First Run News

SHARIYA CAMP, Iraq — The 16-year-old lies on her side on a mattress on the floor, unable to hold up her head. Her uncle props her up to drink water, but she can barely swallow. Her voice is so weak, he places his ear directly over her mouth to hear her. The girl, Souhayla, walked out of the most destroyed section of Mosul this month, freed after three years of captivity and serial rape when her Islamic State captor was killed in an airstrike.

SHARIYA CAMP, Iraq — The 16-year-old lies on her side on a mattress on the floor, unable to hold up her head. Her uncle props her up to drink water, but she can barely swallow. Her voice is so weak, he places his ear directly over her mouth to hear her. The girl, Souhayla, walked out of the most destroyed section of Mosul this month, freed after three years of captivity and serial rape when her Islamic State captor was killed in an airstrike.

Robust digital growth powered The New York Times Company to one of its strongest quarters in recent years, as rising digital advertising revenue and new online subscriptions offset continued declines in print advertising. The company said on Thursday that digital advertising revenue in the second quarter rose 23 percent, to $55 million.

ROME — Italy’s prime minister convened top cabinet ministers on Thursday to discuss a plan to send Italian warships into Libyan territorial waters to combat smugglers who have sent thousands of migrants to Italian shores.

TEHRAN — United States House of Representatives approved a bill that would impose additional sanctions against the country, and Russia and North Korea. Such tests of what are essentially carrier rockets are not prohibited under the landmark 2015

Meg Whitman, chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, said she would not become the next chief of Uber, amid a flurry of reports about who might assume leadership of the troubled ride-hailing company. Ms.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration abruptly waded into the culture wars over gay rights this week, signaling in three separate actions that it will use the powers of the federal government to roll back civil rights for gay and transgender people. Without being asked, the Justice Department intervened in a private employment lawsuit on Wednesday, arguing that the ban on sex discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect workers on the basis of their sexual orientation.

WASHINGTON — After six months of deliberations and occasional quarreling, the top Republican tax negotiators in Congress and the Trump administration declared on Thursday that they had united behind a set of common principles that would guide them as they rush to complete the first overhaul of the tax code in three decades — and that they would do it by the end of this year. The five-paragraph joint statement in many respects raised more questions than it answered, providing fewer specifics than the previous plans released by House Republicans and President Trump.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions described himself on Thursday as hurt by President Trump’s public rebukes of his job performance, but said that he intended to carry on in his role and cited his shared commitment with the president to prosecuting violent crime and leaks of sensitive information. In an interview with Fox News, Mr. Sessions expressed sympathy for Mr. Trump’s statements about the government’s Russia investigation. At the same time, however, the attorney general defended his decision to recuse himself from that inquiry. “It’s kind of hurtful,” Mr.