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SYDNEY, Australia — New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is popular around the world, generating gushing reviews and inspiring a progressive fan base. She has been praised for managing the pandemic, the Christchurch terrorist attack and the birth of her first child.

Now, Ms. Ardern’s star turn looks likely to translate into votes at home.

She is expected to return to power in this week’s general election, with polls giving her Labour Party a comfortable double-digit lead over the more conservative National Party. An especially strong showing might even give Labour the country’s first

PARIS — A knife-wielding man decapitated a teacher near a school in a suburb north of Paris on Friday afternoon and was later shot dead by the police, officials said, abruptly hitting France with a national trauma that revived memories of recent terrorist attacks.

A police officer and parents with knowledge of the attack confirmed French media reports that the victim was a history teacher at the school who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on freedom of expression, which had incited anger among some Muslim families.

The teacher, still unidentified by Friday evening, was immediately

The small Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus has given citizenship and passports to more than 3,000 foreigners who agreed to invest at least $2 million in the country — a “golden passport” that allowed the holders to travel visa-free throughout the European Union.

But this week Cyprus announced that it was ending the initiative after an undercover investigation by journalists appeared to show two lawmakers helping to arrange a passport for a fictitious businessman, despite being told he had a criminal record.

One of those lawmakers, Demetris Syllouris, the president of Parliament and the country’s second-most powerful official, resigned on

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s surprise tweet last week that he would pull all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Christmas is not the only important military mission he may abruptly shrink or end as Election Day nears.

Mr. Trump has told senior advisers that he also wants to see plans for withdrawing all American forces in Somalia, despite warnings from senior military and counterterrorism officials that doing so would bolster the deadly Qaeda affiliate there and cede strategic ground in East Africa to China and Russia.

The president sent mixed signals last month when he declared that U.S. forces “are out

BANGKOK — The cream-colored stretch Rolls-Royce limousine crawled past the angry crowds. The queen of Thailand smiled.

But what Queen Suthida Vajiralongkorn Na Ayudhya saw on Wednesday, on a stately road in Bangkok, may have been sobering.

Antigovernment protesters yelled “my taxes!,” referring to their personal contributions to royal coffers. The police held them back but could not hide the demonstrators’ defiant salutes.

For months now, pro-democracy protesters have gathered by the thousands to call for reforms to the monarchy and military, influential institutions that have dominated Thailand’s power structure for decades.

But the royal limousine’s route on Wednesday was