First Run News

They were young men, petty officers all, whose lives were lived at sea and then almost certainly lost there. John Henry Hoagland III grew up in Killeen, Tex., and he spoke about serving his country when he was just 5 and still confronted with kindergarten. His family said he had joined the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps in high school, and then visited recruiters for different branches of the military before deciding on the Navy, where his uncle and a grandfather had also served. Aboard big ships plowing waters far from land, he found serenity and exhilaration.

YOKOSUKA, Japan — The cluster of bars in the streets known as “The Honch” a few blocks from the United States naval base here pulsed with the primal energy of young men and women letting off steam on a hot summer night. It was Thursday, when the Seventh Fleet, which has its home port here about 40 miles south of Tokyo, announced the death of one sailor and said it had given up the search for nine others who had been missing since a

HONG KONG — The tropical sky off Singapore was utterly dark when an oil tanker plowed into the side of the American destroyer John S. McCain before dawn on Monday — but the moonless night may have been only one of the reasons that the tanker’s crew may have had trouble seeing a warship in their path. Hard to see and hard to track electronically, naval vessels have long posed special perils to nighttime navigation.

SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean court on Friday convicted Lee Jae-yong, the heir to the Samsung business empire, of bribery and embezzlement, sentencing one of South Korea’s most important magnates to five years in prison and breaking with the country’s history of dealing light penalties to major business figures. The decision may embolden South Korea’s leaders to put further pressure on the country’s family-controlled business empires, which helped build an economic powerhouse out of

SEATTLE — The era of Whole Paycheck, the derisive nickname for Whole Foods, may be drawing to a close. Amazon, which takes control of the upscale grocer on Monday, intends to slash prices the same day. The significance of the move goes well beyond the price of organic avocados, baby kale and rotisserie chickens, all of which will cost less on Monday than on Sunday.

WASHINGTON — President Trump started his day on Thursday publicly criticizing leaders of his own party for not advancing his legislative agenda, which the president called “so easy.” Mr.

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — Liberal activists who stage an annual protest in favor of lower interest rates at the Federal Reserve’s annual conference here are planning a different kind of demonstration this year. They plan to don “Yellen wigs” on Friday to demonstrate in support of Janet L. Yellen, the Fed chairwoman, whose first term ends in February. President Trump must soon decide whether to renominate Ms.

WASHINGTON — Democrats, eager to capitalize on President Trump’s unpopular response to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., are pursuing a potpourri of messages and legislative actions, trying to find a comeback that could buoy them ahead of next year’s midterm elections. On Thursday, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, published a lengthy opinion ar

BEARS EARS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Utah — Parts of this sprawling region of red-rock canyons and at least three other national monuments would lose their strict protection and could be reopened for new mining or drilling under proposals submitted to President Trump by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday, according to congressional aides and others who have been briefed on the report. Environmentalists, ranchers, tribal governments and Western lawmakers had been watching closely to see if Mr.

BEARS EARS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Utah — Parts of this sprawling region of red-rock canyons and at least three other national monuments would lose their strict protection and could be reopened for new mining or drilling under proposals submitted to President Trump by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday, according to congressional aides and others who have been briefed on the report. Environmentalists, ranchers, tribal governments and Western lawmakers had been watching closely to see if Mr.