World

The gift and the book itself are fictional. The 2021 film, directed by Pablo Larraín, is too, proceeding from the idea that where there’s a martyr there must be a monster. Elizabeth is a freeze-dried witch, Charles a snarling prig. Perhaps to avoid accusations of defamation, the filmmakers identify their story, in a prefatory caption, as “a fable from a true tragedy.”A fable and a tragedy I grant you: The famous outline of Diana’s story, if not its unknowable guts, is Grimm indeed.But the word “true” doesn’t belong anywhere near “Spencer.” No reputable history has suggested, for instance, that the princess ate a bowlful of pearls emancipated from a Flintstones-size necklace given to her by her unfaithful husband. Nor is she known to have hallucinated Boleyn, who urged her toward self-harm,...

President Biden pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Friday to agree to the creation of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza is over and raised options that would limit Palestinian sovereignty to make the prospect more palatable to Israel.Hoping to overcome Mr. Netanyahu’s strenuous resistance, Mr. Biden floated the possibility of a disarmed Palestinian nation that would not threaten Israel’s security. While there was no indication that Mr. Netanyahu would ease his opposition, which is popular with his fragile right-wing political coalition, Mr. Biden expressed optimism that they may yet find consensus.“There are a number of types of two-state solutions,” the president told reporters at the White House several hours after the call, their first in nearly a month amid ...

A man was arrested in Brazil on Thursday in connection with the killing of Brent Sikkema, a New York art dealer who was found with 18 stab wounds in his Rio de Janeiro apartment this week.The man, Alejandro Triana Trevez, knew Mr. Sikkema and was believed to have stolen cash from the scene before fleeing, said Detective Alexandre Herdy, head of the city’s police homicide unit. The police believe that Mr. Sikkema had brought over $40,000 to spend on furnishing a new apartment in Rio.Officers recovered a bloodied knife from the apartment.“He staked out on the street,” Detective Herdy said. “He comes from São Paulo in the morning, goes straight to the place where the crime took place, to the victim’s street. Parks the car and stays there for several hours.”Mr. Trevez, a Cuban national, was ap...

The Biden administration plans to designate Yemen’s Houthi militia as a terrorist organization, partly reimposing penalties it lifted nearly three years ago on the Iran-backed group whose attacks on Red Sea shipping traffic have drawn a U.S. military response.Beginning in mid-February, the United States will consider the Houthis a “specially designated global terrorist” group, according to a U.S. official, blocking its access to the global financial system, among other penalties. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a policy that had not yet been officially announced.But Biden officials stopped short of applying a second, more severe designation — that of “foreign terrorist organization” — which the Trump administration imposed on the Houthis in its final days. The S...

Despite staunch resistance from his opponents in the government, the anticorruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo was inaugurated early Monday morning as Guatemala’s president, a turning point in a country where tensions have been simmering over widespread graft and impunity.His inauguration had been scheduled for Sunday, but members of Congress delayed it, and concerns persisted about whether it would happen at all. But after an international outcry and pressure from protesters, Mr. Arévalo was sworn in shortly after midnight, becoming Guatemala’s most progressive head of state since democracy was re-established in the 1980s.His rise to power — six months after his victory at the polls delivered a stunning rebuke to Guatemala’s conservative political establishment — amounts to a sea change in...

It is famed for a love of singing and a passion for rugby. It has a distinctive Celtic language and is the birthplace of the poet Dylan Thomas. But few would claim that Wales, a nation of three million people outnumbered by sheep, is well known for whiskey, or whisky, as it is known in Wales.Yet the country has played its part in distilling history — a Welshman is considered one of the founding fathers of bourbon — and a recent revival of whisky production has prompted new rules governing which liquor can call itself Welsh.That was how the problems began in Abergwyngregyn (pronounced ABER-gwin-gregin), in the shadow of the ice-capped Snowdonia mountain range, where Aber Falls single-malt whisky is produced in a distillery filled with the strong malty aroma of barley.Made with exclusively W...

After the brass band packed up its instruments, Sergio Solano and two other food delivery workers walked a white bicycle to an overpass within view of the United Nations headquarters.A fellow worker, or compañero, as they call each other meaning “partner,” had died less than two weeks earlier that September in yet another bicycle wreck on the streets of Manhattan. Delivering food has proved to be a deadly occupation for many of them. Riding bikes at all hours, they get hit by cars, are at constant risk of having accidents and falling prey to crime.The spray-painted bicycle paid homage to Félix Patricio Teófilo, a Mexican immigrant who, like them, made his living pedaling to deliver food. They chained it to the metal railing near the intersection of 47th Street and First Avenue, where he me...

More than 700 people convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. At least four suicides. A woman sent to jail while pregnant. Bankruptcies. Marriages broken, lives ruined.The shocking details of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history have been reported for years yet somehow stayed below the radar for most of the public, despite intense efforts by campaigners and investigative journalists.Until last week. A gripping ITV drama series, “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office,” which began airing on Jan. 1, achieved something that eluded politicians for a decade, cutting through a morass of bureaucratic and legal delays and forcing government action.The show dramatizes the fate of hundreds of people who ran branches of the Post Office across Britain, and who were wrongly accused of th...

When the Nordiques left Quebec nearly 30 years ago, the hockey team’s departure fueled the kind of mythologizing and nostalgia familiar to fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers.The Nordiques’ stint in Quebec, playing there in the N.H.L. from 1979 to 1995, overlapped with the French-speaking province’s two failed attempts to secede from the rest of Canada, and the team’s identity melded with that of their fans: a linguistic minority struggling to assert itself in a part of the world dominated by English speakers.The Nordiques wore their politics on their sleeves, literally, putting the Quebec flag’s fleur-de-lis on their uniforms. They also sang Canada’s national anthem only in French.The team’s exit “left a hole in Quebec City and Quebec regional politics, and a hole in Francophone identity, as wel...

Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, held meetings on Sunday with leaders in Jordan as part of a days-long Middle East tour aimed at reducing the risk that the war in Gaza could spread in the region.Mr. Blinken met separately in Amman with King Abdullah II, the ruler of Jordan, and Ayman Safadi, the foreign minister. He then visited a warehouse with boxes of canned food that was intended to be brought into Gaza on trucks organized by the United Nations World Food Program.Sheri Ritsema-Anderson, the resident U.N. coordinator in Jordan, told reporters that in her 15 years working in the Middle East, she had never seen a humanitarian situation as dire as the one in Gaza, describing it as an “epic catastrophe.”She said about 220 trucks of various types of aid and fuel are now gettin...