President Trump

Whatever actual impact previous foreign entanglements may have had, the stories persist — if only because they feed such powerful thoughts of "what might have been."

The decision is a blow to the Bureau and to Washington's suburbs, who had hoped to land the project.

Earlier on Monday, the White House was defending President Trump's eldest son following another Times report the meeting was intended to get damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

After a meeting in Kiev between President Petro Poroshenko and NATO's secretary general, the Ukrainian leader pledged reforms aimed at qualifying his country for the western alliance by 2020.

Donald Trump, Jr. gave shifting explanations of a meeting last summer with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, also attended by Trump's then-campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

After a long meeting with Russia's leader, President Trump says, "Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!"

Noting President Trump's stance, a declaration states, "The leaders of the other G20 members state that the Paris Agreement is irreversible."

The truce, for a section of the country's southwest, also includes Jordan and Israel. Several such cease-fires in the past have been short-lived.

When the two presidents meet Friday, the world will be looking for clues to the future of the fraught U.S.-Russian relationship. "Putin needs the meeting more than Trump," says one Russia expert.

The renowned physicist and cosmologist says the U.S. pulling out of the Paris climate change accord could turn our planet into another Venus.