François Bayrou, France’s fourth prime minister in a year, knew he had trouble ahead. In his inaugural speech in December, he acknowledged “all kinds of difficulties”: a debt mountain, political strife and, alarmingly, “the splintering of society itself.” So far, he’s at least succeeded in holding a government together. Tasked with reducing a deficit currently…

A small plane veered off the runway at Scottsdale Airport in Arizona on Monday afternoon after part of its landing gear failed, causing it to crash into a parked business jet on a tarmac, killing one person and injuring three others, the authorities said. The crash happened at about 2:45 p.m., when a Learjet 35A…

Hamas has indefinitely postponed the release of Israeli hostages who were set to be freed from the Gaza Strip this weekend, a spokesman said on Monday, accusing Israel’s government of violating an already fragile cease-fire agreement. The move threatens to derail both the six-week truce agreed to last month and the prospects for agreement on…

Sixteen months after the Oct. 7 massacre, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has concluded his official visit to Washington a victor. The Israeli leader — who spent years actively strengthening Hamas’s rule in Gaza and bears deep responsibility for the events leading up to the worst disaster in modern Jewish history since the Holocaust…

Of course he performed “Not Like Us.” In the lead-up to Kendrick Lamar’s headline performance at the Super Bowl LIX halftime show on Sunday night, most of the chatter focused on whether he would play the song that was effectively the knockout blow in his monthslong battle with Drake last year. The song that became…

For two decades, a crew from Lackawanna County in Pennsylvania traveled to a dozen small museums across the country, where its ringleader smashed through security systems to strip them of art and precious memorabilia. Their loot included treasured heirlooms from America’s past, including nine of Yogi Berra’s World Series rings, two of middleweight Tony Zale’s…

In 1962, not long after President John Kennedy created U.S.A.I.D., the federal agency tasked with administering foreign assistance, he welcomed its first mission directors to the White House. He noted the difficult politics of sustaining foreign assistance but called it essential to America’s role as leader of the free world. “There will not be farewell…

Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were instructed to cease “all supervision and examination activity” and “all stakeholder engagement,” effectively stopping the agency’s operations, in an email from the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, on Saturday evening. Mr. Vought, who was confirmed this week to lead the Office of…

Sam Nujoma, the founding president of an independent Namibia, who led a Soviet-backed guerrilla army in an uneven fight against the vastly superior forces of white-ruled South Africa in a victory that owed much to the dynamics of the Cold War, died on Saturday. He was 95. Mr. Nujoma died in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, according…

Tom Stoppard wrote in “The Real Thing,” his enticing play about infidelity: “To marry one actress is unfortunate. To marry two is simply asking for it.” Here’s a political corollary: To elect one Emperor of Chaos is unfortunate. To let two run the government is simply asking for it. Presidents Trump and Musk have merged…