World

It was near the start of one of Brazil’s most famous Carnival celebrations, in the northern seaside city of Olinda, and the town plaza was jammed with thousands of revelers. They were all awaiting their idol.Just before 9 p.m., the doors to a dance hall swung open, a brass band pushed into the crowd and the star everyone had been waiting for stepped out: a 12-foot puppet of John Travolta.Confetti sprayed, the band began playing a catchy tune and the crowd sang along: “John Travolta is really cool. Throwing a great party. And in Olinda, the best carnival.” (It rhymes in Portuguese.)The giant John Travolta, perched on the head of a puppeteer, then led a parade through the cobblestone streets.The “boneco,” as such giant puppets are known in Brazil, wore a bedazzled disco-era turtleneck and su...

The population density in Rafah will make a ground operation there a major challenge.Credit...Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Israeli special forces operation that military officials said freed two hostages early Monday in Rafah was accompanied by a wave of airstrikes that left dozens of Palestinians dead, according to Gazan health officials. The strikes pointed to the challenges facing Israel should its ground forces invade the crowded southern Gaza city.Israeli leaders have framed an invasion of Rafah as an imperative to achieve their goal of eliminating Hamas. But the planning for such an operation, in a city where more than 1 million Palestinians have sought shelter, is fraught with complexity and will likely take some time, according to Israeli officials and analy...

Brazil is experiencing an enormous outbreak of dengue fever, the sometimes fatal mosquito-borne disease, and public health experts say it is a harbinger of a coming surge in cases in the Americas, including Puerto Rico.Brazil’s Health Ministry warns that it expects more than 4.2 million cases this year, outstripping the 4.1 million cases the Pan-American Health Organization recorded for all 42 countries in the region last year.Brazil was due for a bad dengue year — numbers of cases of the virus typically rise and fall on a roughly four-year cycle — but experts say a number of factors, including El Niño and climate change, have significantly amplified the problem this year.“The record heat in the country and the above-average rainfall since last year, even before the summer, have increased ...

Growing up at the end of the Cold War in the United States, I remember a constant low-level hum of fear about a potential war with Russia and quite possibly a nuclear war.Russians were the villains in our movies. Mushroom clouds haunted our dreams.Now, for many of us and maybe you, a new version of those anxieties is emerging.Security analysts and officials have told me they believe the risk of a nuclear weapon being used somewhere — while still small — has increased to a level not seen in decades. North Korea now claims to have developed nuclear warhead​s that it can mount on its various missiles. Russia’s menacing war in Ukraine continues. At the same time, China is expanding its nuclear arsenal, leading experts to suggest we may be heading into another era of brinkmanship, like the one ...

Since Ecuador’s president declared war on gangs last month, soldiers with assault rifles have flooded the streets of Guayaquil, a sprawling Pacific Coast city that has been an epicenter of the nation’s yearslong descent into violence.They pull men from buses and cars looking for drugs, weapons and gang tattoos, and patrol roads enforcing a nighttime curfew. The city is on edge, its men and teenage boys potential targets for troops and police officers who have been ordered to take down powerful gangs that have joined forces with international cartels to make Ecuador a hub of the global drug trade.Yet when people see soldiers pass, many clap or give them a thumbs-up. “We applaud the iron fist, we celebrate it,” said Guayaquil’s mayor, Aquiles Álvarez. “It has helped bring peace.”In early Jan...

The parent firm of Russia’s most prominent technology company, Yandex, said it has agreed to sell all its assets in the country for about $5 billion, which would be one of the largest corporate exits from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.The invasion had roiled Yandex — often referred to as “Russia’s Google” — and turned its attempts to navigate between the Kremlin’s authoritarian policies and a Western blockade of the Russian economy into the most dramatic example of the war’s impact on the country’s once-vaunted tech sector.The deal announced on Monday came after 18 months of negotiations. It is an attempt by some of the company’s executives to shield Yandex’s new generation of businesses from the war’s fallout and to obtain relief from European sanctions.Under its terms, Yandex’s Du...

Forest fires ripping through central Chile’s coastal hills since Friday have killed at least 46 people and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, with many more feared dead, according to the national government.The wildfires are encroaching on Viña del Mar and Valparaíso, two cities that form a sprawling region that is home to more than one million people on Chile’s central coastline, about 75 miles northeast of the capital, Santiago.Just after midday, President Gabriel Boric flew over the area in a helicopter, and said his government had worked to “secure the greatest resources” in Chile’s history to fight the blazes during the country’s wildfire season, which typically hits during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer and reaches a peak in February.“I assure you all that we will be there as a gover...

The tragedy gripped Russia for days. Federal lawmakers convened a special committee to investigate as hundreds of volunteers searched for the victim in subzero temperatures, and state news media ran live updates on the fallout.Eventually, the victim — Twix the cat — was found dead.A national outcry over the demise of a pet who was mistakenly thrown from a long-distance train by an attendant has highlighted both the limits of and the demand for an emotional outlet in wartime Russia.A national poll found that about two out of three Russians were familiar with Twix, a very high proportion in a country where people increasingly tune out negative news, like the war in Ukraine, according to Denis Volkov, director of the country’s largest independent pollster, the Levada Center, which conducted t...

On President Biden’s first day in office, he paused nearly all deportations. He vowed to end the harsh practices of the Trump administration, show compassion toward those wishing to come to the United States and secure the southern border.For Mr. Biden, it was a matter of principle. He wanted to show the world that the United States was a humane nation, while also demonstrating to his fellow citizens that government could work again.But those early promises have largely been set aside as chaos engulfs the border and imperils Mr. Biden’s re-election hopes. The number of people crossing into the United States has reached record levels, more than double than in the Trump years. The asylum system is still all but broken.On Friday, in a dramatic turnaround from those early days, the president i...

Air defenses failed to stop an attack on a U.S. military outpost in Jordan on Sunday that killed three American soldiers at least in part because the hostile drone approached its target at the same time an American drone was returning to the base, two U.S. officials said on Monday.The enemy drone was mistaken for an American surveillance drone returning to the remote resupply base, and air defenses were not immediately engaged, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary findings of a major cause of the episode. Two other drones that attacked other locations nearby in southeast Syria were shot down, they added.The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the drone mix-up, now at the heart of an investigation by the military’s Central Command into ...