China will extend its visa-free policy to nationals of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, putting some of Latin America’s largest economies on equal footing with many European and Asian countries as it sought stronger ties with the region. The visa-free arrangement will be effective from June 1 for a year, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson…
President Trump wants Latin American countries to shift closer into Washington’s orbit, raising echoes of the Monroe Doctrine, when the United States claimed the Western Hemisphere as its domain. This week, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is hosting President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and other leading officials from Latin America and the Caribbean…
In retrospect, Pope Leo XIV had it all going for him. The new pope, whose election on the second day of the conclave stunned the Roman Catholic world, seemed to be from two places at once. He was born and educated in the United States, a country vital to the church’s finances. But he was…
Soon after he took up his post in El Salvador, U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson forged an unusually close relationship with the country’s president. President Trump had nominated Mr. Johnson in 2019 as his ambassador to the country shortly after the White House declared war on El Salvador’s notoriously violent gangs, including MS-13. The relationship between…
Leonardo Augustus Patterson was born on April 15, 1942, in Limon, a town on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Little is known about his family history. He said that his father left home when he was very young and that his mother, a farmer, died when he was a teenager. He said he found…
Americans are making too many solo dinner reservations. That was one takeaway from the annual World Happiness Report, which was released on Thursday and showed that the United States had dipped to its lowest slot in the country rankings — 24th — after being ranked as high as 11th in 2012, the first year of…
In the biggest bullfighting city in the largest bullfighting country in the world, Mexico City lawmakers overwhelmingly voted on Tuesday to ban traditional bullfighting — a move that was supported by Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, but was fiercely opposed by backers of the centuries-old custom. The legislation, approved by a 61-1 vote, prohibits the injuring…
President Trump’s executive order on Saturday invoking the Alien Enemies Act targeted Venezuelan citizens 14 years and older with ties to the transnational gang Tren de Aragua, saying they “are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.” Mr. Trump’s order was quickly challenged in court, but the gang has been a…
With a trade war brewing, President Trump gave the Mexican president a sign of grudging respect: “You’re tough,” he told her in a phone call last month, according to four people with knowledge of the exchange. By their most recent conversation, the two leaders were trading compliments and carving out a reprieve from some tariffs…
Avocados are true superfoods: dense, buttery scoops of vitamins, fat and fiber, all in a hand-size package. We worked for a long time to make them this way. According to a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, people in what we today call Honduras made avocados a part of…