World News

She’s 18. He’s 23. He sent her a one-sentence letter through his prison’s electronic mail system: “Will you marry me?” They wed in a small room in a Moscow jail.

As another major quake struck Japan, the country was still reckoning with the nuclear crisis triggered by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami of 13 years ago.

Our correspondents ventured to some of the world’s most remote, and dangerous, locales to report stories that reveal a country’s culture and the human condition. Here are our favorites from the year.

The message of resilience offered by Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky’s message, contrasted sharply with that of President Vladimir V. Putin, who glossed over the war in an effort to project a sense of normality.

More than 90 percent of Palestinians in the territory say they have regularly gone without food for a whole day, according to the United Nations.

Iranian-backed Houthi gunmen from Yemen had fired on American helicopters responding to an attack on a commercial ship, American officials said.

Plus the beloved cats of a Chilean prison.

Margrethe, the longest-serving monarch in Europe, announced during her New Year’s speech that she would abdicate her throne in January. Her eldest son, Crown Prince Frederik, will succeed her.

At a time when support for peace is at a low, conversations at Israel’s Hand in Hand schools about the Oct. 7 attack and the war in Gaza sound different than they do elsewhere.

Under the withering attacks, 165 people were killed in the past 24 hours, Gazan officials said, while Israel said it had destroyed the apartment of a Hamas leader.