WASHINGTON — A year into the Trump administration’s ratcheted-up mass deportation effort, approval rates for asylum seekers have plummeted as immigrants are too afraid to show up for court hearings. Fewer than 3% of asylum cases decided in January were approved — a record low, according to Mobile Pathways, a San Francisco nonprofit that analyzes federal immigration…
QLAYAA, Lebanon — The bells rang, their peals obscuring the buzz of the Israeli drone overhead as the casket of Father Pierre al-Rahi arrived at the parish he had served. Only days before, Al-Rahi had stood in the very churchyard where the crowd assembled Wednesday for his funeral. He had announced that the people of Qlayaa would…
In the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians were displaced in one of the fastest mass movements of people in recent history. Train stations became shelters. Theaters became aid centers. Borders became waiting rooms for grief. Journalists moved in the opposite direction, toward uncertainty, because without witnesses, displacement becomes statistics and…
TEHRAN — The elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei to the mantle of supreme leader brings to Iran’s top job a hard-line figure who is most firmly his father’s son in charting a defiant path for the country. “Mojtaba Khamenei’s elevation is not just a succession, it is a provocation — a blunt middle finger to Trump,” said Ali…
The artist known as Jeffrey’s Human Persona has remained anonymous for nearly 25 years — the same length of time that he has staged guerrilla-style musical puppet shows titled “almighty Opp” on a gritty street corner in Koreatown on the last Saturday of each month. He missed only three shows in the first 19 years…
BEIRUT — The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for entire neighborhoods of Beirut’s southern suburbs, sparking pandemonium as hundreds of thousands of people joined a panicked exodus out towards Lebanon’s north. On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman told residents of the Dahiyeh — the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital — to “save your…
WASHINGTON — The U.S. and Israeli war against Iran entered its ninth day Sunday with no clear path toward de-escalation — and a seventh U.S. service member killed — as President Trump said deploying American ground troops to the Middle East remains under consideration and Iran’s foreign minister rejected calls for a ceasefire. Speaking to reporters on…
I know a lot of people who suffer from a chronic malady that gets worse each time there’s news out of Washington. Supporters of the current president of the United States might refer to this condition as a side effect of Trump derangement syndrome, but it’s more like Trump fatigue syndrome. Symptoms can include a…
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Friday that the United States would accept nothing short of Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” signaling that the possibility of regime change may be emerging as an objective as the expanding war in the Middle East entered its seventh day. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said negotiations with Iran were off the…
GALLE, Sri Lanka — A torpedo fired by a U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka, whose navy said Wednesday it recovered 87 bodies and rescued 32 people. The Iranian vessel sunk in the Indian Ocean was the Islamic Republic’s “prize ship,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. It was one of…