Our Great City

LIMA, Peru, Nov. 21 -- President Bush arrived in Peru's capital on Friday for his last scheduled overseas trip, taking a final chance to mingle with world leaders as they struggle with a worsening economic crisis and other looming threats.

NEW DELHI -- She was a gutsy student leader known for hunger strikes and provocative street theater at universities across the country, exposing the plight of India's beleaguered lower castes. He was a worldly gadfly with a passion for ending nuclear proliferation and exposing environmental crimes.

ALBI, France -- Stéphanie Guiraud-Chaumeil was still in law school when her son Paul was born 14 years ago. Later came Valentine, a daughter now 10. Then Mathieu, 9, and finally little Louise, 7.

If President-elect Barack Obama turns to James L. Jones Jr. to be his national security adviser, his administration would gain someone whose career spans much of the contemporary security landscape.

Thirteen members of Congress and an association of interpreters this week urged the Pentagon to rescind a policy that prohibits interpreters who work with U.S. troops in Baghdad from wearing ski masks to conceal their identity.

The latest face of Chile's HIV crisis is a woman with no face at all.

BEIJING, Nov. 21 -- A senior Chinese official met with participants in a recent riot, according to the protesters and media reports Friday, as the government sought to highlight how much it was doing in the face of a shaky economy and an increasingly restive population.

BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 -- Thousands of followers of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demonstrated Friday against an agreement that would extend the U.S. military presence in Iraq, shouting "America out!" and burning an effigy of President Bush.

The drive for dwindling resources, including energy and water, combined with the spread of nuclear weapons technology could make large swaths of the globe ripe for regional conflicts, some of them potentially devastating, according to a report released by the National Intelligence Council yesterday.

TOKYO -- The American poet Theodore Roethke called it "the inexorable sadness of pencils." It's the desolation of time lost and dreams forsaken while sitting in an office.

BAGHDAD, Nov. 20 -- U.S. forces said Thursday that they had killed an Iraqi insurgent leader responsible for the death of a 20-year-old Army reservist who became a focus of national attention in the United States during the four years he was missing in action.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 20 -- Argentina's Senate on Thursday night gave final approval to the government's plan to nationalize the private pension system in an attempt to protect retirement investments from the international financial crisis.

Vowing to protect Sudanese civilians, the International Criminal Court prosecutor yesterday requested arrest warrants for three rebel commanders he accused of war crimes in an attack that killed 12 African Union peacekeepers in the Darfur region of Sudan.

BEIJING -- They have been coming here from all over China, businessmen and local officials looking for a slice of the Chinese stimulus.

MOSCOW, Nov. 20 -- The trial of three men accused of helping to organize the murder of one of Russia's most prominent investigative reporters, Anna Politkovskaya, took a surprise turn Thursday as a juror publicly challenged the court's decision to hold the proceedings behind closed doors.

An internal CIA probe has concluded that agency officials deliberately misled Congress, the White House and federal prosecutors about key details of the 2001 downing of an airplane carrying U.S. missionaries in Peru, according to a senior lawmaker who called yesterday for a new criminal inquiry i...

For the first time, a federal judge ordered the release yesterday of detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay after evaluating and rejecting government allegations that five men were dangerous enemy combatants.

BEIJING, Nov. 20 -- A top Chinese official on Thursday described the country's employment outlook as "grim" and said he will expedite a new system to mediate employment disputes as China seeks to head off social unrest amid a weakening economy.

NEW YORK, Nov. 20 -- The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to reinforce the beleaguered U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, approving the temporary deployment of more than 3,100 additional personnel to help protect hundreds of thousands of civilians.

BANGKOK, Nov. 20 -- An explosion at an anti-government protest site in central Bangkok early Thursday killed one person and wounded 23 others, prompting a leader of the demonstration to call for a mass rally against the government on Sunday.