CARACAS — Clashes between armed inmates and guards in a crowded Venezuelan jail on Friday left at least 23 prisoners dead, a rights groups said. The clashes started when inmates, many armed, refused to let the authorities enter, fearing they would be robbed, said Humberto Prado of the Venezuelan Prison Observatory. At least 18 guards were injured, Mr. Prado said, adding that there were reports of at least one explosion. The prison is in the central state of Portuguesa, 220 miles from Caracas. Designed to hold 250 people, it now…

For decades, the once sleepy Sellwood-Moreland neighborhood in Portland, Ore., was defined by its dusty antique shops and the old-school Oaks Amusement Park, established in 1905. But the blue-collar neighborhood is moving into the spotlight. Its cool factor got a big jump-start in 2015 when the Orange Line of the city’s light rail system opened, providing a direct route from downtown Portland. Then, in 2018, a refurbished five-mile stretch of the city’s 21-mile bike path, the Springwater Corridor, reopened in Sellwood-Moreland, making it even more accessible. Creative entrepreneurs and a…

If whales are going to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada to search for food, they are swimming as much as 700 to 800 additional miles, which means they will need to eat more to stay fully nourished, said Sean Hayes, protected species branch chief with NOAA in Woods Hole, Mass., who was not involved in the new study. Right whale sightings were uncommon in the Gulf of St. Lawrence before 2017, said Catherine Brennan, of the Ocean and Ecosystem Sciences Division of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. But about…

MANILA — The Canadian government said on Wednesday that it would take back tons of garbage sent to the Philippines several years ago, after President Rodrigo Duterte ordered that it be returned immediately. In a statement, Catherine McKenna, the Canadian minister of environment and climate change, said a Canadian company had been awarded a contract to repatriate the trash. “Canada values its deep and longstanding relationship with the Philippines and has been working closely with Filipino authorities to find a solution that is mutually acceptable,” she said. The company, Bolloré…

LOS ANGELES — Danny Gabai was used to being ignored. For years, he ran what may have been Vice Media’s most uncool business — the production of feature films, made to be shown in theaters. Whatever, dude. We do digital stuff here. “We were seen as a redheaded stepchild,” Mr. Gabai said, “if our existence was acknowledged at all.” But that was the old Vice, the one that functioned less as a company and more as an out-of-control frat party. The new Vice, which started to take shape last year,…

Scientists reported on Wednesday that they have discovered the oldest known fossils of fungi, a finding that may reshape our understanding of how life first arrived on land from the oceans. Fungi are the invisible giants of the natural world, even if most people are only dimly aware of them as toadstools along a hiking trail, or mushrooms sprinkled across a pizza. Scientists have identified about 120,000 species of fungi so far, but estimate there are as many as 3.3 million species in all. By comparison, all living mammals comprise…

BEIJING — Two Canadian men detained in China since December have been formally arrested on espionage charges, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, a move likely to ratchet up tensions between China and Canada that broke out with the arrest of a Chinese tech executive in Vancouver. Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat who was detained while visiting Beijing, was arrested on suspicion of “gathering state secrets and intelligence for abroad,” and Michael Spavor, a business consultant who was detained in northeastern China, was accused of “stealing and providing state…

CARACAS, Venezuela — It was a daring gambit: Juan Guaidó, Venezuela’s opposition leader, stood by a military base alongside dozens of uniformed officers and political allies, calling for a military uprising against President Nicolás Maduro. Three weeks later, Mr. Guaidó is shuttling among a half-dozen safe houses to escape capture. Most of the men who stood with him by the base that day, and many of the legislators who support him, are in jail or sheltering in foreign embassies. Soldiers routinely shut down the National Assembly that Mr. Guaidó leads….

Animal eyes, watching Still, the trip was not about what happened on the boat, but what happened off it. One night, after a dinner of hearty tucunaré soup — hunks of tender white fish, hard-boiled eggs and potato chunks in broth — Nigel herded us into a small, canoe-like motorboat and set off down the pitch-black river. He scanned the riverbank with a powerful headlamp, waiting to spot double red dots that meant animal eyes were watching — poking their heads out of the water, staring at us from land…

When things go wrong, those in power often promise to make it right. But do they? This is the first in a series in which The Times is going back to the scene of major news events to see if those promises were kept. After Colombia’s government signed a peace deal with the country’s main rebel group, ending decades of war and upheaval, both sides said it heralded a new era. But two and a half years after the militants agreed to lay down their arms, many of the promises…