signals that it is interested in negotiations, not to engage with Washington. And though Mr. Khamenei made an unusual gesture last year of openness to talks, he has generally taken a publicly hostile posture toward Washington even while quietly allowing Iranian officials to negotiate.In comments on Friday, Mr. Khamenei argued that Iran’s previous experiences negotiating…
For nearly eight years, wrapped in white and crowned with green hearts, Grenfell Tower has stood as a tragic monument to the worst residential fire in the post-World War II history of Britain. On Friday, the government confirmed it would demolish the building, where 72 people died in a blaze that a public inquiry blamed on a lethal combination of negligence, cost-cutting and deregulation.The decision, by the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, divided families of the victims when she told them of it on Wednesday, in advance of the official announcement. Some condemned the plan to tear down the building…
Serbia’s authoritarian leader should be riding high, lifted by economic growth that is four times the European average, falling unemployment and steadily rising wages.Instead, President Aleksandar Vucic, battered by three months of nationwide street protests, is struggling to weather his biggest political crisis in more than a decade of strong-arm rule.Leading the charge against him have been students in wealthy cities like Belgrade, the capital. To try to get them off the streets, the government said in December that it would offer young people state-subsidized loans of up to about $100,000 to buy apartments.Student representatives had a blunt response: Keep…
For decades, some members of the white Afrikaner minority have been trying to convince anyone and everyone who would listen that they are the true victims in post-apartheid South Africa.They have made claims of mass killings of their people and widespread land grabs by a Black-led government that they insist is seeking retribution for the sins of the Afrikaner-led apartheid government. Their stories have been false or greatly exaggerated, but that hasn’t stopped them from being widely amplified and repeated online.Afrikaners, an ethnic group that descended from European — primarily Dutch — colonizers, have found a champion of their cause…
Booing during “The Star-Spangled Banner” at sports games in Canada.“Buy Canadian” signs multiplying at grocery stores amid a brewing boycott of U.S. goods.Cross-party calls to find new friends and customers on the global stage.President Trump may have paused his plans to impose crushing tariffs on Canada, pulling the two countries back from the brink of a trade war. But evidence abounds of the damage Mr. Trump has inflicted on the relations between the two nations.After threatening levies on Canada, and Canada threatening to retaliate, Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday came to an agreement for a 30-day…
When I returned to Windsor, Ontario, the day before President Trump was set to impose potentially devastating tariffs on exports from Canada, fear was the city’s prevailing mood. A week later, following Mr. Trump’s suspension of a 25 percent tariff on most exports and 10 percent on oil, the mood has shifted more toward anger and the nation’s focus has moved toward alternatives to the United States.Whether Mr. Trump will impose the tariffs in early March remains unknown. But Matina Stevis-Gridneff and I found that whatever happens, relations between Canada and the United States have undergone a profound shift.[Read: Betrayed:…
There used to be a multiplex near my house that we called the “Babysitter 12” because it felt like, no matter the film on view, the theater was always full of people laughing, screaming, horsing around. I stopped going there after a while because while it was fun to be part of a boisterous crowd during, say, a Marvel movie, the constant din during more serious films grew distracting. The Babysitter 12 closed during the pandemic, when people’s living rooms became their theaters.My colleague Marie Solis recently wrote a story for The Times about a “laugh epidemic” in movie theaters.…
