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      China Holds War Games in a Warning to Taiwan’s Leader

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      The drills were seen as a response to a speech by President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan, who said last week that China had “no right to represent” the island.China began holding military drills in areas surrounding Taiwan on Monday, days after Beijing accused the self-governing island’s president of promoting independence in a National Day address. China said its army, navy, air force, rocket force and other forces were taking part in the drills to test their ability to fight alongside each other, and to send a warning to Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory. It did not say when the exercises would conclude.“This is a powerful deterrent against the separatist activities of ‘Taiwan independence’ forces and a legitimate and necessary action to defend national sovereignty and maintain national unity,” said Senior Col. Li Xi, a spokesman for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command, which oversees an area including Taiwan, according to state media. In a social media post, the Eastern Theater Command said it was “ready to fight at all times.”Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, in a statement, expressed “strong condemnation for such irrational and provocative behavior” and said it had dispatched troops to respond to the Chinese drills. Experts in Taiwan said the scale of the exercises was not immediately clear, given that no prior notice had been given and few details had been made public. A map posted by Chinese state media depicted the drills as being conducted in six large areas encircling Taiwan. China called the exercise “Joint Sword-2024B,” suggesting that it was a continuation of a two-day exercise in May, called “Joint Sword-2024A,” that was held after President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan was sworn in. Beijing dislikes Mr. Lai, accusing him and his party of seeking independence.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Secret Documents Show Hamas Tried to Persuade Iran to Join Its Oct. 7 Attack

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      The Times reviewed the minutes of 10 meetings among Hamas’s top leaders. The records show the militant group avoided several escalations since 2021 to falsely imply it had been deterred — while seeking Iranian support for a major attack.For more than two years, Yahya Sinwar huddled with his top Hamas commanders and plotted what they hoped would be the most devastating and destabilizing attack on Israel in the militant group’s four-decade history.Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings, seized by the Israeli military and obtained by The New York Times, provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, as well as Mr. Sinwar’s determination to persuade Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join the assault or at least commit to a broader fight with Israel if Hamas staged a surprise cross-border raid.The documents, which represent a breakthrough in understanding Hamas, also show extensive efforts to deceive Israel about its intentions as the group laid the groundwork for a bold assault and a regional conflagration that Mr. Sinwar hoped would cause Israel to “collapse.”The documents consist of minutes from 10 secret planning meetings of a small group of Hamas political and military leaders in the run-up to the attack, on Oct. 7, 2023. The minutes include 30 pages of previously undisclosed details about the way Hamas’s leadership works and the preparations that went into its attack.The documents, which were verified by The Times, lay out the main strategies and assessments of the leadership group:Hamas initially planned to carry out the attack, which it code-named “the big project,” in the fall of 2022. But the group delayed executing the plan as it tried to persuade Iran and Hezbollah to participate.As they prepared arguments aimed at Hezbollah, the Hamas leaders said that Israel’s “internal situation” — an apparent reference to turmoil over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious plans to overhaul the judiciary — was among the reasons they were “compelled to move toward a strategic battle.”In July 2023, Hamas dispatched a top official to Lebanon, where he met with a senior Iranian commander and requested help with striking sensitive sites at the start of the assault.The senior Iranian commander told Hamas that Iran and Hezbollah were supportive in principle, but needed more time to prepare; the minutes do not say how detailed a plan was presented by Hamas to its allies.The documents also say that Hamas planned to discuss the attack in more detail at a subsequent meeting with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader at the time, but do not clarify whether the discussion happened.Hamas felt assured of its allies’ general support, but concluded it might need to go ahead without their full involvement — in part to stop Israel from deploying an advanced new air-defense system before the assault took place.The decision to attack was also influenced by Hamas’s desire to disrupt efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the entrenchment of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Israeli efforts to exert greater control over the Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, sacred in both Islam and Judaism and known to Jews as the Temple Mount.Hamas deliberately avoided major confrontations with Israel for two years from 2021, in order to maximize the surprise of the Oct. 7 attack. As the leaders saw it, they “must keep the enemy convinced that Hamas in Gaza wants calm.”Hamas leaders in Gaza said they briefed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Qatar-based political leader, on “the big project.” It was not previously known whether Mr. Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in July, had been briefed on the attack before it happened.Prelude to WarThe documents provide greater context to one of the most pivotal moments in modern Middle Eastern history, showing it was both the culmination of a yearslong plan, as well as a move partly shaped by specific events after Mr. Netanyahu returned to power in Israel in late 2022.Yahya Sinwar in April 2023 in Gaza City. Documents show that he and other Hamas leaders wanted time to lull Israeli leaders into a false sense of security before attacking Israel. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      North Korea Accuses the South of Sending Drones Over Pyongyang

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      Pyongyang threatened military action if the provocations continued, while the South advised its angry neighbor not to act “rashly.”North Korea on Friday accused South Korea of sending unmanned drones to scatter propaganda leaflets over its capital city of Pyongyang, and threatened military action if the flights continued.South Korean drones were seen over Pyongyang on Wednesday and Thursday night this week, the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday. The drones dropped “numerous leaflets full of political propaganda and slander” against the government of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, it said.North Korea called the intrusions “a grave political and military provocation” that could lead to “an armed conflict.” It said its military was preparing “all means of attack” and would respond without warning if South Korean drones were detected over its territory again.“The criminals should no longer gamble with the lives of their citizens,” it said.No anti-North Korean activist group in South Korea has claimed responsibility for the drones. The South Korean military said it could not confirm the North Korean claim, but advised North Korea “not to act rashly.” The North Korean statement on Friday did not describe what type of drone was spotted.“We will retaliate resolutely and mercilessly if the North endangers the safety of our people,” South Korea said in a statement.Tensions between the two Koreas have increased in recent months as anti-North Korean activists in the South — mostly defectors — have sent balloons filled with leaflets criticizing Mr. Kim’s government across the border. North Korea has also released thousands of balloons toward the South since May. The payloads mostly contained scrap paper and other household trash.North Korea has resorted to increasingly hostile language toward the South ever since Mr. Kim’s diplomacy with former President Donald J. Trump collapsed in 2019. The two leaders were meant to negotiate an agreement on rolling back the North’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for easing United Nations sanctions.Mr. Kim has since expanded his weapons tests while South Korea has redoubled its military ties with the United States and Japan.During the Cold War, the two Korean militaries often sent propaganda balloons across the border. When the leaders of the two Koreas held the first inter-Korean summit meeting in 2000, they agreed to end the government-sponsored balloon campaigns.But North Korean defectors and conservative and Christian activists in the South have continued the practice, sending balloons filled with mini-Bibles, USB drives containing K-pop and K-drama and leaflets calling Mr. Kim a “pig.”Mr. Kim’s government has called the leaflets political “filth.” More

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      U.S. Aims to Revive Failed U.N. Plan for Lebanon War

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      At the heart of the frantic diplomatic efforts to halt Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon is a decades-old United Nations resolution that was intended to demilitarize the area and protect Israel from cross-border attacks by Hezbollah.All parties agree that the measure, Security Council Resolution 1701, has been a complete failure. They also agree that reviving it may be the only way out of Israel’s widening war to its north.“The outcome that we want to see is the full implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701,” the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Monday, speaking of Israel’s continuing assault in Lebanon.Mr. Miller said that would mean the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from the Israel-Lebanon border, and the deployment of U.N. and Lebanese army forces into the buffer zone in southern Lebanon that the resolution had sought to create.The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1701 in August 2006 as part of a cease-fire that ended Israel’s last war with Lebanon. The resolution called for “an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of” Lebanon’s government and a U.N. peacekeeping force in the area known as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL.In recent days, the question of how to restore that resolution has consumed senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Amos Hochstein, a senior White House national security aide who has been working for months to broker an agreement between Israel and Hezbollah to restore calm along the Israel-Lebanon border. Mr. Blinken has also been working the phones with Arab officials to discuss Lebanon’s political future, in which U.S. officials hope the influence of Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, will be diminished.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prestigious U.S.-Ireland Mitchell Scholarship Paused Amid Funding Woes

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      More than 300 American students have benefited from the George J. Mitchell program, founded after the Good Friday Agreement, but it has been halted indefinitely.Last month, 12 American students flew across the Atlantic to begin the prestigious George J. Mitchell scholarship program in Ireland and Northern Ireland. They are living in cities and towns including Cork, Belfast and Dublin, studying subjects like biotechnology, history and engineering.But they could be the last cohort in the program, as organizers announced earlier this year that they had paused selection for coming years because of funding difficulties.The program sent its first students to the island in 2000, in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement that forged peace after decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles. Named for then-Senator George J. Mitchell, who lead the talks, it has brought nearly 300 students to Ireland since its inception. The scholarship covers the full cost of tuition for a year, accommodations and a stipend for living expenses and travel.Organizers said the difficulty in securing long-term funding for the program raised questions about the changing relationship between the United States and Ireland, although the countries still benefit from close ties, particularly when compared to other small European countries. The scholarship has an overall budget of around $1 million, according to its latest annual report.Simon Harris, Ireland’s taoiseach, or prime minister, is in Washington on Wednesday for a two-day visit to meet with President Biden and to attend an event marking 100 years of bilateral diplomatic relations between the two nations.For a small country of just five million, Ireland has an outsized status in the American psyche because of the large numbers of immigrants in centuries past, the deep involvement of Irish Americans in the founding of the Irish state and more recently, America’s involvement in the peace process in Northern Ireland.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Athens Democracy Forum: Seeking the Road to Peace in the Middle East

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      Panelists at the Athens Democracy Forum discussed the widening conflict and the challenge of getting the warring parties to a consensus.This article is from a special report on the Athens Democracy Forum, which gathered experts last week in the Greek capital to discuss global issues.As the war in the Middle East faced another round of deadly escalation, the international negotiator Nomi Bar-Yaacov called on all sides in the conflict to stop and consider how “we got here.”An Israeli citizen and associate fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House, she didn’t hesitate to give her own answer.“At the heart of this lies the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and to statehood,” Ms. Bar-Yaacov said, leading off a sometimes-edgy 40-minute panel discussion on the Middle East at the Athens Democracy Forum last week.In recent days, the heightened confrontation between Israel and Iran has exacerbated fears in the region and globally about an even larger and more dangerous conflict.And yet, the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict was what started the current war, just as it has other Middle East wars before it. And most of the panelists agreed that the most feasible path to peace would be the two-state solution that has been on and off the table since Israel was created.“Nobody in 76 years has come up with a better idea,” said Roger Cohen, Paris bureau chief of The New York Times, who has reported frequently from the region.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fears of a Global Oil Shock if the Mideast Crisis Intensifies

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      The threat of an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has created an “extraordinarily precarious” global situation, sowing alarm about the potential economic fallout.As the world absorbs the prospect of an escalating conflict in the Middle East, the potential economic fallout is sowing increasing alarm. The worst fears center on a broadly debilitating development: a shock to the global oil supply.Such a result, actively contemplated in world capitals, could yield surging prices for gasoline, fuel and other products made with petroleum like plastics, chemicals and fertilizer. It could discourage investment, hiring, and business expansion, threatening many economies — particularly in Europe — with the risk of recession. The effects would be potent in nations that depend on imported oil, especially poor countries in Africa.The possibility of this calamitous outcome has come into focus in recent days as Israel plots its response to the barrage of missiles that Iran unleashed last week. Some scenarios are seen as highly unlikely, yet still conceivable: An Israeli strike on Iranian oil installations might prompt Iran to target refineries in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, both major oil producers. Iranian-supported Houthi rebels claimed credit for an attack on Saudi oil installations in 2019. The Trump administration subsequently pinned the blame on Iranian forces.As it has done before, Iran might also threaten the passage of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway that is the conduit for oil produced in the Persian Gulf, the source of nearly one-third of the world’s oil production. Such a move could entail conflict with American naval ships stationed in the region.That, too, is currently considered to be improbable. But the upheaval in the region in recent months has pushed out the parameters of possibility, rendering imaginable scenarios that were once dismissed as extreme.As Israel plots its next move, it has other targets besides Iranian oil installations. Iran would have reason for caution in crafting its own retaliation. Broadening the war to its Persian Gulf neighbors would invite a punishing response that could push Iran’s own economy — already bleak — to the brink of collapse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ship in Need of Repairs Has Explosive Cargo, but No Dock

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      The MV Ruby has meandered around Europe’s northwestern coastline under a cloud of suspicion over its thousands of tons of Russian fertilizer.The MV Ruby has languished off the coast of Britain for more than a week, its hull cracked, its propeller damaged. Yet no port will let the ship dock, fearing that the thousands of tons of Russian fertilizer it carries could lead to a disastrous explosion.Over the weekend, the MV Ruby remained 14 miles off the coast of Kent, in southeastern England, where it has been since last month.For weeks now, the ship has sailed around northern Europe’s coastline, looking for a friendly port. But no country has allowed it to approach, fearing a repeat of the explosion in 2020 in Lebanon that destroyed the Port of Beirut and killed more than 190 people.The ship is reportedly ferrying 20,000 tons of ammonium nitrate, a substance used for fertilizer. An explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate devastated the Lebanese port and was felt as far away as Cyprus in the Mediterranean. The MV Ruby may be carrying more than seven times as much.The ship’s stalled journey underscores the distrust and suspicion that vessels linked to Russia have faced since the start of the war in Ukraine. While the MV Ruby is registered in Malta and owned by a Maltese company, Ruby Enterprise, and is managed by Serenity Shipping, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, the Russian fertilizer it is ferrying has caused some governments to worry that the ship may be a Trojan horse, sent to sabotage vital shipping and port infrastructure.The ship’s managers and some maritime authorities have tried with little success to assure the public that the cargo poses no threat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More