First Run News

FARAH, Afghanistan — A police officer guarding the outskirts of this city remembers the call from his commander, warning that hundreds of Taliban fighters were headed his way. “Within half an hour, they attacked,” recalled Officer Najibullah Amiri, 35.

Just a year ago, after the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the University of Texas at Austin’s admissions program by a single swing vote, the question seemed to be edging, at last, toward an answer: Colleges could, the justices ruled, consider race when deciding whom to let through their gates. “I thought this was settled,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, an economist at Georgetown University who studies affirmative action.

Just a year ago, after the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the University of Texas at Austin’s admissions program by a single swing vote, the question seemed to be edging, at last, toward an answer: Colleges could, the justices ruled, consider race when deciding whom to let through their gates. “I thought this was settled,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, an economist at Georgetown University who studies affirmative action.

MANILA — Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson will for the first time on Sunday be in the same room with his North Korean counterpart, and much of the world will be watching for whether the two even acknowledge each other. Joining them in Manila will be representatives of other countries with a stake in the regional confrontation, including China, Russia, South Korea and Japan.

UNITED NATIONS — The North Korea over its repeated defiance of a ban on testing missiles and nuclear bombs. The resolution, intended to press North Korea to renounce its nuclear militarization, could reduce the isolated country’s already meager annual export revenue by $1 billion, or about a third of its current total. Ambassador Nikki R.

WASHINGTON — Investigators working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, recently asked the White House for documents related to the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, and have questioned witnesses about whether he was secretly paid by the Turkish government during the final months of the presidential campaign, according to people close to the investigation. Though not a formal subpoena, the document request is the first known instance of Mr.

WASHINGTON — Investigators working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, recently asked the White House for documents related to the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, and have questioned witnesses about whether he was secretly paid by the Turkish government during the final months of the presidential campaign, according to people close to the investigation. Though not a formal subpoena, the document request is the first known instance of Mr.

WASHINGTON — The moment President Trump left Washington aboard Air Force One on Friday, bound for the New Jersey golf course where he will spend his summer vacation, a White House employee switched off the air-conditioning in the West Wing to turn the area officially into a construction zone. By then, senior White House officials — including Mr.

GLENDORA, Calif. — They’re the first to admit that trying to reorient conservatism and the Republican Party around a president who does not consider himself much of a conservative or a Republican is a bit of a riddle. But to this small group of renegade thinkers on the right, President Trump represents the foundation of what they hope will be a new conservative movement premised on the inward-looking, America-centric approach his administration is pursuing. Just don’t call it Trumpism. Building on Mr.

WASHINGTON — Senators Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse have already been to Iowa this year, Gov. John Kasich is eyeing a return visit to New Hampshire, and Mike Pence’s schedule is so full of political events that Republicans joke that he is acting more like a second-term vice president hoping to clear the field than a No.