First Run News

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Sunday that he would be willing to bring a bipartisan proposal to stabilize health insurance markets up for debate if President Trump signaled his support. “If there’s a need for some kind of interim step here to stabilize the market, we need a bill the president will actually sign,” Mr.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson warned Europeans on Sunday not to invest in certain Iranian businesses as the Trump administration considers walking away from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions against Iran. Speaking during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Tillerson said, “Both of our countries believe that those who conduct business with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, any of their entities — European companies or other companies around the globe — really do so at great risk.” Mr.

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain, the sometimes cantankerous, often charming and eternally irrepressible Republican from Arizona, has never minced words. But in the twilight of a long and storied career, as he fights a virulent form of brain cancer, the 81-year-old senator has found a new voice. In twin speeches — one in July, where he issued a call to bipartisanship in the Senate, and another in Philadelphia this past week, where he railed against “half-baked, spurious nationalism” — Mr. McCain has taken on both his colleagues and President Trump.

BEIJING — No part of the world seems too small, too near or too far for China’s globe-trotting president, Xi Jinping. He has traveled to the tiny Pacific islands of Fiji, toured the neighboring nations of Central Asia and signaled his interest in Antarctica with a visit to Tasmania, off Australia’s southern coast.

Last January, six months after Fox News ousted its chairman amid a sexual harassment scandal, the network’s top-rated host at the time, Bill O’Reilly, struck a $32 million agreement with a longtime network analyst to settle new sexual harassment allegations, according to two people briefed on the matter — an extraordinarily large amount for such cases. Although the deal has not been previously made public, the network’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, acknowledges that it was aware of the woman’s complaints about Mr. O’Reilly.

Two prominent executives — one in the movie industry, the other in the restaurant business — are the latest to face allegations of sexual misconduct. The Los Angeles Times reported accusations made by dozens of women against James Toback, a writer and director whose films include “Bugsy” and “Two Girls and a Guy.” And in another report, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans describ

Bill O’Reilly and Harvey Weinstein may have come from different ends of the political spectrum, but it turns out they have a lot in common. They rose to positions of power around the same time and used their big, bullying voices to secure for themselves leading roles in American culture. Both men worked in industries that put up with gross behavior from male executives for decades, and both now stand accused of lording their status over women who have stepped forward to say that the men sexually harassed or otherwise abused them. Mr. O’Reilly, late of Fox News, and Mr.

THE HAGUE — As recently as a year ago, United States and other Western counterterrorism officials feared that a major surge of Islamic State fighters would return home to Europe and North Africa to commit mayhem after being driven out of their strongholds in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria. Now, those cities have fallen to American-backed forces, but the number of combat-hardened returnees has been much smaller than anticipated, if still worrisome, counterterrorism of

WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan, sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants across the country, according to two senior American officials, the latest sign of the agency’s increasingly integral role in President Trump’s counterterrorism strategy. The assignment marks a shift for the C.I.A. in the country, where it had primarily been focused on defeating Al Qaeda and helping the Afghan intelligence service. The C.I.A.

After meeting separately with John McCain said the military should do more to keep members of Congress aware of its counterterrorism operations around the world. Sen. Graham told reporters that one of the open questions surrounding the ambush in Niger, which killed four Americans, is whether it was the result of an intelligence failure. “It’s too early to say. That’s exactly the questions we should be asking ourselves.