First Run News

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans scrambled on Friday to find a way to block Roy S. Moore’s path to the Senate, exploring extraordinary measures to rid themselves of their own nominee in Alabama after accusations emerged that he had made sexual advances on four teenage girls when he was in his 30s. Mr. Moore, meanwhile, remained defiant, insisting in a radio interview with Sean Hannity that he would stay in the race. He told Mr. Hannity, the Fox News host, who has endorsed Mr.

GADSDEN, Ala. — Roy S. Moore, the embattled Republican Senate nominee in Alabama, moved Saturday to discredit the women who accused him of sexual misconduct, and his party’s most powerful figures became increasingly desperate to end a campaign that they worried would undermine their candidates nationwide. Mr. Moore won at least one battle in his efforts to salvage his candidacy — Gov.

At the start of his Air Force career, Devin P. Kelley was picked for a demanding and selective intelligence analyst school. He walked into his first Monday of class with a crisp blue uniform, shined shoes, and for perhaps the first time in years, with hope.

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Tex.

DANANG, Vietnam — President Trump has issued two starkly contradictory calls on his trip to Asia this past week: The nations of the world must rally behind the United States to confront the nuclear threat from North Korea, but they should expect America to go its own way on trade. Reconciling those messages will be hard, and it may determine the near-term fate of the United States as a Pacific power. In South Korea on Wednesday, Mr. Trump put on the mantle of a superpower leader.

BANGKOK — The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, seldom holds back. His antidrug crusade has led to the extrajudicial killings of thousands of people. He is fond of boasting about how he has personally killed criminals and even strangers.

WASHINGTON — At midday on March 24, 2016, an improbable group gathered in a London cafe to discuss setting up a meeting between Donald J. Trump, then a candidate, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. There was George Papadopoulos, a 28-year-old from Chicago with an inflated résumé who just days earlier had been publicly named as a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign.

DANANG, Vietnam — President Trump said on Saturday that he believed President Vladimir V. Putin was sincere in his denials of interference in the 2016 presidential elections, calling questions about Moscow’s meddling a politically motivated “hit job” that was hindering cooperation with Russia on life-or-death issues. Speaking after meeting privately with Mr. Putin on the sideline of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Danang, Vietnam, Mr.

A 36-year-old lawyer who has never tried a case and who was unanimously deemed “not qualified” by the American Bar Association has been approved for a lifetime federal district judgeship by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The lawyer, Brett Talley, is the fourth judicial nominee under President Trump to receive a “not qualified” rating from the bar association and the second to receive the rating unanimously.

WASHINGTON — In the weeks before Donald J. Trump took office, lawyers joining his administration gathered at a law firm near the Capitol, where Donald F. McGahn II, the soon-to-be White House counsel, filled a white board with a secret battle plan to fill the federal appeals courts with young and deeply conservative judges. Mr. McGahn, instructed by Mr.