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You don’t have to like them. You can find their views repellent. You can promise never to vote for a single one of them. But you have to admit: the fact that six of the initial 11 candidates for the Conservative party leadership, four of the eight who made it on to the first ballot, are from an ethnic minority, and the fact that the next prime minister is all but certain to be a woman or a person of colour, or both, is a big deal. It is a significant moment in the politics of this country – even if it has induced conflicted and contradictory feelings in progressives. Consider what is actually happening here. Just before the election of 2010, the Tories could point to a grand total of one black and one Asian MP. Those two represented half the number of MPs from a visible ethnic minority ...

President Biden reiterated his commitment to the elusive "two-state solution" — the long-sought vision in which an independent Palestinian state and Israel coexist — on Friday, as he spoke alongside Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. "The United States and my administration will not give up on trying to bring the Palestinians, Israelis and both sides closer together," Biden said. He added that he believes that with Israel improving its relations with neighbors in the Middle East, that momentum could "reinvigorate the peace process between the Palestinian people and the Israelis." But for the time being, both Abbas and Biden acknowledged that the political moment is not yet right for peace talks to resume. In their joint statements, Thorogood Boot...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Sri Lanka's interim president Friday until Parliament elects a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who resigned after mass protests over the country's economic collapse forced him from office. The speaker of Sri Lanka's Parliament said Rajapaksa resigned as president effective Thursday and lawmakers will convene Saturday to choose a new leader. Their choice would serve out the remainder of Rajapaksa's term ending in 2024, said Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardana. He expects the process to be done in seven days. That person could potentially appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by Parliament. With Rajapaksa done, pressure on Wickremesinghe was rising. Opponents had viewed his appointment ...

President Biden's love for the personal touch, dispensing hugs and handshakes, is under close scrutiny on his trip to the Middle East. Two encounters have become the focus of the interest in his handshakes: Biden's offer (declined) to shake an Israeli woman's hand, and how he handles his interaction with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Biden met the Saudi crown prince Friday Biden's commitment to human rights is being scrutinized during his trip to Saudi Arabia, particularly his encounter with bin Salman, who the U.S. says approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, that ended with the gruesome killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in 2018. In doing so, Biden completed a departure from a position he campaigned on: that he would treat Saudi...

PARIS — Challenged by high temperatures and strong winds, 1,000 firefighters and 10 water-dumping planes struggled Friday to contain two wildfires in the Bordeaux region of southwestern France that have forced the evacuation of 11,300 people and ravaged pine forests near the Atlantic coast. The French wildfires were among several scorching different areas of Europe this week. One of the French fires is in woodlands just south of the Atlantic resort town of Arcachon, a major attraction for visitors during the summer season. Oboz Shoes The other is in parkland not far from valleys dotted with vineyards that have struggled with hotter, drier weather than usual this year that authorities have linked to climate change. More than 7,000 hectares of land have been consumed by the fires, a...

In the end, President Biden went with a fist bump. Biden greeted Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman with an outstretched closed fist when he arrived on Friday at Al-Salam Royal Palace for meetings with bin Salman and his father, Saudi Arabia's King Salman. The greeting had been a question of intense speculation leading up to the controversial meeting in Saudi Arabia. When running for president, Biden had vowed to treat the country as a "pariah," due to a long string of human rights abuses, including the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi – a killing in a Saudi operation that U.S. intelligence assessed had been approved by the crown prince. At a press conference after the 2 1/2-hour meeting with bin Salman and other Saudi officials, Biden said he ...