MOLALLA, Ore. — Ralph Mitchell’s neighbors were fleeing. Ash rained from the sky. And outside Mr. Mitchell’s natural-medicine business, a police cruiser announced on loudspeaker: “This has been declared a life-threatening fire emergency. You need to evacuate the city.” Mr. Mitchell was having none of it. He was staying. “There’s …...Read More

This is the Coronavirus Schools Briefing, a guide to the seismic changes in U.S. education that are taking place during the pandemic. Sign up here to get the newsletter in your inbox. Image Demetria “Demi” Bannister. Credit... Richland School District 2, via Associated Press Demetria Bannister, known as Demi, a …...Read More

It’s not clear where the postcard has been during the intervening decades, or why it took so long to reach the address. Letters from years or decades past do sometimes turn up in people’s mailboxes, though a spokesman for the Postal Service said it was rarely because they became lost …...Read More

Ms. Campbell left after six months with an honorable discharge, not because she wasn’t up to the task but because she was irritated by her unit’s inefficiencies, as she told her daughter. After she boarded the train on her way home, she threw her Marine’s duffel bag out of the …...Read More

Fires continued to rage in southern Oregon, where hundreds of homes have been razed, as well as east of Salem, where two bodies have been found, and along the state’s coast. More than 900,000 acres have burned, nearly double a typical season. Hundreds of thousands of people have been ordered …...Read More

However, you must leave your home if the authorities order you to evacuate. Mr. Centoni said that when evacuation orders for the S.C.U. Lightning Complex were issued in mid-August it meant to leave home as soon as possible in order to save lives. [Read the latest updates on the fires …...Read More

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on a Ukrainian lawmaker Thursday for waging “a covert influence campaign” to undermine the presidential election after he disseminated information intended to hurt Joseph R. Biden Jr. The Treasury Department accused Andriy Derkach, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, of being “an active Russian agent …...Read More

President Trump is running out the clock on his own re-election campaign. With less than eight weeks left until the election, and with early voting beginning in some states this month, the number of days Mr. Trump can afford to burn is dwindling. He is trailing Joseph R. Biden Jr. …...Read More

But Mr. Biden may not be able to count on the same level of support that Democratic candidates received in 2018. Some of the groups that swung hardest in Democrats’ direction that year have been slow to warm to Mr. Biden. Compared with an authoritative study of the 2018 midterm …...Read More

Last week’s newsletter comparing the U.S. coronavirus death toll to the global average helped spark a continuing debate: What’s the fairest expectation of how bad the pandemic should have been in this country? Your answer to that question guides your judgment of the Trump administration’s response. Ross Douthat of The …...Read More