Richard L. Garwin, an architect of America’s hydrogen bomb, who shaped defense policies for postwar governments and laid the groundwork for insights into the structure of the universe as well as for medical and computer marvels , died on Tuesday at his home in Scarsdale, N.Y. He was 97. His death was confirmed by his…
The last time India and Pakistan faced off in a military confrontation, in 2019, U.S. officials detected enough movement in the nuclear arsenals of both nations to be alarmed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was awakened in the middle of the night. He worked the phone “to convince each side that the other was not…
During President Trump’s first term, Ukraine worried that Mr. Trump might recognize Russian control over Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula Moscow forcibly seized in early 2014. As a candidate, Mr. Trump had said he would “take a look” at the matter, even though the Obama administration and America’s Western allies had rejected Russia’s annexation of the…
Kim Shin-jo, the only captured member of a team of 31 North Korean commandos who came within striking distance of the South Korean presidential palace in central Seoul before they were repelled in 1968, died on Wednesday. He was 82. Mr. Kim’s death at a nursing hospital was confirmed on Thursday by his Sungrak Church…
Journalists from Radio Martí, the U.S. federally-funded news outlet aimed at communist Cuba, were in the middle of interviewing a Cuban activist in Miami on a recent Saturday when bleak looks suddenly came over their faces. The 40-year-old news agency, designed to send uncensored news in Spanish into Cuba, had just been ordered closed by…
My grandfather’s idea of an Easter egg hunt involved hiding money in colorful plastic eggs sprinkled around his house on Long Island. Most held coins, but there was always one with a crisp, new $100 bill. My cousin, Billy-O, and I were the only players. We were usually playful partners in mayhem but as competitors,…
Boris Spassky, the world chess champion whose career was overshadowed by his loss to Bobby Fischer in the “Match of the Century” in 1972, died on Thursday in Moscow. He was 88. His death was announced by the International Chess Federation, the game’s governing body, which did not cite a cause. Mr. Spassky had suffered…
Three and a half decades after reunification, a line runs through Germany where the Iron Curtain once stood. Instead of barbed wires and dogs, that line now divides Germans by measures like income and unemployment — and increasingly by the willingness to vote for extremist parties. If East Germany were still its own country, the…