Jordan Bardella, the young president of France’s far-right National Rally, plans to visit Israel this month in a powerful symbol of his party’s shift from the home of French antisemitism to a vociferous friend of the Jews.

“Antisemitism is a poison,” Mr. Bardella told Le Journal du Dimanche, a Sunday newspaper, announcing that he plans to attend a Jerusalem conference on that subject in late March and visit areas of Israel attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. “Our engagement in this combat is absolute.”

No leader of the far-right party, including its perennial presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, has previously made an official visit to Israel. But the party’s stand against what it calls “Islamist ideology,” has led it to a sweeping embrace of Israel and the country’s fight against Hamas and Hezbollah. At the same time, the National Rally’s vehement anti-immigrant ideology, aimed particularly at Muslims, has earned it the support of some French Jews.

Many French Jews, however, remain steadfast in their opposition to the party. Bernard-Henri Lévy, a prominent intellectual and author last year of the book “Israel Alone,” an impassioned paean to Israel in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, immediately announced that he had dropped out of the Jerusalem conference because Mr. Bardella is going. He informed President Isaac Herzog of Israel of his decision.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front, which became the National Rally in 2018, famously dismissed the Holocaust as a “detail” of history and called the Nazi occupation of France “not particularly inhumane,” despite the deportation of more than 75,000 Jews to Hitler’s death camps.

Over many years his daughter, Ms. Le Pen, aided of late by her 29-year-old protégé, Mr. Bardella, has sought to distance herself from her father’s antisemitism as part of a campaign for broader acceptance of a party long seen as a direct threat to French democracy. A French verb, “dédiaboliser,” became the epithet for the drive to end the National Rally’s “demonization.”

Serge Klarsfeld, a renowned Nazi hunter and a prominent French Jew, last year gave a significant stamp of approval to the party’s image makeover when he said he was prepared to vote for the National Rally against a far left he characterized as antisemitic.

“It’s quite normal given the activity I’ve had over the past 60 years, that between an antisemitic party and a pro-Jewish party, I’ll vote for the pro-Jewish one,” he said.

The far-left France Unbowed party has been vehement in its denunciation of Israel’s military operation in Gaza as a “genocide.” Its de facto leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, turning to antisemitic tropes, has impugned the loyalty to France of the president of the National Assembly and a former prime minister, both of Jewish descent.

Many French Jews, troubled by enduring anti-Muslim xenophobia among National Rally members, had severe misgivings over Mr. Klarsfeld’s new position and his equivocation. In 2022, he had co-signed an article in the Libération newspaper headlined, “No to Le Pen, daughter of racism and antisemitism.”

The National Rally, all taboos apparently shattered, now holds 123 of the 577 seats in the French Parliament.

Mr. Bardella met last month in the United States with Israel’s Diaspora Minister, Amichai Chikli, when both attended the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. In a statement on X, Mr. Bardella said they had “fruitful discussions” on “the international fight against Islamic terrorism and antisemitism.”

The Israeli invitation to Mr. Bardella to attend the conference in Jerusalem on March 26 and 27 followed that meeting. A second prominent figure of the French far right, Marion Maréchal, the niece of Ms. Le Pen and a member of the European Parliament, will also attend the conference.

In the newspaper interview, Mr. Bardella said a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in France was attributable to “Islamist ideology, reinforced by the naïveté of our immigration policy, the laxness of our laws, and the complicity of a left that has become the voice in France of Hamas beliefs.”

Widely seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2027, Mr. Bardella vowed to “reduce immigration drastically, promulgate a law banning Islamist ideology, expel extremist foreigners, close fanatical mosques and dissolve all Islamist offices in France.”

He said “the fight against antisemitism must be implacable,” and accused the French far left of “exchanging the French flag for the Palestinian.”

There were clear echoes of the Trump Administration in the policies put forward by Mr. Bardella. His own party and others on the far right across Europe have been emboldened by Mr. Trump’s first weeks in office.

Ms. Le Pen, 56, along with other party members, is on trial charged with the embezzlement of funds from the European Parliament between 2004 and 2016. She has denied any wrongdoing, but a conviction could complicate her presidential aspirations, or even lead to her becoming ineligible, and so give a boost to Mr. Bardella’s bid for the presidency. Up to now, they have skirted conflict over the potential clash of their ambitions.

Mr. Bardella’s announcement of his plans to go to Israel came as Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister, called for “extreme vigilance” during the upcoming Jewish holidays of Purim and Passover, in light of the “elevated level of terrorist threats.”

President Trump said Thursday he saw “good signals” toward finalizing a 30-day cease-fire agreement between Russia and Ukraine, as U.S. officials visiting Moscow were expected to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The remarks, delivered in the Oval Office while meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, came as Mr. Putin made clear he was in no hurry for a cease-fire, laying out numerous conditions before he could agree to a truce.

“It doesn’t mean anything until we hear what the final outcome is, but they have very serious discussions going on right now with President Putin and others, and hopefully they all want to end this nightmare,” Mr. Trump said of the meetings his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, was having in Russia. “It’s a nightmare. It’s a horrible thing.”

Mr. Trump said he hoped to speak to Mr. Putin soon. He also said the U.S. had discussed with Ukraine possible concessions as part of a peace agreement.

“We’ve been discussing with Ukraine land and pieces of land that would be kept and lost, and all of the other elements of a final agreement,” Mr. Trump said.

He added: “A lot of the details of a final agreement have actually been discussed.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine struck a pessimistic tone in his evening address to Ukrainians on Thursday. Mr. Putin’s response to the cease-fire proposal, he said, was “very predictable.” Mr. Putin, he said, set so many preconditions “that nothing will work out at all, or that it will not work out for as long as possible.”

Despite Mr. Trump’s years of complaints about NATO, an organization from which he has repeatedly threatened to withdraw, the meeting with Mr. Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, proceeded amicably as the two leaders discussed areas of cooperation.

Mr. Trump commended Mr. Rutte for “doing a fantastic job” while Mr. Rutte heaped praise on Mr. Trump, crediting him with revitalizing the organization by pushing countries to contribute more military spending.

“I really want to work together with you in the run-up to The Hague summit to make sure that we will have a NATO which is really reinvigorated under your leadership, and we are getting there,” Mr. Rutte said, referencing this summer’s meeting in the Netherlands.

Many American presidents have complained that other European allies do not spend enough on defense, relying instead on American protection, but Mr. Trump has escalated the rhetoric to a new level, suggesting the U.S. may not fulfill its mutual defense commitment for countries that have not contributed enough.

Mr. Trump’s more conciliatory approach to Russia and his sweeping tariffs on the European Union have also divided the alliance and its member states, some of which are starting to explore a future that does not depend so heavily on the United States.

Mr. Rutte, seeking to avoid the kind of confrontation that blew up Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Zelensky in early March, complimented the U.S. president and tried to steer away from conflict — at least in front of news cameras.

When Mr. Trump was asked about his efforts to annex Greenland — a territory controlled by Denmark, a NATO member — the president noted that Mr. Rutte “could be instrumental” in making that happen.

“We have to do it,” he said. “We really need it for national security.”

Mr. Rutte deflected the question of the United States taking Greenland, saying he did not want to “drag NATO into that.” Instead, he pivoted to agreeing with Mr. Trump that Russia and China posed threats to the Arctic region.

Marc Santora in Kyiv and Luke Broadwater in Washington contributed reporting.

Russian troops appear close to driving Ukraine from all the territory it seized in the Kursk region of Russia last year, a battlefield success that would deny President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a significant bargaining chip in any negotiations.

The Russian push in Kursk appeared to accelerate after President Trump froze military aid and intelligence support to Ukraine on March 3. The flow of aid resumed this week as Ukraine agreed to a Trump administration proposal for a 30-day cease-fire with Russia.

On Thursday, Mr. Putin expressed preliminary support for the proposal but said he still had questions that required more discussion. Those questions, he told a news conference, included the fate of Ukrainian troops still in Kursk — suggesting that he may demand Kyiv order them to lay down their arms.

Here is a look at the Ukrainian incursion — the first on Russian soil since World War II — and how Russian troops are fighting back.

Why is Kursk important?

Kursk is an area of western Russia that borders the Sumy region of Ukraine. Sumy had long been thought to be a place where Russia might try opening a new front in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.

But in a move that surprised even its key allies, Ukrainian troops caught Moscow off guard last summer, pouring across a thinly defended border and opening a new front themselves.

The main objectives, one Ukrainian colonel told The New York Times, were to divert Russian troops from the grueling fighting in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, push Moscow’s artillery out of range of the Sumy region and damage Russian morale.

Within weeks of the incursion, Ukraine had established control over a slice of Kursk that its officials said encompassed nearly 500 square miles of farmland and settlements. Though barely a sliver of Russia, the largest country in the world, the assault was an embarrassment for Mr. Putin. It also surprised Ukraine’s allies, including the United States, who had not been told in advance.

The most important town in Kursk that Ukrainian forces seized was Sudzha, an administrative center with a population of around 5,000 people before the incursion.

Analysts said that Ukraine’s offensive was a gamble, stretching its military resources at a time when Kyiv’s troops were struggling to defend a long front line in their own territory.

Mr. Zelensky said that his military did not want to stay on Russian soil indefinitely, and that territory gained in Kursk could be used to strengthen Ukraine’s position in future negotiations with Moscow.

How has Russia responded?

Initially, rather than diverting large numbers of troops to defend Kursk, Mr. Putin said that eastern Ukraine remained Moscow’s main military focus. Russian troops continued their creeping advance within Ukraine, taking the town of Vuhledar in October and then pushing farther west.

Weeks into its incursion in Kursk, Ukraine’s push slowed and its troops began gradually to lose ground as Russian forces deployed there in greater numbers.

Then, in the fall, Russia received a boost from its ally North Korea, which deployed around 11,000 soldiers to Kursk to assist Moscow’s defense. The deployment at first unnerved Ukraine and its allies. But the North Korean troops suffered wave after wave of heavy losses and, for a time, were withdrawn from the frontline.

In recent weeks, Russian forces, assisted by North Korean fighters, have advanced rapidly in Kursk, using drones and fighter jets to retake much of the territory that Ukraine had held.

In a sign of renewed military confidence, Mr. Putin visited a command post near the front in Kursk late Wednesday, the Kremlin said.

Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, pushed back against the idea of an immediate Ukrainian withdrawal from the area. He said on Wednesday night that Ukrainian troops would “hold the line in the Kursk region for as long as it remains reasonable and necessary.”

On Thursday, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that its forces had retaken Sudzha. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. If confirmed, that Russian advance would leave only small pockets of Russian land along the border under Ukrainian control.

Chained, detained for weeks and eventually deported, two German tourists trying to enter the United States were recently tangled in a system responding to President Trump’s push to sharply restrict entry and deport people en masse.

The cases of Jessica Brösche, held for 46 days, and Lucas Sielaff, held for 16, and accounts of their rough handling by immigration officers, have grabbed headlines in Germany as a sign of what being caught on the wrong side of the White House’s immigration policy could mean for European travelers.

Tourists from most European countries, including Germany, generally enjoy visa-free travel to the United States for up to 90 days. But Mr. Sielaff and Ms. Brösche were stopped, separately, at the San Ysidro border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana, told that they were being denied entry and sent to a crowded detention center, according to their own accounts and those of their friends.

Mr. Sielaff said he was denied a translator and had trouble understanding what was happening to him. Ms. Brösche’s friends said she was kept in solitary confinement for nine days. By their accounts, both were flown back to Germany without a clear understanding of why they were detained in the first place.

“Sometimes I just wake up because I have nightmares of this situation and what happened,” Mr. Sielaff, 25, said in an interview. “And I just try to go for walks and calm down.”

The family of a tourist from Britain, Becky Burke, 28, says she has been held for more than two weeks in Washington State, similarly caught up in the system but unsure why.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, did not respond on Thursday to requests for comment on their cases.

Ms. Brösche was detained at the border on Jan. 25, according to an online fund-raising campaign that friends set up to lobby for her release. She was traveling on the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, available to tourists from countries who do not need a need a visa to travel to the United States but are still required to declare the purpose of their visit. She told the German newspaper Bild that she had completed the authorization and planned to enter the United States after spending a week in Tijuana.

At the border, officials flagged issues with her documentation, according to the online petition.

Ms. Brösche, a 29-year-old tattoo artist, could not be reached for an interview. But Nikita Lofving, a friend who has spoken with her, said in an interview that she thought officials saw the tattooing equipment in Ms. Brösche’s luggage and might have concluded that she planned to work in the United States, violating the terms of visa-free entry.

She was sent the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. The authorities told her she would be detained for “a couple of days,” according to the online fund-raiser, but “what followed was an alarming sequence of events: after being denied entry, Brösche was placed in solitary confinement for nine days.”

She remained at the center for more than six weeks, friends said, her case apparently lost in a border enforcement backlog.

“Just the sheer fact of not knowing what’s going on drove her insane,” Ms. Lofving said. “She could barely sleep the whole time she was in there. She was up at night crying.”

Ms. Brösche arrived back in Germany on Wednesday.

“She will need a few days to recover but she wants to speak out when she’s been fed and slept and probably cried a bit in her mom’s arms,” Ms. Lofving said.

Mr. Sielaff said he had traveled to the United States on Jan. 27 to see his partner, Lennon Tyler, an American psychologist who lives in Las Vegas. Three weeks later they drove to Tijuana for medical treatment for Dr. Tyler’s dog, but when they attempted to return on Feb. 18, they didn’t get past the border checkpoint.

He said he struggled to hear the border control officer questioning him, and gave a muddled answer. He and Dr. Tyler said the officers asked about his place of residence, suggesting that he had been illegally living in the United States, not just visiting, and then taken for questioning.

After Mr. Sielaff was bundled off to an interrogation room, he said, his repeated requests for a German translator were denied. He said the written report of his interrogation did not accurately reflect what he had said, or even the questions he had been asked.

“I said, I don’t live here, and I have to go back to Germany before the 90 days, and they didn’t even listen to me,” Mr. Sielaff said.

After more than an hour of questioning, he was denied re-entry to the U.S. and was chained to a bench along with other travelers.

Outside, Dr. Tyler said in an interview that she was also trying to get answers from officials. In response, she said, they searched her car, and when she raised objections, two bulky ICE officers detained her and took her to a separate room, where she was subjected to a humiliating body search.

“For the first time in my life, I’m in handcuffs,” she said. “As they’re walking me into a building, they’re twisting my arms.”

After the body search, she, too, was chained to a bench for a time before being released, she said, and repeatedly asked, “Why am I being detained? Is this legal? Can you do this to a United States citizen?”

She caught a glimpse of Mr. Sielaff as he was being led to the bathroom, and it was the last time she saw him in person. Dr. Tyler has now started a civil claim over her detention, her lawyer said.

“I threw my arms around him, and we both had tears in our eyes,” Dr. Tyler said in an interview. “And I said, I’m going to get a lawyer. I’m going to get you out, I promise you.”

Mr. Sielaff was held at the border post for two more days, sleeping on a bench under a Mylar blanket, and then transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Center. For two weeks there, he said, he shared a cell with eight other people, and waited in long lines to heat his food in the one microwave oven shared by more than 120 people.

He said the only way he was given to communicate with the ICE agents assigned to his case was through a tablet computer shared among inmates — but he didn’t know who those agents were.

“I asked so many people if they know who my ICE officer is,” he said in an interview. “I don’t even know who it was in the end.”

Dr. Tyler called the immigration authorities daily, she hired lawyers who also called them, she gave news media interviews and she reached out repeatedly to a German Consulate. Eventually, last week, Mr. Sielaff was allowed voluntary deportation, on a flight that cost him $2,744.

“My lawyer said bother them until they let him go,” Dr. Tyler said. “And that’s what Lucas and I did. We just made ourselves a nuisance.”

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday did not rule out a U.S. and Ukrainian proposal for a monthlong cease-fire, but he set down numerous conditions that would most likely delay any truce — or could make one impossible to achieve.

Mr. Putin’s comments during a news conference highlighted the balance he was trying to strike, exuding confidence in Russia’s position on the battlefield while seeking to continue talks with the United States and avoid upsetting President Trump. The U.S. president, having antagonized the country’s allies and realigned American foreign policy in Russia’s favor, has emerged as a key geopolitical partner for Mr. Putin.

In sharp remarks later in the day, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said the Russian leader set so many conditions “that nothing will work out at all or that it will not work out for as long as possible.”

Mr. Putin’s comments came before he was to meet with Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, to discuss the cease-fire proposal that Ukraine had already agreed to. As of early Friday Moscow time, the Kremlin had not commented on how the meeting went. But the Kremlin said Mr. Putin had also spoken with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, about Ukraine.

Mr. Putin’s remarks came as Russia kept up its momentum in the key battle in the Kursk region of Russia, where Moscow’s forces appeared close to pushing Ukraine out of the territory it seized last summer. Such a development would reduce Kyiv’s leverage in future peace talks.

“The idea itself is the right one, and we definitely support it,” Mr. Putin said, referring to the cease-fire proposal. “But there are questions that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to talk them through with our American colleagues and partners.”

Mr. Putin suggested that his conditions would include limits to Ukraine’s ability to mobilize more troops and import weaponry during a cease-fire — restrictions that would put Kyiv at a deeper disadvantage if the fighting restarted.

Mr. Putin’s comments were the first about the cease-fire offer that emerged from negotiations between the United States and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia this week. They suggested that the Russian leader viewed that proposal as just a part of a broader negotiation between Washington and Moscow, and that he was eager to show that he was engaging with Mr. Trump’s efforts to end the war that Mr. Putin began with his full-scale invasion three years ago.

Mr. Putin said he might “have a call with President Trump and talk it over with him.” When asked later on Thursday if he would speak with the Russian president, Mr. Trump said he would “love to meet” and talk with him.

“We’d like to see a cease-fire from Russia,” Mr. Trump told reporters while meeting with the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office.

Mr. Trump said the United States had discussed with Ukraine possible concessions as part of a peace agreement. “We’ve been discussing with Ukraine land and pieces of land that would be kept and lost, and all of the other elements of a final agreement,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “A lot of the details of a final agreement have actually been discussed.”

Mr. Putin appears keen to stay on Mr. Trump’s good side, given the geopolitical victories that the U.S. president has already delivered for the Kremlin.

But Mr. Putin’s comments also showed that the Russian leader saw his forces as having the upper hand on the battlefield and that it would be to Russia’s advantage to draw out the negotiations.

He said on Thursday that Russia would continue to insist on a peace deal that addressed the “original causes” of the war — suggesting that his push for major Western concessions, such as a reduction of NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe, hadn’t changed, though it wasn’t clear if he would make them a stipulation for a monthlong cease-fire.

Mr. Zelensky called Mr. Putin’s response to the cease-fire proposal “very predictable, very manipulative.”

“Putin, of course, is afraid to tell President Trump directly that he wants to continue this war, wants to kill Ukrainians,” he said in his evening address.

Mr. Putin was straightforward in declaring that a quick truce would be better for Ukraine than for Russia.

“In these conditions, it seems to me that it would be very good for the Ukrainian side if there were a cease-fire, even for 30 days,” Mr. Putin said. “And we’re in favor of it. But there are nuances.”

He then listed those “nuances,” starting with the Ukrainian forces still in Kursk. He said that Russia would not allow those troops to peacefully withdraw and that the Ukrainian leadership could instead order them “to simply surrender.”

Ukraine stunned Russia in August with a cross-border incursion into Kursk, seizing several hundred square miles of territory.

But Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday that the country’s military had regained full control of Sudzha, the main town in Kursk that Ukraine had seized. Ukrainian officials have not confirmed a retreat from the town, where Wednesday night Kyiv’s military reported fierce fighting. If confirmed, such a retreat would leave only small pockets of Russian land along the border under Ukrainian control.

Mr. Putin also suggested he might demand that Ukraine’s Western allies halt arms deliveries, and said it was not clear how the cease-fire would be monitored along a front line of some 700 miles.

“These are all questions demanding very careful study,” he said.

While Mr. Putin’s conditions may be impossible for Ukraine to accept, he did not repeat his onerous demand from last year that a cease-fire would depend on Ukraine’s withdrawing from the four Ukrainian regions that Russia had declared as its own but did not fully control.

Still, Dara Massicot, a Russian military specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which is based in Washington, called Mr. Putin’s new demands “very dangerous for Ukraine.”

In effect, she argued, Mr. Putin was pushing for a scenario in which the West would not be able to help Ukraine rebuild its armed forces while Russian factories pumped out new weaponry.

“What Putin said today implies that the West cannot support Ukraine while Russia regenerates,” she said.

Reporting was contributed by Maria Varenikova from Kyiv, Ukraine; Marc Santora from Dnipro, Ukraine; Paul Sonne from Berlin; and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Putin appeared open to a cease-fire with Ukraine

President Vladimir Putin of Russia yesterday seemed to voice preliminary support for a cease-fire, but made it clear he was in no hurry. He said he wanted to continue negotiating with President Trump, but told reporters in Moscow that Russia was in favor of a 30-day truce — with numerous conditions.

Among the questions he hopes to address, Putin said, is whether Kyiv would continue getting arms shipments during the truce, and how the cease-fire would be monitored and enforced. He said that Ukrainian forces occupying land in the Kursk region wouldn’t be allowed to peacefully withdraw. Kyiv could instead order them “to simply surrender.” He did not repeat his demand that Kyiv cede land from four regions in exchange for a cease-fire.

Trump said yesterday that the U.S. and Ukraine had been discussing land that Kyiv would have to give up as part of an agreement to end the war, and told reporters that “a lot of the details of a final agreement have actually been discussed.”

Quote: President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Putin only wanted to continue the war and had set so many preconditions “that nothing will work out at all or that it will not work out for as long as possible.”

Trump threatened Europe with a 200% alcohol tariff

President Trump escalated his trade war with the E.U. yesterday, announcing he would “shortly place” 200 percent tariffs on European wine and champagne if the bloc did not reverse its own U.S. tariffs planned for April 1.

The S&P 500 fell 1.4 percent, slipping into correction territory and underscoring investors’ souring mood over Trump’s policies.

European leaders have made it clear that they would rather make a deal with Trump than enact tariffs. In an interview yesterday, Howard Lutnick, the U.S. commerce secretary, warned other countries against retaliating. “If you make him unhappy, he responds unhappy,” Lutnick said of Trump.

What’s next: The E.U. trade commissioner will have calls with his U.S. counterparts in Washington today, a spokesman said.

Vineyards: A 200 percent tariff “would kill the business totally,” said an owner of a small Champagne house that exports 10 to 12 percent of its annual production to the U.S.

For many Syrians, a return home is a return to nothing

During 13 years of civil war, more than six million Syrians left the country and some seven million have been displaced within its borders. After President Bashar al-Assad was ousted last year, the interim leader has said millions can return. But after more than a decade of fighting, rubble is all that’s left of thousands of homes.

Some people have chosen to live in their homes, no matter how damaged. Many others have decided to remain outside Syria for the time being, including in camps in Turkey and Jordan. They watch as recent sectarian violence plays out on the country’s coast.

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Japan held a rare auction this week, but not for art or antique cars. On the table were nearly 150,000 metric tonnes of rice from the government’s emergency stockpile, sold off to drive down prices during a national shortage. Nobody is quite sure what caused the problem, but experts think that speculators may be hoarding the grain in anticipation of rising prices.

An official called the crisis “truly unthinkable.”

Lives lived: James Reason, a British professor who became an authority on the psychology of human error through his Swiss cheese model for failure, died at 86.

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The bone hunters of Siberia

Mammoths and other ice age creatures once roamed the Yakutia region of Russia, and the freezing climate has kept their fossils hidden under permafrost for centuries. Now, explorers are diving in the ice-covered Adycha River for skulls and tusks that are thousands of years old.

Temperatures can reach brutal lows, and success is unpredictable. Sometimes the river gives a lot, and sometimes nothing.

“The world under the water is so strange and mysterious,” one diver said. “It looks like this ancient cemetery.”

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