The Brink of War: Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was meeting today with Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov amid fading hopes of heading off a Russian invasion of Ukraine. The US has described many Russian demands, including prohibiting Ukraine from joining NATO, as …

Friend or Foe: Shortly before meeting Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Helsinki today, President Trump said the two would be talking about “everything from trade to military to nuclear.” He didn’t mention last week’s indictment of 12 Russian agents for hacking …

Biblical: The storm that brought catastrophic flooding to Houston and the Texas Gulf Coast still threatens to dump as much as 20 more inches of rain on areas where roads are already under several feet of water and homes are …

The Intel: Republican Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said yesterday that as many as 1,000 Russian internet trolls created fake news stories to get voters in swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and …

— Park City, UT ICE, ICE, Baby: Immigrations and Customs Enforcement staged a series of raids this week rounding up illegal immigrants with criminal records. Operations have been reported in California, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, New York and Kansas. …

In Transition: The abrupt departure of two members of the Trump transition team indicates turmoil in forming the next White House administration. In the second major shakeup since the election, Mike Rogers, a former Michigan congressman who was handling national …

No Means No: House Speaker Paul Ryan called a press conference yesterday to say, don’t even think about it, he’s not going to step into the Republican nomination melee and declare himself a candidate for President. Sounding a bit like …

Big Mosquito: The Zika virus is “scarier than we initially thought,” according to US health officials and the White House has asked Congress for $ 1.9 billion to kill mosquitoes and fight the spread of the virus. The Centers for …

Word on High: Pope Francis signaled this morning that he’d like the Catholic Church to ease up, become more welcoming, and less judgmental. The Pope’s 256-page guide to love, sex, and marriage is called “Amoris Laetitia,” Latin for “The Joy …