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By Murr Brewster I’m not a tea person. I do keep a box of assorted teas on hand for company, and I’ve been known to indulge to be sociable, but it doesn’t do much for me. One day, though, feeling vaguely troubled, I pulled out the box.   Camomile is one of the herbal teas that gets left over after people have picked out their favorites. I gave the neglected camomile a sniff. It didn’t really smell like anything. According to the box, it promotes relaxation. So does a cup of hot water, which is what camomile tea most resembles. But then something happened.

Two distinct tragedies - in Israel and in India  - are raising leadership and accountability questions. In India, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party failed to make gains in four recent state elections, according to preliminary results released Sunday. The results suggest his Hindu nationalist party's political strength may be slipping as the country struggles to contain an unprecedented surge in coronavirus cases. Some have blamed the surge on large campaign rallies and lax public health rules at religious gatherings. In Israel, after the deaths of 45 ultra-Orthodox Jews in a ...

Jerusalem Officials came under growing scrutiny Sunday for ignoring warnings about safety lapses at one of Israel’s most visited holy sites, as the country mourned 45 ultra-Orthodox Jews killed in a stampede at a festival there. The disaster at Mount Meron also heated up the debate over the role of the ultra-Orthodox minority in Israel and the refusal of some of its leaders to acknowledge the authority of the state. The festival had drawn some 100,000 people, most of them ultra-Orthodox Jews, after powerful ultra-Orthodox politicians reportedly pressured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an...

Getting from place to place in Moscow often requires an exhausting and demoralizing effort. Lately the city’s urban planners have put on their green caps. Their latest project is to construct a “green ring” of bicycle paths and hiking trails to connect the city’s giant parks, and also a network of bicycle lanes and parking areas throughout the city that will enable Muscovites to go to work, do their shopping, or just get around by electric scooter or bicycle, much as people already do in modern European cities. Why We Wrote This Moscow’s efforts to fix the city’s terrible traffic ...

San Francisco Epic Games faces an uphill legal battle against Apple in an antitrust trial starting Monday, and a defeat for the maker of Fortnite could make it harder for United States government regulators to pursue a similar case against the iPhone maker, legal experts said. But win or lose at the trial, Epic, which has pursued an aggressive public relations campaign against Apple alongside its court pleadings, may have already accomplished a major goal: Drawing Apple squarely into the global debate over whether and how massive technology companies should be regulated. Apple has mostly succ...