First Run News

BALUKHALI, Bangladesh — Nazir Hossain, the imam of a village in far western Myanmar, gathered the faithful around him after evening prayers last month. In a few hours, more than a dozen Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army fighters from his village would strike a nearby police post with an assortment of handmade weapons. The men needed their cleric’s blessing. “As imam, I encouraged them never to step back from their mission,” Mr. Hossain recalled of his final words to the ethnic Rohingya militants.

WASHINGTON — Every year, the president heads to New York to welcome world leaders to the United Nations General Assembly.

UNITED NATIONS — When the 193-member United Nations convenes this week for the annual General Assembly speeches and high-level meetings, world leaders will be paying closest attention to the words and gestures of the most unconventional — and powerful — leader among them. What President Trump says, whom he may offend, please or surprise and how other international leaders react at the world’s largest diplomatic gathering are topics that are likely to dominate the chatter at the United Nations, which, in its 72nd year, is barely older than Mr.

WASHINGTON — On a Friday in August, the president of the United States casually said at a televised news briefing that his administration could not rule out a “military option” to respond to the crisis in Venezuela. A look of bewilderment washed over the face of the woman standing next to him: Nikki R. Haley, President Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. She knit her brows, looked at him briefly, looked down at her hands. Twitter reacted immediately.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering closing the recently reopened United States Embassy in Havana after 21 Americans associated with the embassy experienced a host of unexplained health problems. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that such a closing was “under evaluation.” “It’s a very serious issue with respect to the harm that certain individuals have suffered,” he said. “We’ve brought some of those people home.

It’s a big week for President Trump. He will appear before the United Nations General Assembly, the first such visit of his presidency. The session comes at a time when the United States is on the cusp of crucial foreign policy decisions: North Korea continues to provoke by firing missiles over Japan, and Mr.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s legal team is wrestling with how much to cooperate with the special counsel looking into Russian election interference, an internal debate that led to an angry confrontation last week between two White House lawyers and that could shape the course of the investigation. At the heart of the clash is an issue that has challenged multiple presidents during high-stakes Washington investigations: how to handle the demands of investigators without surrendering the institutional prerogatives of the o

When North Korea launched long-range missiles this summer, and again on Friday, demonstrating its ability to strike Guam and perhaps the United States mainland, it powered the weapons with a rare, potent rocket fuel that American intelligence agencies believe initially came from China and Russia. The United States government is scrambling to determine whether those two countries are still providing the ingredients for the highly volatile fuel and, if so, whether North Korea’s supply can be interrupted, either

This much is clear: The public is angry about the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs.

This article was written through collaboration between The New York Times and ProPublica, the independent, nonprofit investigative journalism organization. At a time when the United States is in the grip of an opioid epidemic, many insurers are limiting access to pain medications that carry a lower risk of addiction or dependence, even as they provide comparatively easy access to generic opioid medications. The reason, experts say: Opioid drugs are generally cheap while safer