By Greg Jaffe Thirty-eight soldiers killed themselves in July, the worst month for suicides since the Army began releasing figures in 2009, according to Pentagon officials. If soldiers continue to take their lives at the current rate, the Army will lose about 200 active-duty troops this year, a number that is significantly higher than any year in the past decade. “Suicide is the toughest enemy I have faced ...

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM As a student at the National War College in Washington, the chief of staff of Egypt’s armed forces argued in a paper that the American military presence in the Middle East and its “one-sided” support of Israel were fueling hatred toward the United States and miring it in an unwinnable global war with Islamist militants. The paper, written seven years ago by , offers ...

By ANDREW JACOBS NAIROBI, Kenya — China’s investment prowess and construction know-how is widely on display in this long-congested African capital. A $200 million ring road is being built and financed by Beijing. The international airport is undergoing a $208 million expansion supported by the Chinese, whose loans also paid for a working-class housing complex that residents have nicknamed the Great Wall apa ...

By LYDIA POLGREEN MARIKANA, South Africa — The police fired on machete-wielding workers engaged in a wildcat strike at a platinum mine here on Thursday, leaving a field strewed with bodies and a deepening fault line between the governing African National Congress and a nation that, 18 years after the end of apartheid, is increasingly impatient with deep poverty, rampant unemployment and yawning inequality. ...

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS HOUSTON — The United States is increasing its dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia, raising its imports from the kingdom by more than 20 percent this year, even as fears of military conflict in the tinderbox Persian Gulf region grow. The increase in Saudi oil exports to the United States began slowly last summer and has picked up pace this year. Until then, the United States had decreased ...

By ISABEL KERSHNER JERUSALEM — Shimon Peres, Israel’s president and elder statesman, spoke out Thursday against the prospect of a lone Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a message that contradicts the hawkish, go-it-alone line emanating from the offices of Israel’s prime minister and defense minister. The president’s comments came amid a wave of speculation in Israel and abroad that Prime ...