Riots to Protest Death Sentence Enter 3rd Day in Bangladesh

Associated PressA car burned in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Saturday. Unrest continued after the leader of an Islamic party was sentenced to death. DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Demonstrators protesting the death penalty given to an Islamic political party leader clashed with Bangladeshi security forces for a third straight day on Saturday, killing two people and injuring about a dozen, the police said. ...

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Leaving North Korea, Rodman Calls Kims ‘Great Leaders’

Jason Mojica/VICE Media, via Associated PressThe North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and the former N.B.A. star Dennis Rodman watched an exhibition basketball game in Pyongyang on Thursday. PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Ending his unexpected round of basketball diplomacy in North Korea on Friday, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman called leader Kim Jong Un an "awesome guy" and said his father and grandfather...

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At Ice Age End, a Smaller Gap in Warming and Carbon Dioxide

A meticulous new analysis of Antarctic ice suggests that the sharp warming that ended the last ice age occurred in lock step with increases of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the latest of many indications that the gas is a powerful influence on the earth’s climate. Previous research had suggested that as the world began to emerge from the depths of the ice age more than 20,000 years ago,...

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IHT Rendezvous: Will Turkey Make Peace With the Kurds?

LONDON — There is growing optimism that a ceasefire in Turkey’s three-decade war with Kurdish guerrillas will be declared to coincide with the Kurdish New Year in three weeks.Under a draft plan reported on Wednesday, the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., would lay down its arms on March 21 and withdraw its forces from Turkish territory by August.The potential for a breakthrough in ending...

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Immigrants Released Ahead of Automatic Budget Cuts

In a highly unusual move, federal immigration officials have released hundreds of detainees from immigration detention centers around the country, an effort to save money as automatic budget cuts loom in Washington, officials said Tuesday. The government has not dropped the deportation cases against the immigrants, however. The detainees have been freed on supervised release while their cases...

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Lens Blog: The Largely Unknown Photography of Lola Álvarez Bravo

The year 2007 was a pretty good one for rediscovering long-forgotten images in Mexico. Most people already know about Robert Capa’s Mexican suitcase, a trove of his work from the Spanish Civil War. But that same year an unknown archive of vintage prints by Mexico’s greatest photographers was also discovered, left behind in the longtime home of Lola Álvarez Bravo.The find, known as the Gonzalez-Rendon...

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Letter From Washington: A Struggle for Control of Republican Party

WASHINGTON — The late William F. Buckley and Karl Rove have little in common, other than the Republican Party and intelligence. Mr. Buckley’s politics were guided by principles; Mr. Rove’s principles are guided by politics. Yet Mr. Rove, the party establishment’s money and strategy guru, is channeling Mr. Buckley, a founding father of contemporary conservatism, by trying to root out extremism...

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The Lede: Reeva Steenkamp, Steve Biko and the Quest for Justice in South Africa

LONDON – The title of the presiding judge 35 years ago was the same, chief magistrate of Pretoria, and the venue for the hearing, a converted synagogue, was not far from the modern courthouse seen on television screens around the world in recent days as Oscar Pistorius, the gold medal-winning Paralympic athlete, fought for bail in the killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.The case that unfolded...

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IHT Rendezvous: Russian Nationalists Say ‘Nyet’ to Foreign Words

LONDON — Nationalist Russian legislators have introduced a bill to hold back a tide of foreign words, specifically English ones, which they claim is swamping the Russian language.A bill submitted by the minority Liberal Democratic Party would impose fines of up to $1,700 on officials, advertisers and journalists who use foreign words rather than their Russian equivalents.Their main gripe appears to...

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The Lede: Assad Denies Starting War in New Interview

Last Updated, Thursday, 3:48 p.m. The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, denied in an interview broadcast last week on German television that he was responsible for starting the bloody conflict tearing his country apart.The interview, featured in a new documentary on the conflict in Syria by the filmmaker Hubert Seipel, was conducted in English but later overdubbed in German for broadcast on the network...

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Russian Mother of Adopted Boy Who Died in U.S. Wants His Brother Back

MOSCOW — The Russian mother of two young boys who were adopted by a Texas couple requested on Wednesday that the younger child be returned to her, after his brother died under unclear circumstances in a case that has given new impetus to a long-running controversy over foreign adoptions. The older boy, Max Shatto, 3, died in a West Texas hospital in late January. His birth mother, Yulia A....

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At War Blog: Korean War Veteran Is Buried Six Decades After He Disappeared

The passengers aboard Delta Air Lines Flight 2125 didn’t get up when the plane taxied into its gate at Baltimore Washington International Airport earlier this month. They didn’t retrieve their bags from the overhead bins. Instead, they looked out the right side of the aircraft, where an honor guard and black hearse were waiting to escort the remains of Cpl. James R. Hare home, the final portion of...

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India Ink: Image of the Day: Feb. 18

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Blasts Across Baghdad Kill at Least 21 People

BAGHDAD — A wave of attacks in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad killed at least 21 people and wounded 125 on Sunday, a security official said. Four car bombs exploded in a market, a bus station and on a major road in the Sadr City district, killing seven people and wounding more than 30 others, officials said. More people were killed and dozens were wounded when car bombs were set off...

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Vast Throng in Bangladesh Protests Killing of Activist

Pavel Rahman/Associated PressMourners in Bangladesh on Saturday carried the coffin containing the body of Rajib Haider, an organizer who was killed. NEW DELHI — Tens of thousands of people resumed mass demonstrations in Bangladesh’s capital on Saturday, intensifying their demands for more severe punishment for war criminals from the country’s 1971 liberation war, while also demanding justice for the...

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Indian Troops Kill Pakistani Soldier in Kashmir Border Clash

NEW DELHI — Indian troops have shot and killed another Pakistani soldier at the de facto border between the two countries in Kashmir, adding to an unusually tense period in the disputed region. A statement released Friday by the Indian Army said that Indian soldiers saw an intruder at 3 p.m. on Thursday in the Nowshera sector of the so-called Line of Control separating the Indian- and Pakistani-held...

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Russia Seeks Arrest of Georgian Politician

MOSCOW — Russian authorities issued an arrest warrant for a Georgian politician, Givi Targamadze, on Thursday, charging that he had incited riots in Russia, in particular by helping to organize an anti-government march last May that culminated in a confrontation between protesters and the riot police. Russian authorities asserted that the large anti-government protests were being orchestrated...

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A Running Start for a U.S.-Europe Trade Pact

BRUSSELS — Embarking on what could be the biggest trade agreement ever in its economic sweep, officials from the United States and the European Union indicated Wednesday that they had already resolved some of the stickiest issues behind closed doors. But the sheer ambition of the trade negotiations, which aim not only to eliminate import duties but also synchronize regulations governing...

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Politics in Bangladesh Jolted by Huge Protests

Andrew Biraj/ReutersPlain clothes police officers arrest a  Jamaat-e-Islami activist. Clashes erupted after the Bangladeshi government rejected a request by Jamaat leaders to stage a counterprotest against the youth demonstrations. NEW DELHI — Huge daily demonstrations in the heart of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, are upending the nation’s politics and illustrating how heavily the country’s...

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Rabbi David Hartman, 81, Champion of an Adaptive Judaism

JERUSALEM — Rabbi David Hartman, an American-born Jewish philosopher who promoted a liberal brand of Orthodoxy and created a study center that expressed his commitment to pluralism by bringing together leaders from all strains of Judaism, died on Sunday at his home here. He was 81. His son Donniel said the death came after a long illness. Rabbi Hartman, who was a professor at Hebrew...

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