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      Estonia Election Delivers Vote of Confidence for Ukraine Aid

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      In a blow to the Kremlin’s hope that economic pain in Europe would soften public support for Ukraine, Estonian voters have given a big election win to a center-right government that has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest backers, despite soaring inflation and other problems.A member of both the European Union and NATO, Estonia is one of the European bloc’s smallest countries but has taken an oversize role in prodding bigger member nations like France and Germany to impose sanctions on Russia and to provide arms to help Ukraine defend itself.The center-right Reform Party of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who has pushed the West to send more weapons to Ukraine and impose tougher penalties on Russia, finished far ahead of eight other parties in a general election on Sunday, according to near final results Monday morning.To stay in power, Ms. Kallas’s party now needs to form a coalition with members of Parliament from rival parties, a task that will involve much haggling over posts but should be within reach. Because of the format of the Estonian political system, coalition governments are almost inevitable.Ms. Kallas’s Reform Party won nearly 32 percent of the vote, about double the tally of the second-place finisher, EKRE, a far-right populist party that, though sometimes critical of Russia, wants to curb Estonia’s spending on Ukraine and put more money into helping Estonians pay their energy bills and withstand an inflation rate of nearly 20 percent, one of the highest in Europe.Estonian soldiers at a military camp in their home country in January. Estonia donates around 44 percent of its military budget to Ukraine.Valda Kalnina/EPA, via ShutterstockRussia, struggling on the battlefield in Ukraine after a year of war, has increasingly based its hopes for victory on calculations that economic problems in the West, severely aggravated by cuts in the supply of Russian energy, would diminish solidarity with Ukraine and curb the delivery of weapons for use against Russian forces.Estonia has a large ethnic Russian community, which makes up around a quarter of the population of about 1.3 million, but its political clout has been weakened by divisions over the war in Ukraine. The Center Party, which has traditionally represented the interests of Russian speakers but alienated some of them by criticizing Moscow’s miliary onslaught, came in third place with under 15 percent of the vote.Ms. Kallas, speaking late on Sunday in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, said that the election result was “much better than we expected” and had provided a “strong mandate” to continue aiding Ukraine.Estonia, which donates around 44 percent of its military budget to Ukraine, is one of only seven countries out of 30 NATO members that meets a military spending target of 2 percent of total gross domestic product. Ms. Kallas, Estonia’s first female head of government, says she wants to increase that spending to 3 percent. More

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      Canada Knows China Tried to Meddle in Its Elections, but What Should Come Next?

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      Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has rejected calls by the opposition for a full public inquiry.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have hoped that this week’s independent review of China’s meddling in the last two Canadian federal elections would tamp down debate on the subject in Parliament. Instead, the report seemed to revitalize the opposition parties.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has rejected calls for an inquiry into election subversion.Carlos Osorio/ReutersHere’s a short version of that report, which I wrote about when a redacted version was made public late Tuesday: There is evidence that China, Russia and Iran tried to subvert the 2019 and 2021 elections, but there is no evidence that their efforts “impacted” the results.[Read: Foreign Efforts to Subvert Canada’s Last 2 Elections Failed, Report Says]The federal government has long accepted that the Chinese government tried to sway those elections. And since November, a House of Commons committee has been looking into attempts by foreign governments to meddle in elections.But the issue flared up on Feb. 17 when The Globe and Mail published an article it said was based on secret and top-secret reports prepared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the agency most English-speaking Canadians know as CSIS.According to the article, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party did not want a Conservative government to win the 2021 election because it feared it would take a hard-line approach to China. The Chinese leadership, however, wasn’t entirely happy with the Liberals, either, and wanted to hold them to a minority government. While that ultimately was the result, it’s difficult to see how any outside government could engineer such an outcome.The documents, as reported by The Globe, laid out a variety of strategies, not all of them obviously feasible. China asked its diplomats in Canada to swing the vote in favor of the Liberal candidates in constituencies with large Chinese populations. And the documents the newspaper cited included boasts some of those diplomats conveyed back to Beijing that they had successfully defeated Conservative candidates, although there is nothing to back their claims.More on ChinaA Surge in Activity: After being battered by the pandemic in 2022, Chinese factories bounced back with vigor in February: Manufacturing activity rose to its highest level in more than a decade.Erasing Vestiges of ‘Zero Covid’: The ruling Communist Party is waging a propaganda campaign to rewrite the public’s memory of its handling of the pandemic, which included some of the harshest restrictions in the world.Desperate for Babies: For generations, Chinese parents chafed under the country’s one-child policy. Now, facing a declining birthrate, China wants lots of children — but many families don’t.Courting Europe: Beijing, in urgent need of reviving its economy, wants to mend ties with Europe but is struggling to create distance between itself and Moscow.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, citing secrecy laws, has not addressed any of the specific allegations, but he has criticized the article and other reports for containing inaccuracies, without elaborating.The Conservatives, who of course were the target, swiftly demanded a public inquiry, and Pierre Poilievre, their leader, charged that Mr. Trudeau was covering up China’s actions.“He’s perfectly happy to let a foreign, authoritarian government interfere in our elections as long as they’re helping him,” Mr. Poilievre said at a news conference.The New Democrats also joined the call for the inquiry, and on Thursday, the committee looking into election interference passed a motion, not binding on the government, from one of its members. It called for a public inquiry into foreign interference in Canada’s democratic institutions and during Canadian elections.Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, has charged the prime minister with trying to cover up Chinese meddling.Blair Gable/ReutersOn Friday, Mr. Trudeau again told reporters in Winnipeg that such a step would be unnecessary. He noted that a panel of senior public servants, who work with law enforcement and intelligence agencies during elections, found that no foreign government had managed to subvert the vote. In addition to the public hearings of the House of Commons committee, Mr. Trudeau said, a special committee of members of Parliament who meet in secret and have access to confidential intelligence was reviewing the issue.Wesley Wark, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a former intelligence adviser to the federal government, told me that while more needed to be done about election subversion by foreign governments, an inquiry was not the way to go. It would, he said, most likely be conducted by a judge with little or no background in intelligence, would have little or no access to secret intelligence and would not issue its findings until after the next election.Instead, Mr. Wark said, he wants both the government and CSIS to follow Australia’s lead when it comes to interference by China in Canada.“The Australians are willing to to really talk about the threats very bluntly and provide, without getting into the very sensitive information, case-by-case examples of how these dangers are unfolding,” Mr. Wark told me.By contrast, he said, it has been over a year since David Vigneault, the director of CSIS, has made a public speech, and the latest report on foreign interference in Canada from the intelligence agency is from 2021.“It’s just not fulfilling what I think of as its responsibility as an authority on threats to the security of Canada to help educate Canadians about that,” Mr. Wark said.More broadly, Mr. Wark faulted the government for, in his view, being “super reluctant” to expel diplomats who are interfering in Canada’s affairs, whether through disinformation campaigns, illegal campaign activities or threatening and intimidating nationals of their countries who now live in Canada.That reluctance, he said, appears to come from a fear of retaliation. But he disagrees with allowing such concerns to hold back the response.“Expulsions are a way of sending a message to the governments engaging in that kind of behavior, and also sending a message to Canadians that we’re on this and we’re not going to turn a blind eye,” Mr. Wark said. “Expulsions and more naming and shaming are very appropriate.”Trans CanadaMigrants arriving in Quebec after illegally crossing the border from the United States.Nasuna Stuart-UlinNorimitsu Onishi, my Montreal-based colleague, has looked into the rise in the number of people who are illegally crossing into Canada from the United States: “Shielded by geography, strict immigration policies favoring the educated and skilled, and its single border with the United States, Canada is now being forced to deal with an issue that has long bedeviled other wealthy Western nations: mass illegal border crossings by land,” he writes.The New York Times Magazine this week includes a in-depth look at a truly revolutionary stroke treatment that promises to save millions of lives. Eva Holland, a writer based in Whitehorse, examined it in action in Calgary for her article.This week, the government of Canada joined those in other nations and banned the TikTok app from government devices out of security concerns.The Canadian actor Eugene Levy is, to put it mildly, not keen on travel. He discussed with Anna Peele what it had taken to persuade him to star in a travel television series.In her review of “Old Babes in the Woods,” a collection of stories by Margaret Atwood, Rebecca Makkai writes: “If you consider yourself an Atwood fan and have only read her novels: Get your act together. You’ve been missing out.”Brendan Fraser, the Canadian American actor who has been nominated for an Oscar for his performance in “The Whale,” spoke about his comeback with Kyle Buchanan, the awards season columnist for The New York Times.A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.How are we doing?We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More

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      The Woman Shaking Up Italian Politics (No, Not the New Prime Minister)

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      Daughter of Italian and Jewish American parents, Elly Schlein wants to remake the center-left opposition to Giorgia Meloni, if only her party can survive it.ROME — Growing up in Switzerland, Elly Schlein felt a little lost.“I was the black sheep. Because my brother and sister seemed to be more sure of what they would do,” the politician recalled. She watched Italian neorealist cinema and American comedies, played Philip Glass on the piano, pet her dwarf bunny named after Freddie Mercury, listened to the Cranberries and ultimately got involved in her school’s politics. “It took a lot more time for me to find my way,” she said.Last weekend, Ms. Schlein, 37, found her way into the center of the debate about the future of the European left when she stunned the liberal establishment and reordered Italy’s political landscape by winning a primary election to become the first woman to lead the country’s center-left Democratic Party. She is promising, she said in her new office headquarters on Wednesday, to “change deeply” a party in the midst of an identity crisis.It is hard to embody change in Italy more than Ms. Schlein.A woman in a relationship with a woman, she is the daughter of a Jewish American father; granddaughter of an Italian antifascist partisan; proud native of Lugano, Switzerland; former volunteer for Barack Obama; collaborator on an award-winning documentary about Albanian refugees; fan of “Naked Gun” movies; shredder of Green Day chords on her electric guitar; and fervent progressive eager to make common international cause with “A.O.C.,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.With her election, Ms. Schlein has catapulted Italy, which long seemed a Country for Old Men, into markedly different territory. A female opposition leader now is pitted against the first female prime minister, the right-wing nationalist Giorgia Meloni.Ms. Schlein grew up in Lugano, Switzerland, and described herself as the “black sheep” of her family. Andrea Wyner for The New York Times“It’s a different scenario now,” said Ms. Schlein, who had the professorial air of her professor parents as she leafed through newspapers. “And an interesting one, because I’ve always said that we don’t need just a female leadership. We need a feminist leadership.”The two women could hardly be more different. Ms. Meloni, who called Ms. Schlein to congratulate her, was raised by a single mother in a working-class neighborhood of Rome, was a youth activist in post-Fascist parties and came to prominence on an anti-migrant, Italy-first platform. Her battle cry: “I’m Giorgia, I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m a Christian!”Explore The Times’s Saturday ProfilesThey are shaping the world around them. These are their stories.Going Gray: The prominent news anchor Lisa LaFlamme was unceremoniously dismissed not long after she stopped dyeing her hair — setting off debates across Canada.Reclaiming His Voice: While on a rescue mission in Ukraine, an aspiring opera singer was shot in the lungs. His recovery is a marvel of medicine, chance and his own spirit.A Marxist Mayor: A Communist politician in Graz, Austria, wants to redistribute wealth. A focus on housing, her own modest lifestyle and a hard childhood have helped her popularity.Cleaning Up Senegal: Dressed head to toe in plastic, Modou Fall is a familiar sight in Dakar. His goal? Ridding the capital of the scourge of plastic bags.Princess Rita: A Texas rancher’s daughter landed a dream role as a Roman princess. A battle over the estate of her late husband has soured the reality.Ms. Schlein — who has Italian, Swiss and American passports — said she didn’t understand how being “a woman, a mother and a Christian helps Italians to pay their bills.” She added: “I am a woman. I love another woman. I am not a mother, but I am not less of a woman for this.”She argued that Ms. Meloni represented an ideology that viewed women merely for their reproductive and child-rearing roles. Ms. Meloni has “never described herself as an antifascist,” Ms. Schlein said, arguing that she instead threw red meat to her base with “inhuman” and “illegal” policies making it harder to save migrants at sea.Such liberal red meat is likely to sate the base of progressives and young voters that Ms. Schlein brought into the Democratic Party fold in last Sunday’s primary. But it did little for the left in the election Ms. Meloni won easily in September. Ms. Schlein’s party now has about half the support of Ms. Meloni’s.Moderate critics within Ms. Schlein’s own deeply divided party fear that she will fold its big tent by forfeiting the political center, driving the party to the far left, gutting it of its reputation for sober competence, and blending it with — or feeding it to — the reinvigorated, populist Five Star Movement.Supporters of Giorgia Meloni at a rally in September, in Rome. Ms. Schlein has criticized the prime minister for hurling red meat to her base with “inhuman” and “illegal” policies on migrants.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesBut Ms. Schlein is not convinced that denizens of an Italian middle even exist. “Where are they today?” she asked in her perfect English, noting that “when somebody had tried to represent them with new political options, it never went really well.” Instead, she saw the way forward as making “clear who we want to represent” — struggling Italians.She said she would spread “environmentalist and feminist” solutions to endemic Italian problems such as female unemployment and inequality in “clearly a patriarchal country.” She would make amends for “the mistakes made in the past,” especially during the leadership of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, which led her to quit the Democratic Party nearly a decade ago.She would reintroduce labor protections, tax the rich, reconnect with trade unions, invest in a greener economy and push for gay and immigrant rights. This week, she visited the site of a deadly shipwreck of migrants in Calabria and effectively interrogated Ms. Meloni’s interior minister for appearing to blame the victims.“Rights, civil rights and social rights, for us are strictly interconnected,” she said in the interview, adding, “The left lost in the moment it became shy on these issues.”One major change on her agenda is to put her party in a position to win elections by making alliances with partners who agreed on critical progressive issues, such as the support of a universal income.“Five Star, of course,” she said. “They have a lot of support.”But Giuseppe Conte, the leader of Five Star, which has demonstrated a strong illiberal streak over recent years, was the prime minister who signed off on the crackdown of migrant rescue ships at sea. He has emerged as Italy’s main opponent to Ms. Meloni’s vow to keep sending weapons to Ukraine.Ms. Schlein with her assistant in her temporary office at the party headquarters in Rome.Massimo Berruti for The New York TimesFive Star’s position on Ukraine, Ms. Schlein said, “I don’t agree on.” She described her party as wholly supportive of Ukraine against the “criminal invasion” by Russia and noted it had voted to send arms over the next year, because “it’s necessary now.”Supporters of Ukraine, however, worry about Ms. Schlein’s ongoing commitment because of her talk of being a “pacifist” and what some consider her naïve argument that Europe somehow needed to convince China to force Russia to end the war.But she said she feels a personal connection to Ukraine. Her grandfather was from Ukraine, she said, and after he emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Elizabeth, N.J., his family back home was almost certainly wiped out in the Holocaust. Her Italian grandfather, who eventually became a Socialist lawmaker, refused to wear the “black shirts of the Fascists” during his graduation and “was an antifascist lawyer” who, she said, would “defend Jews in trials.”That family history has made her keenly sensitive to “what nationalism has brought to the European continent,” she said, adding, with a reference to the Russian president, “This war is a nationalist war from Putin.”Ms. Schlein was herself not raised Jewish, though she called herself “particularly proud” of her Jewish ancestry. In a friendly interview during the campaign, she told an Italian website that her last name and pronounced nose, what she considers her defining physical feature, attracted odious anti-Semitic attacks. But, she noted, the nose was not Jewish, but “typically Etruscan.”The Colosseum lit up in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, in Rome, in February. Ms. Schlein described her party as wholly supportive of Ukraine against the “criminal invasion” by Russia.Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse, via Associated PressAsked about that comment, Ms. Schlein’s verbosity stalled. “I wouldn’t go back to that,” she said. “No, thanks.” When pressed on what an Etruscan nose looked like, she threw her hands up and acknowledged, “They don’t even exist!”The point, she said, was that she learned that being a “woman,” and “an L.G.B.T.Q.I.+ person” and “very proudly the daughter of a Jewish father” made her a prime target “from the extreme right or also from my extreme left sometimes.” Ms. Schlein declined in the interview to discuss her family or her partner in further detail.Ms. Schlein said addressing such injustices drew her into politics. A star pupil in her Lugano high school, she said, she wanted to take her talents to Italy, “because I’ve always felt that this country, the country of my mother, has strong potential that only needs to be freed.”She went to art school in Bologna. Then she dropped film for law and went from campus politics to the real thing — making powerful friends, gaining fluency in social media and doing stints in the European and Italian Parliaments along the way. When she quit the Democratic Party to protest the loss of its liberal way, she supported a movement to “occupy” the party.Now she occupies the leadership headquarters near the Spanish Steps, and after a short walk toward Ms. Meloni’s palace, Ms. Schlein, the progressive no one saw coming, entertained taking that place over, too.“Well,” she said. “We’ll see.” More

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      Thai Hunger Strikers Calling for Changes to Monarchy Are at Risk of Dying

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      The two young women have not had food for 44 days, part of a campaign urging the government to repeal a law that criminalizes criticizing the royal family.A stream of protesters outside the Supreme Court in Bangkok held up the three-fingered salute — a symbol of defiance against the government. “Fight, fight, fight,” they yelled to two young women who were taken out of a makeshift tent in stretchers, both so weak that they could not open their eyes.The women, Tantawan “Tawan” Tuatulanon, 21, and Orawan “Bam” Phuphong, 23, were taken to a hospital on Friday evening after their family members and lawyer said that they were on the brink of death. They were on their 44th day of a hunger strike, protesting the detention of Thai political prisoners, calling for judiciary changes and the repeal of a law that criminalizes criticizing the Thai monarchy. Their plight has been discussed by Thailand’s House of Representatives and has drawn urgent expressions of concern from international human rights groups, which have called on the government to engage with the activists. In 2022, both women were accused of violating the law against criticizing the monarchy after they conducted a poll asking whether the royal motorcade was an inconvenience to Bangkok residents. They were released on bail in March that year under the condition that they no longer participate in protests or organize activities that defame the royal family.The doctors are now most concerned about the women’s kidneys failing, according to their lawyer, Krisadang Nutcharut. “Their parents and I were consulting each other and saw that they wouldn’t make it past tonight, according to the blood results,” Mr. Krisadang said.The women’s protest has presented the Thai government with a political dilemma two months before a general election: Meet their demands and risk appearing weak among voters or do nothing and face a potential fallout that could trigger widespread unrest.Kasit Piromya, a former Thai foreign minister, has called on Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha of Thailand to address the women’s demands. Mr. Prayuth, through a government spokesman, has said he hopes the two women are safe but urged parents to “monitor their children’s behavior” and for all Thais to “help protect the nation, religion and monarchy.”The women began their hunger strike in January. Last month, Ms. Tantawan, a university student, and Ms. Orawan, a grocery store worker, were hospitalized and put on saline drips after their conditions became critical. They have stopped drinking water but are sipping electrolytes on doctors’ orders.Orawan “Bam” Phuphong after leaving the hospital in Bangkok in February.Rungroj Yongrit/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Thursday, the pair announced that they would stop taking electrolytes, too. In an interview with The New York Times on Thursday evening, Mr. Krisadang said the women’s spirits remain unbowed.In January, Thailand’s justice minister told Ms. Tantawan and Ms. Orawan that the government would consider reforming the bail system, though he did not address their core demands, which include reforming the country’s judicial system.Thailand’s opposition parties, Pheu Thai and Move Forward, submitted an urgent motion for a debate in the House of Representatives in February to propose measures to save the women’s lives. The debates stopped short of addressing the activists’ demands to abolish lèse-majesté, the law that makes criticizing the monarchy illegal, fearful of alienating royalists before the election. (The protesters are also calling for the abolition of Thailand’s sedition laws.)Thailand has one of the world’s strictest lèse-majesté laws, which forbids defaming, insulting or threatening the king and other members of the royal family. Known as Article 112, the charge carries a minimum sentence of three years and a maximum sentence of up to 15 years. It is the only law in Thailand that imposes a minimum jail term.Previously, Thai authorities confined the use of lèse-majesté against people who explicitly criticized the leading members of the monarchy. But after Mr. Prayuth seized power in a coup in 2014, the number of topics that constituted lèse-majesté expanded to include criticism of the institution, and even deceased kings.Thailand informally suspended the use of the lèse-majesté law in 2018, according to Chanatip Tatiyakaroonwong, Amnesty International’s regional researcher on Thailand. The move coincided with calls from the international community for Thailand to respect their commitments to the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.But after the 2020 protests, Mr. Prayuth, who has repeatedly vowed to remain loyal to the monarchy, instructed all government officials to “use every single law” to prosecute anyone who criticized the monarchy.The authorities have charged at least 225 people, including 17 minors, for violating the lèse-majesté law since 2020. Thousands more have been slapped with other criminal charges. As more activists were targeted, the mass protests slowly began to wane.Protesters attending a pro-democracy rally demanding that Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn hand back royal assets to the people and reform the monarchy, in Bangkok in 2020. Adam Dean for The New York TimesSunai Phasuk, the senior researcher for Thailand for Human Rights Watch, said the case of Ms. Tantawan and Ms. Orawan and their public survey was the clearest example of how the law is being arbitrarily enforced. “The use of the lèse-majesté law has become more and more arbitrary, in that even the slightest criticism of both the individuals and the institution can lead to legal action,” he said.On Thursday evening, dozens of supporters appeared outside the Supreme Court in support of the women. They held sunflowers and cards that read, “Abolish lèse-majesté law.” (Ms. Tantawan’s name in Thai means “sunflower.”)“These kids are so brave, my generation cannot compete with them,” said Yupa Ritnakha, a 65-year-old supporter who was holding a bunch of sunflowers outside of the Supreme Court. “They are willing to die for their cause.”This is not Ms. Tantawan’s first hunger strike. In April 2022, she went on a hunger strike for over a month after she was detained for violating her bail by posting details of the royal motorcade on Facebook. She was released on bail once again, but placed under house arrest.Friends of Ms. Tantawan and Ms. Orawan say they are disappointed that the women’s campaign has failed to sway the general public or motivate the government to introduce reforms.“It’s unfortunate for them that this is happening at a low point of the protest movement,” said Mr. Chanatip, of Amnesty. “After three years of an official crackdown on the protests, people are quite burned out.”Ryn Jirenuwat More

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      Cambodian Opposition Leader Is Found Guilty of Treason Ahead of Election

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      Kem Sokha, co-founder of the defunct Cambodia National Rescue Party, was accused of conspiring to overthrow the government and sentenced to 27 years’ house arrest.Kem Sokha, Cambodia’s most prominent opposition politician still in the country, was sentenced to 27 years of house arrest Friday on a charge of treason and banned from running or voting in elections.Cambodian courts are not an independent branch of government, and the sentence was the latest step that Prime Minister Hun Sen has taken as he crushes what remains of a political opposition in advance of a July election. Mr. Hun Sen, who has been in power for 38 years, has said he is planning to run in that election and has anointed one of his sons, Lt. Gen. Hun Manet, to succeed him in the future.“It is not right, unfair and can’t be accepted,” said Ang Oudom, one of Mr. Kem Sokha’s lawyers, after the sentence was announced. He said he would appeal but added: “It is a political case, and only politicians can decide.”Outside the courthouse, where several ambassadors had gathered to hear the verdict, W. Patrick Murphy, the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, said the case was fabricated and a miscarriage of justice.“Denying Kem Sokha and other political figures their freedom of expression, their freedom of association, undermines Cambodia’s Constitution, international commitment and past progress to develop a pluralist and inclusive society,” he said.Mr. Kem Sokha, 69, is a co-founder of the now-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party, known as the C.N.R.P., along with Sam Rainsy, who has been in self-imposed exile since 2015 to avoid arrest for defamation, among other charges. Mr. Kem Sokha was arrested in September 2017 in a showy late-night raid on a charge of colluding with the United States government to take power in Cambodia.That charge was based on a statement he made in a video about receiving advice from American pro-democracy groups. He has denied the charges, and Washington has dismissed them as “fabricated conspiracy theories.”From abroad, Mr. Rainsy said the charges against Mr. Kem Sokha were “based on a grotesque reading of a standard speech he had made years earlier in Australia.”Mr. Kem Sokha was moved from prison to house arrest just over a year after he was detained and then freed from house arrest in November 2019 but banned from politics. Soon after his arrest, the Supreme Court dissolved the C.N.R.P. after the government accused it of plotting its overthrow.The party posed the most serious threat to Mr. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, known as the C.P.P., and the C.N.R.P.’s dissolution cleared the way for Mr. Hun Sen’s party to sweep all 125 seats in the National Assembly in a 2018 election.Mr. Kem Sokha’s arrest and the termination of the C.N.R.P. were part of a wide-ranging crackdown on opposition politicians, activists and members of the press that has seen hundreds of people jailed or sentenced in absentia after fleeing abroad. In June, a court in Phnom Penh convicted at least 51 opposition figures of “incitement” and “conspiracy” as well as other charges.Among those convicted was Theary Seng, a lawyer and civil rights activist with dual American and Cambodian citizenship, who is now serving a six-year sentence in a remote prison in Preah Vihear Province.Human Rights Watch, which has strongly condemned each step of the crackdown in Cambodia, called on foreign governments Friday to reassess their approach to Mr. Hun Sen’s government.“It was obvious from the start that the charges against Kem Sokha were nothing but a political ploy by Prime Minister Hun Sen to sideline Cambodia’s major opposition leader and eliminate the country’s democratic system,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.He said the sentence “isn’t just about destroying his political party but about quashing any hope that there can be a genuine election in July.” Ming Yu Hah, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director over Southeast Asia, emphasized the same point, saying, “This verdict is an unmistakable warning to opposition groups months before national elections.”Mr. Hun Sen put the point in graphic terms in a speech in January, in which he warned his political opponents to prepare for assault. He said he could “gather people belonging to the C.P.P. to protest and beat you,” and added, “Be careful. If I can’t control my temper, you will be destroyed.”Sun Narin More

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      Ron DeSantis Usually Avoids the Press. For Murdoch, He’ll Make an Exception.

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      The Florida governor granted a rare interview to The Times of London, one of several Murdoch media properties he’s spoken with as he prepares a possible presidential bid.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a sulfurous critic of the news media, has all but shunned one-on-one interviews with mainstream political reporters, speaking almost exclusively in recent months with friendly conservative pundits.But he has finally granted an interview to a major establishment newspaper — just not one in the United States.Mr. DeSantis’s face is on the cover of Thursday’s edition of The Times of London, whose American correspondent recently conducted an extensive interview with the governor at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Tallahassee. “The Man Who Might be President,” reads the headline.Presumably, few Republican primary voters reside in Britain. But The Times of London, one of England’s oldest and most respected papers, is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire has already thrown its considerable influence behind the prospect of a DeSantis presidential bid.The governor appears to be returning the favor.As he kicks off a promotional tour for his new memoir (published by Mr. Murdoch’s HarperCollins), Mr. DeSantis took Salena Zito, a conservative columnist at The New York Post (owned by Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp), on a tour of his hometown in Florida, and he appeared on Fox News (owned by Mr. Murdoch’s Fox Corp) for interviews with Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Jesse Watters and the co-hosts of “Fox & Friends.” Excerpts from his memoir appeared in The Post and on FoxNews.com.Mr. DeSantis, left, appearing on “Fox & Friends” as he kicked off a promotional tour for his new memoir. Fox NewsBy contrast, Mr. DeSantis’s press secretary recently said the governor would not engage at all with journalists at NBC News or MSNBC. The DeSantis camp cited its frustration with an imprecise question asked by the NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell about Mr. DeSantis’s restrictions on how racism is taught in Florida public schools. (Ms. Mitchell later offered a clarification.)Gov. Ron DeSantis and His AdministrationReshaping Florida: Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has turned the swing state into a right-wing laboratory by leaning into cultural battles.Challenging Trump: As former President Donald J. Trump lobs insults, Mr. DeSantis is carefully avoiding conflict. But if he runs for president in 2024 as expected, a clash is inevitable.Rift with Disney: In the latest development in a battle between the governor and Disney, Mr. DeSantis has gained control of the board that oversees development at Walt Disney World, a move that restricts the autonomy of Disney over its theme-park complex.Education: Mr. DeSantis, an increasingly vocal culture warrior, is taking an aggressive swing at the education establishment, announcing a proposed overhaul of the state’s higher education system.Mr. DeSantis, however, has not given carte blanche to employees of Mr. Murdoch. While the governor is willing to appear with Fox News’s conservative hosts, he has not been interviewed recently by Bret Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, or Shannon Bream, host of “Fox News Sunday,” anchors who would be more inclined to ask him tough questions.Mr. DeSantis’s presence in Murdoch-controlled news outlets comes as his prospective rival for the Republican nomination, former President Donald J. Trump, has seemed to vanish from the same media properties. Mr. Trump has not appeared on a Fox News broadcast since declaring his candidacy in November, although Fox News’s website has published interviews with him.The Post, whose coverage is often viewed as a distillation of Mr. Murdoch’s id, took direct aim at Mr. Trump when he announced his presidential run, relegating the news to the mocking headline “Florida Man Makes Announcement.” And after last year’s midterm elections, The Post featured Mr. DeSantis on its front page with the admiring headline “DeFUTURE.”Mr. Trump has expressed displeasure with the situation, deriding Ms. Zito’s interview with Mr. DeSantis as a “puff piece” and calling The Post a “dying” publication, a far cry from his warm attitude toward the tabloid in the past. In a post on Truth Social, his right-wing social network, Mr. Trump combined three Murdoch media properties into a single insult: “I don’t read the New York Post anymore. It has become Fake News, just like Fox & WSJ!”Mr. DeSantis’s interview in The Times of London was conducted by David Charter, the newspaper’s U.S. editor, a veteran foreign correspondent who is viewed as a straight-ahead journalist and not an opinionated pundit.Mr. DeSantis’s face is on the cover of Thursday’s edition of The Times of London, whose American correspondent recently conducted an extensive interview with the governor at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Tallahassee.The Times of LondonThe two-page spread appears under a splashy quote rendered in British spelling: “Ron DeSantis: ‘Don’t we need a little more vigour and punch?’”The article is presented as a feature, observing at one point that Mr. DeSantis has “a firm handshake and a neat crop of chestnut hair.” In the interview, Mr. DeSantis muses about a golf vacation with his wife to Scotland and Northern Ireland. He calls himself a “big supporter” of Brexit, although he offered a light critique of Britain’s pro-Brexit Conservative Party, saying the party “hasn’t been as aggressive at fulfilling that vision as they should have been.”Asked if he had written his memoir because he wanted to be president, Mr. DeSantis demurred: “What I would say is, I was well known. I was, you know, kind of a hot commodity. And I thought that the book would do well, I think it is doing well. I think you’re gonna see it’s going to do very well. We’ve had a great, great response.”Despite the seemingly cordial tone of the interview, Mr. DeSantis at one point became irritated with his interlocutor.Mr. Charter writes that when he asked Mr. DeSantis how he would handle American relations with Ukraine, the governor referred “to Biden being ‘weak on the world stage’ and failing at deterrence.”Mr. Charter pressed for more detail: How would a President DeSantis handle the conflict in Ukraine?“Perhaps you should cover some other ground?” the governor replied. “I think I’ve said enough.” More

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      Turkey’s Earthquake Will Not Delay Elections in Country, Erdogan Says

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      The Feb. 6 earthquake’s vast destruction will present a challenge when it comes to mounting a viable election. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the vote would go on in May, “God willing.”ADANA, Turkey — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made clear on Wednesday that he does not intend to delay crucial elections in Turkey because of last month’s devastating earthquake, saying they would go ahead as previously announced on May 14.It was the first time the Turkish leader has publicly mentioned a polling date since the catastrophic quake on Feb. 6, which raised questions over whether he would seek to delay the presidential and parliamentary vote. The quake ravaged a large area of southern Turkey and northern Syria, killing more than 51,000 people so far. The number is rising daily.“This nation — the time is coming on May 14 — will do what is necessary, God willing,” Mr. Erdogan told members of his ruling Justice and Development Party. He had announced the same date before the quake hit.The vast destruction caused by the 7.8-magnitude temblor and a powerful aftershock have posed a new political challenge for Mr. Erdogan, Turkey’s paramount politician for two decades, while drastically complicating the logistics of holding elections with so many communities in ruins.Mr. Erdogan’s popularity had sagged over the last year because of a spike in inflation that ate into the budgets of Turkish families. And many quake survivors have criticized his government’s initial response to the country’s largest natural disaster in decades as slow and inadequate.The president has acknowledged in recent days that the government’s initial response was lacking, while emphasizing the quake’s magnitude.The election is critical to the political future of Mr. Erdogan, a towering political figure at home whose international profile has grown since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year.Civilians search for their relatives under a collapsed building in the city of Kahramanmaras in February.Emin Ozmen for The New York TimesHe has frustrated other members of NATO by refusing to join Western sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for the invasion and blocking the alliance’s expansion to include Sweden and Finland.But Western officials acknowledge that his relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has yielded diplomatic benefits such as a deal to allow the export of Ukrainian grain.Deadly Quake in Turkey and SyriaA 7.8-magnitude earthquake on Feb. 6, with its epicenter in Gaziantep, Turkey, has become one of the deadliest natural disasters of the century.Near the Epicenter: Amid scenes of utter devastation in the ancient Turkish city of Antakya, thousands are trying to make sense of an earthquake that left them with no home and no future.Another Quake Hits: A 5.2-magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey on Feb. 27, shaking parts of the same area stricken by the devastating Feb. 6 quake.Builders Under Scrutiny: The deadly quake in Turkey has raised painful questions over who is to blame for shoddy construction and whether better building standards could have saved lives.Studying the Quake: Scientists analyzing the disaster in Turkey and Syria may bring new insights to a seismic zone that is strikingly similar: the San Andreas Fault in California.An election victory for Mr. Erdogan would give him a third presidential term, and a strong showing by his party would help him to keep pushing his policies through Parliament.But it remains unclear how the earthquake and the government’s response have affected Mr. Erdogan’s standing with voters.Emre Erdogan, a professor of political science at Istanbul Bilgi University, said he did not expect the quake to drastically affect the roughly 40 percent of voters who support the president’s party.“His electorate is conservative, with a strong belief in fate,” said Professor Erdogan, who is not related to the president. “They might rationalize any failure they witnessed, particularly with a fatalistic mind-set that disasters are inevitable.”So far, Mr. Erdogan has not directly addressed accusations that the death toll was increased by poor construction enabled by the weak enforcement of building codes. The government has announced legal investigations of hundreds of building contractors, and some have been detained.Now, the government must figure out how to hold a viable election in the wake of a disaster that wrecked more than 200,000 buildings and displaced millions of people. Exactly how that will work remains unclear.In areas hit by the quake, many public buildings that would normally serve as polling places are damaged. Many voters have fled the quake zone for other parts of the country, making it hard for them to cast votes in their home districts.Voter rolls will need to be updated to account for the dead and the large number of people who are still missing.A stadium converted to a camp where earthquake survivors took shelter in the city of Adiyaman in February. The earthquake displaced millions of people.Emin Ozmen for The New York TimesThis week, a delegation from Turkey’s High Election Council, which oversees the vote, has been visiting quake-stricken areas to explore whether shipping containers can be used as polling places and how displaced people can cast ballots for their home districts, according to state-run news media.Experts said that holding a viable election in such conditions was possible, but would take tremendous organization.“If the current law and regulations are upheld, I don’t see a big problem in holding elections,” said Volkan Aslan, a lecturer in constitutional law at Istanbul University.Names of the dead can be easily deleted from the voter rolls, he said. And photo ID checks and signatures at polling stations can help prevent fraud.Legally, the vote must be held on or before June 18, but Mr. Erdogan can set an earlier date. His announcement on Wednesday did not begin the official process of setting the election in place, but he still has time to do that.A coalition of six opposition parties has joined forces to try to unseat Mr. Erdogan, but they have yet to announce their candidate.Critics have accused Mr. Erdogan of eroding state institutions and pushing Turkey toward authoritarianism. Signs have emerged in recent weeks that his government is seeking to quash dissent as the vote approaches.Last weekend, fans of some of the country’s largest soccer clubs chanted antigovernment slogans during games, yelling “government, resign!” and “Lies, lies, lies! It’s been 20 years, resign!” One of Mr. Erdogan’s top political allies suggested that games be held without fans, and the supporters of one large club that joined the chants have been barred from attending a game scheduled for Saturday.Mr. Erdogan’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, has deemed the chanting a security threat.Mr. Erdogan on a poster in Istanbul in January. He is running for a third term as president.Erdem Sahin/EPA, via ShutterstockBen Hubbard More

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      Your Thursday Briefing: Nigeria’s New ‘Big Boss’

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      Also, a major tank battle in Ukraine and a deadly train wreck in Greece.Bola Tinubu celebrating at his campaign headquarters in Abuja.Ben Curtis/Associated PressVictory for a Nigerian political ‘big boss’Bola Tinubu was declared the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election on Wednesday, extending the governing All Progressives Congress party’s rule in Africa’s largest nation.Tinubu won about 36 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a runoff. But only 27 percent of voters participated, the lowest turnout in the country’s history.A political insider who ran on the slogan “It’s my turn,” Tinubu is a divisive figure. Some revere him for turning around the fortunes of Lagos during his eight years as governor; others deride him as a corrupt stalwart of the old guard.A multimillionaire, Tinubu made his money in real estate, but has faced questions over his wealth. His supporters call him “big boss,” while many detractors call him “balablu,” a reference to a speech in which he failed to pronounce the word “hullabaloo” and a shorthand to imply that he is too old to lead.The parties representing Tinubu’s two chief rivals, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, have already called for a redo of the election after reports of delays and violence at polling sites. Some Nigerians described being unable to vote despite waiting all day.Challenges: When Tinubu takes office in May he will need to work on solving electricity shortages, reviving oil production and improving security, including addressing the threats from extremist groups like Boko Haram in the country’s northeast and separatists in the southeast.Ukraine’s 72nd Brigade near Vuhledar on Saturday.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesRussia routed in tank battleUkrainian officials said Russian forces were soundly defeated during the biggest tank battle of the war so far.During the fighting, which took place over three weeks near the coal mining town of Vuhledar in southeastern Ukraine, the Russians advanced in columns, while the Ukrainians fired from hiding places as Russian vehicles came into sight. It was the same mistake that cost Moscow hundreds of tanks earlier in the war: advancing into ambushes.The State of the WarRussia’s New Offensive: The Russian military is relying on tens of thousands of inexperienced conscripts to carry out its latest maneuver, which has barely budged over the last month.Deploying High-Powered Aides: President Biden has dispatched Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a concerted diplomatic push to show support for Ukraine.A War of Words: Russia and the West have been arguing for months about which side is more willing to negotiate ending the war in Ukraine peacefully.In one skirmish, Ukrainian soldiers seeded the fields around a dirt road with land mines and hid anti-tank teams in the tree line around the fields. Once the trap was sprung the Russian tanks couldn’t turn around without detonating the mines, and blown-up vehicles soon delayed them more.Ukraine’s military said Russia lost at least 130 tanks and armored personnel carriers in the battle, though that figure could not be independently verified. Context: The Russian military has lionized tank warfare since World War II, and Russian military bloggers have posted screeds blaming generals for the failures of the tank assaults.Other news from the war:Ukraine said it had sent reinforcements to the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut.A Ukrainian drone that landed in a field southeast of Moscow this week was carrying explosives, Russian news media outlets reported.Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said the Biden administration saw “zero evidence” that President Vladimir Putin was considering peace talks.“Windows were shattering and people were screaming,” one survivor said.Angelos Tzortzinis for The New York TimesDeadly train crash in GreeceA head-on collision in Greece killed at least 38 people and injured dozens more in the country’s deadliest rail accident in memory. The Greek transport minister announced his resignation.The high-speed collision between a freight and passenger train was so forceful that two carriages “basically don’t exist anymore,” a regional governor said. The passenger train was carrying about 350 passengers, many of whom were college students, traveling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki.The cause of the crash remains unclear, but a railway official said that monitoring and warning systems along the track worked only sporadically. The head of the rail workers’ union told Greek television that the two trains raced toward one another for 12 minutes before colliding.Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that “tragic human error” had led to the crash, but gave no further details. Police arrested the station manager in Larissa, a city about 20 miles south of the crash site. Greek news media reported that the station manager had directed the freight train onto the same track as the passenger train.Context: Greece already had the worst record for rail safety in Europe, with maintenance problems going unaddressed for decades.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificAn assembly line at a Wuling Motors factory in Qingdao, China.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFactory production in China has surged since the end of lockdowns, bolstering the country’s economic recovery.South Korea’s president called for closer ties with Japan to better counter North Korean nuclear threats, The Associated Press writes.India’s February was its hottest on record and heat waves could follow in March and April, the BBC reported.Around the WorldThe Gemini used to ferry vacationers from Turkey to the Greek islands.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesA cruise ship has become a shelter for more than 1,000 people displaced by the earthquake in Turkey.The police in Tel Aviv used water cannons and stun grenades against thousands of protesters opposed to the Israeli government’s plan to limit the judiciary. Also, a Times video investigation shows how an Israeli raid in the West Bank turned deadly.Eritrean troops massacred hundreds of civilians in Tigray just before the end of Ethiopia’s civil war late last year, according to rights groups, aid workers and news outlets.Other Big StoriesMany undocumented immigrants are leaving the U.S. after decades.Eli Lilly, a major U.S. drug manufacturer, announced it would cap the price of insulin at $35 a month.U.S. intelligence agencies determined that a foreign adversary is “very unlikely” to be responsible for Havana syndrome, the mysterious ailment that spies and diplomats have reported experiencing.In this month’s space news, a rocket made mostly with 3-D printing could slip the surly bonds of Earth. And China’s Mars rover doesn’t appear to have moved since last September.A Morning ReadNicole Solero moved back in with her parents to save money after graduating from college.Todd Anderson for The New York TimesYoung adults in the United States are often encouraged to leave the nest as a rite of passage. But the high cost of living, student debt and family obligations keep some at home, helping them save for the future.ECONOMIC IDEASIndia’s digital payment revolutionTiny QR codes have become ubiquitous across India’s vastness. Roadside barbers, peanut vendors, street performers and beggars all accept money through an instant payment system that connects hundreds of millions of people.The Unified Payments Interface, an initiative of India’s central bank, dwarfs anything in the West. The value of the billions of instant digital transactions in India last year was far more than in the U.S., Britain, Germany and France.At the heart of the payment network is a campaign to deliver every citizen a unique identification number, called the Aadhaar. The government says that more than 1.3 billion IDs have been issued, and that the payment system is now used by close to 300 million individuals and 50 million merchants.“Our digital payments ecosystem has been developed as a free public good,” Narendra Modi, the prime minister, told finance ministers from the Group of 20. Now, India wants to export it as it fashions itself as an incubator of ideas for poorer nations.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJulia Gartland for The New York TimesTips from around the world for a great beef stew.What to WatchIn “The Reluctant Traveler,” Eugene Levy discovers the (mild) joys of leaving his comfort zone.What to Listen toFive minutes that will make you love jazz piano.What to WearIntricate enamel pieces from a storied Indian jewelry family keep a dying craft alive.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Singer Simone (4 letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Mariah and DanP.S. Rich Barbieri, a deputy business editor, is heading to Seoul to oversee our business and economic coverage in Asia.“The Daily” is about abortion pills. We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to briefing@nytimes.com. More