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      Should Hundreds of Millions in Seized Assets Go to ISIS Victims?

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      The State and Justice Departments disagree about what to do with more than half a billion dollars after a French company pleaded guilty to aiding militants in war-torn Syria.Biden administration officials are divided over what to do with $687 million in assets a French company forfeited after pleading guilty to aiding terrorist groups like the Islamic State, according to people familiar with internal deliberations.The dispute, which has pit the State Department against the Justice Department, raises a tangle of legal, moral and policy problems about the financial implications of executive branch officials handling an unusually large amount of money that has not gone through the usual process of being appropriated for a specific purpose by Congress.Among the points of contention: whether the administration can or should funnel some of the money toward helping international victims of ISIS, most of whom are still in Syria or are refugees elsewhere in the Middle East.Adding to the complications, a group of ISIS victims now living in the United States also want a share of the assets. They are represented by Amal Clooney, a prominent human rights lawyer who is married to George Clooney, the actor who is helping raise money for Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, and by Lee Wolosky, a former Biden administration official.The vast sum at stake comes from the first prosecution of a corporation for conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. In 2022, the French building materials giant Lafarge pleaded guilty to paying off ISIS and another terrorist group in Syria, the Nusra Front, in 2013 and 2014, to ensure that it could keep operating a plant in the region.When the civil war in Syria broke out, Lafarge had just built an expensive cement factory in the northern part of that country. Officials at the company struck the unusual agreement with militant groups, court papers said, in part so it would be in a position to profit off the need to rebuild in Syria when the war ended.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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      Deepfake of U.S. Official Appears After Shift on Ukraine Attacks in Russia

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      A manufactured video fabricated comments by the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller.A day after U.S. officials said Ukraine could use American weapons in limited strikes inside Russia, a deepfake video of a U.S. spokesman discussing the policy appeared online.The fabricated video, which is drawn from actual footage, shows the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, seeming to suggest that the Russian city of Belgorod, just 25 miles north of Ukraine’s border with Russia, was a legitimate target for such strikes.The 49-second video clip, which has an authentic feel despite telltale clues of manipulation, illustrates the growing threat of disinformation and especially so-called deepfake videos powered by artificial intelligence.U.S. officials said they had no information about the origins of the video. But they are particularly concerned about how Russia might employ such techniques to manipulate opinion around the war in Ukraine or even American political discourse.Belgorod “has essentially no civilians remaining,” the video purports to show Mr. Miller saying at the State Department in response to a reporter’s question, which was also manufactured. “It’s practically full of military targets at this point, and we are seeing the same thing starting in the regions around there.”“Russia needs to get the message that this is unacceptable,” Mr. Miller adds in the video, which has been circulating on Telegram channels followed by residents of Belgorod widely enough to draw responses from Russian government officials.The claim in the video about Belgorod is completely false. While it has been the target of some Ukrainian attacks, and its schools operate online, its 340,000 residents have not been evacuated.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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      The Long, Tortured Road to Biden’s Clash With Netanyahu Over Gaza War

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      The president offered strong support to Israel after Oct. 7 but has grown increasingly frustrated over the conduct of the war. “He has just gotten to a point where enough is enough,” a friend says.President Biden laid it out for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel long before letting the public know. In a conversation bristling with tension on Feb. 11, the president warned the prime minister against a major assault on the Gaza city of Rafah — and suggested that continued U.S. support would depend on how Israel proceeded.It was an extraordinary moment. For the first time, the president who had so strongly backed Israel’s war against Hamas was essentially threatening to change course. The White House, however, kept the threat secret, making no mention of it in the official statement it released about the call. And indeed, the private warning, perhaps too subtle, fell on deaf ears.Six days later, on Feb. 17, Mr. Biden heard from Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. The president’s chief diplomat was calling from his blue-and-white government plane as he was flying home from a security conference in Munich. Despite the president’s warning, Mr. Blinken reported that momentum for an invasion of Rafah was building. It could result in a humanitarian catastrophe, he feared. They had to draw a line.At that point, the president headed down a road that would lead to the most serious collision between the United States and Israel in a generation. Three months later, the president has decided to follow through on his warning, leaving the two sides in a dramatic standoff. Mr. Biden has paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs and vowed to block the delivery of other offensive arms if Israel mounts a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah over his objections. Mr. Netanyahu responded defiantly, vowing to act even “if we need to stand alone.”Mr. Biden’s journey to this moment of confrontation has been a long and tortured one, the culmination of a seven-month evolution — from a president who was so appalled by the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7 that he pledged “rock solid and unwavering” support for Israel to an angry and exasperated president who has finally had it with an Israeli leadership that he believes is not listening to him.“He has just gotten to a point where enough is enough,” said former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a onetime Republican senator from Nebraska and a friend of Mr. Biden’s from their days together in Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration. “I think he felt he had to say something. He had to do something. He had to show some sign that he wasn’t going to continue this.”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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      A New Diplomatic Strategy Emerges as Artificial Intelligence Grows

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      The new U.S. approach to cyberthreats comes as early optimism about a “global internet” connecting the world has been shattered.American and Chinese diplomats plan to meet later this month to begin what amounts to the first, tentative arms control talks over the use of artificial intelligence.A year in the making, the talks in Geneva are an attempt to find some common ground on how A.I. will be used and in which situations it could be banned — for example, in the command and control of each country’s nuclear arsenals.The fact that Beijing agreed to the discussion at all was something of a surprise, since it has refused any discussion of limiting the size of nuclear arsenals themselves.But for the Biden administration, the conversation represents the first serious foray into a new realm of diplomacy, which Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke about on Monday in a speech in San Francisco at the RSA Conference, Silicon Valley’s annual convention on both the technology and the politics of securing cyberspace.The Biden administration’s strategy goes beyond the rules of managing cyberconflict and focuses on American efforts to assure control over physical technologies like undersea cables, which connect countries, companies and individual users to cloud services.Yuri Gripas for The New York Times“It’s true that ‘move fast and break things’ is literally the exact opposite of what we try to do at the State Department,” Mr. Blinken told the thousands of cyberexperts, coders and entrepreneurs, a reference to the Silicon Valley mantra about technological disruption.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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      U.S. Army Soldier Is Detained in Russia

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      The soldier was apprehended in Vladivostok on charges of criminal misconduct, in a case that is likely to aggravate the contentious relationship between Moscow and Washington.A U.S. Army soldier has been detained by Russian authorities in the port city Vladivostok on charges of criminal misconduct, the State and Defense Departments said on Monday, adding what is likely to be another complication in the contentious relationship between Moscow and Washington.A military official identified the soldier as Staff Sgt. Gordon Black, 34, and said he was in the process of returning home to Fort Cavazos in Texas after being stationed in South Korea. He was apprehended on May 2, and Russia notified the State Department of the soldier’s “criminal detention” in accordance with international agreements between the two nations.“The Army notified his family, and the U.S. Department of State is providing appropriate consular support to the soldier in Russia,” Cynthia O. Smith, an Army spokeswoman, said in a statement.A State Department official reiterated the U.S. government’s warning for Americans not to travel to Russia. The arrest of Sergeant Black was reported earlier by NBC News.The detention follows a pattern in recent years of Americans being arrested in Russia and held, sometimes indefinitely, on what U.S. officials say are often trumped-up charges. The detentions have gnawed at the already badly frayed relationship between Russia and the United States, which have clashed most notably over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but also over a host of other matters, including what Washington says is Moscow’s push to put a nuclear weapon in space.Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has been jailed by Russian authorities for more than a year on charges of espionage that he and his employer reject. The White House has designated him “wrongfully detained,” and President Biden reiterated calls for his release last month.Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive and former U.S. Marine, is serving a 16-year sentence in a Russian penal colony on what the U.S. government has called fabricated espionage charges. Brittney Griner, a professional basketball player, was detained in Russia for about 10 months and released in December 2022 in exchange for Viktor Bout, a Russian convicted of conspiring to kill Americans and provide material support to a terrorist group.And in February, Russia’s main security agency said a dual citizen of Russia and the United States had been arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg on accusations of treason by raising funds for Ukraine. The woman, who lived in Los Angeles, is accused of sending just over $50 to a New York-based nonprofit that sends assistance to Ukraine. She could face up to 20 years in prison.It took weeks of diplomacy for the United States to secure the return of another Army soldier who was recently arrested in an unfriendly country. The soldier, Pvt. Travis T. King, was released in October after being detained by North Korean authorities. He had crossed into that country from South Korea without authorization in July at the border village Panmunjom. More

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      U.S. Considers Imposing Sanctions on Israeli Military Unit

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      Israeli leaders expressed alarm about the possible action by the Biden administration over rights violations in the West Bank.The United States is considering imposing sanctions on one or more Israeli battalions accused of human rights violations during operations in the occupied West Bank, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Saturday called the possibility of the Biden administration’s placing such sanctions “the peak of absurdity and a moral low” at a time when Israeli forces are fighting a war in Gaza against Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu said in a social media post that his government would “act by all means” against any such move.The news about the possible sanctions, reported earlier by Axios, came only a day after the House approved $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza. The sanctions, if imposed, would not hold up the military aid that was just approved in Congress.On Sunday, Palestinians in the West Bank went on a general strike to protest a deadly Israeli military raid at a refugee camp. At least 10 people were killed in the raid on Saturday, the latest operation in a sweeping economic and security clampdown in the Israeli-occupied territory.Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and detained in raids in the West Bank, which Israeli officials describe as counterterrorism operations against Hamas and other armed groups.The strike on Sunday “paralyzed all aspects of life” in the West Bank, with shops, schools, universities and banks shuttered, according to the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa. Public transportation also was halted.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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      State Dept. Is Sending Its Top Diplomat for East Asia to China

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      The announcement comes days after President Biden met jointly with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines to discuss Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.The top U.S. diplomat for East Asia will travel to China on Sunday, the State Department announced, just days after President Biden met with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines in Washington as part of a broad diplomatic outreach in the region to counter China’s aggression.Daniel J. Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, will travel with Sarah Beran, Mr. Biden’s top China adviser on the National Security Council. They will be in China until Tuesday, meeting with officials “as part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and to responsibly manage competition,” according to a statement from the State Department.China’s moves in the Indo-Pacific region were a focus at the White House this week during a three-day state visit by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan that ended with a first-ever three-way summit with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines. That nation has borne the brunt of China’s intimidation campaign in the South China Sea.Tensions between China and the United States have recently increased amid concern that China might begin a conflict over Taiwan, and because the United States is treaty-bound to defend the Philippines. In a meeting at the State Department on Friday, Enrique Manalo, the foreign secretary of the Philippines, said that “China’s escalation of its harassment” continued to take a toll on the country, recently injuring four Filipino seamen. Also present at the meeting were Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state; Lloyd J. Austin III, the secretary of defense; Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser; and their three counterparts from the Philippines.In the past several years, Japan has moved closer to the United States on countering China by increasing military spending and siding with Washington in global diplomacy on the world stage. That has included standing with Ukraine in its war against Russia, while China reaffirms ties with Russia.The last high-level U.S. official to make a trip to China was Janet L. Yellen, the treasury secretary, who returned from Beijing this month with little to show for four days of top-level economic meetings.Mr. Biden concluded the Thursday meeting with his counterparts from Japan and the Philippines by saying that America’s commitment to their defense was not in question.“When we stand as one,” he said, “we are able to forge a better peace for all.” More

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      Blinken Will Travel to Israel as Part of Gaza Cease-Fire Efforts

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      Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will travel to Israel this week, adding a stop to his latest Middle East trip amid intense diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.Mr. Blinken arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday afternoon. The State Department initially made no mention of Israel in announcing his travel plans, saying only that he would visit Saudi Arabia and then Egypt on the trip — Mr. Blinken’s sixth to the region since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel set off the war in Gaza.On Wednesday, the State Department said that Mr. Blinken would travel to Israel, as well, for talks with the country’s “leadership” about efforts to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza and to “dramatically increase” humanitarian aid deliveries to the enclave.There was no immediate confirmation from the Israeli government. Nor were there details on whom Mr. Blinken would meet with.The visit will come as American and Israeli leaders are increasingly at odds over Israel’s approach to the war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has brushed aside President Biden’s opposition to a planned ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, saying on Tuesday that his government would press ahead despite pleas for restraint from the United States and other allies.In a phone call with Mr. Netanyahu this week, Mr. Biden argued that a ground invasion could be disastrous for those sheltering in Rafah and that Israel had other ways of achieving its objective of defeating Hamas.The White House is expected to host an Israeli delegation early next week to discuss Israel’s plans for the invasion, and the issue will also be on Mr. Blinken’s agenda when he is in Israel.The State Department said that on his visit, Mr. Blinken would “discuss the need to ensure the defeat of Hamas, including in Rafah, in a way that protects the civilian population, does not hinder the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and advances Israel’s overall security.”Mr. Blinken’s trip comes as negotiators from Israel have joined officials from Egypt and Qatar for meetings in the Qatari capital, Doha, aimed at securing a pause in the fighting in the Gaza Strip and the release of hostages held there by Hamas and other armed groups.Those efforts have taken on greater urgency as the death toll in Gaza climbs and as the United Nations warns that a famine in the enclave is “imminent.”John Yoon More