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      U.S. Seals Security Pact With Japan and South Korea as Threats Loom

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      While the former president’s name appeared nowhere in the communique issued by three leaders, one of the subtexts was the possibility that he could return to power in next year’s election and disrupt ties with America’s two closest allies in the Indo-Pacific region.The new three-way security pact sealed by President Biden and the leaders of Japan and South Korea at Camp David on Friday was forged with threats by China and North Korea in mind. But there was one other possible factor driving the diplomatic breakthrough: Donald J. Trump.While the former president’s name appeared nowhere in the “Camp David Principles” that the leaders issued at the presidential retreat, one of the subtexts was the possibility that he could return to power in next year’s election and disrupt ties with America’s two closest allies in the Indo-Pacific region.Both Japan and South Korea struggled for four years as Mr. Trump threatened to scale back longstanding U.S. security and economic commitments while wooing China, North Korea and Russia. In formalizing a three-way alliance that had long eluded the United States, Mr. Biden and his counterparts hoped to lock in a strategic architecture that will endure regardless of who is in the White House next.“This is not about a day, a week or month,” Mr. Biden said at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea. “This is about decades and decades of relationships that we’re building.” The goal, he added, was to “lay in place a long-term structure for a relationship that will last.”Asked by a reporter why Asia should be confident about American assurances given Mr. Trump’s campaign to recapture the presidency on a so-called America First platform, Mr. Biden offered a testimonial to the value of alliances in guaranteeing the nation’s security in dangerous times.“There’s not much, if anything, I agree on with my predecessor on foreign policy,” Mr. Biden said, adding that “walking away from the rest of the world leaves us weaker, not stronger. America is strong with our allies and our alliances and that’s why we will endure.”The meeting at the getaway in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland was a milestone in Mr. Biden’s efforts to stitch together a network of partnerships to counter Chinese aggression in the region. While the United States has long been close to Japan and South Korea individually, the two Asian powers have nursed generations of grievances that kept them at a distance from one another.The alignment at Camp David was made possible by Mr. Yoon’s decision to try to put the past behind the two countries. His rapprochement with Tokyo has not been universally popular at home with a public that harbors long memories of the Japanese occupation in the first half of the 20th century, but both sides made clear they are dedicated to a fresh start.“That’s a long, bitter colonial wound that President Yoon has to jump over, and Kishida as well,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. “That I think is a consonant expression of the degree to which China’s rather belligerent, punitive behavior has driven together allies, partners and friends within Asia.”Mr. Biden hoped to capitalize on that by bringing the Japanese and South Korean leaders together for the first stand-alone meeting between the three nations that was not on the sidelines of a larger international summit. He repeatedly praised Mr. Yoon and Mr. Kishida for “the political courage” they were demonstrating.He chose the resonant setting of Camp David for the talks to emphasize the importance he attaches to the initiative, inviting the leaders to the storied retreat that has been the site of momentous events over the decades, including most memorably Jimmy Carter’s 13-day negotiation in 1978 brokering peace between Israel and Egypt.“This is a big deal,” Mr. Biden said, noting that it was the first time he had invited foreign leaders to the camp since taking office. “This is a historic meeting.”The others echoed the sentiments. “Today will be remembered as a historic day,” Mr. Yoon said. Mr. Kishida agreed, saying the fact that the three could get together “means that we are indeed making a new history as of today.”A stronger collaboration with Japan and South Korea could be a significant pillar in Mr. Biden’s strategy to counter China.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesThe leaders agreed to establish a three-way hotline for crisis communications, enhance ballistic missile cooperation and expand joint military exercises. They issued a written “commitment to consult” in which they resolved “to coordinate our responses to regional challenges, provocations, and threats affecting our collective interests and security.”The commitment is not as far-reaching as NATO’s mutual security pact, which deems an attack on one member to be an attack on all, nor does it go as far as the defense treaties that the United States has separately with Japan and South Korea. But it cements the idea that the three powers share a special bond and expect to coordinate strategies where possible.China has derided the idea of a “mini-NATO” in Asia, accusing Washington of being provocative, but aides to Mr. Biden stressed the difference from the Atlantic alliance. “It’s explicitly not a NATO for the Pacific,” said Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser.Mr. Biden and his aides maintained that the collaboration sealed at Camp David should not be seen as aimed at China or any other country. “This summit was not about China. This was not the purpose,” the president said. “But obviously China came up.” Instead, he said, “this summit was really about our relationship with each other and defining cooperation across an entire range of issues.”Still, no one had any doubt about the context against which the meeting was taking place. The Camp David Principles issued by the leaders did not directly mention China, but it did “reaffirm the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” a warning against aggressive military actions by Beijing.The documents released were more explicit about nuclear-armed North Korea and the joint efforts they will take to counter its military, cyber and cryptocurrency money laundering threats.Looming in the backdrop was Mr. Trump, whose mercurial actions and bursts of hostility while president flummoxed Japanese and South Korean leaders accustomed to more stable interactions with Washington.At various points, he threatened to withdraw from the U.S. defense treaty with Japan and to pull all American troops out of South Korea. He abruptly canceled joint military exercises with South Korea at the request of North Korea and told interviewers after leaving office that if he had a second term he would force Seoul to pay billions of dollars to maintain the United States military presence.The summit at Camp David was aimed at ending decades of friction between the two Asian countries.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesThe Asian leaders hope that the three-way accord fashioned by Mr. Biden will help avoid wild swings in the future. The president and his guests sought to institutionalize their new collaboration by committing to annual three-way meetings in the future by whoever holds their offices.“There’s definitely risk-hedging when it comes to political leadership,” said Shihoko Goto, acting director of the Asia program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.”By deepening the cooperation below the leader level through various new mechanisms, she said, the governments may be able to maintain functional ties even if a volatile president occupies the White House.“If a new U.S. president were to avoid going to international conferences or had no interest in engaging, the trilateral institutionalization of ties should be strong enough so that working relations between the three countries would continue,” she said. “So it won’t matter if a president didn’t show up since the working-level military or economic cooperation would be well-established.”It is not the first time allies have questioned the United States’ commitment to its partners. Despite Mr. Biden’s promise at the NATO summit last month that Washington would “not waver” in its support for Ukraine and western allies, some leaders openly asked whether the U.S. foreign policy agenda would be upended by the outcome of the next election.Ukraine needed to make military progress more or less “by the end of this year” because of the coming elections in the United States, President Petr Pavel of the Czech Republic warned on the first day of the summit.Mr. Biden in Finland was also asked about whether the U.S. support of NATO would endure. “No one can guarantee the future, but this is the best bet anyone could make,” Mr. Biden said then.At Camp David on Friday, neither Mr. Yoon nor Mr. Kishida mentioned Mr. Trump directly in their public comments, but they seemed intent on ensuring that their agreement persists beyond their tenures. Mr. Yoon said the nations were focused on building an alliance that could last for years to come. The three nations will hold a “global leadership youth summit to strengthen ties between our future generations,” he said.Endurance was a running theme throughout the day. “We’re opening a new era,” Mr. Sullivan told reporters shortly before the meetings opened, “and we’re making sure that era has staying power.”Ana Swanson More

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      Fast Living and Foreign Dealings: An F.B.I. Spy Hunter’s Rise and Fall

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      Charles McGonigal had a family, a house in the suburbs and an influential job as a counterintelligence leader in New York. Federal prosecutors suggest it wasn’t enough for him.By the time he reached middle age, Charlie McGonigal was living a comfortable suburban life.He had married and raised two children in a tidy Maryland neighborhood near the Capital Beltway. He coached his co-workers on an office softball team and went to church on Sundays. In his den, he hung posters celebrating sports teams from his native Ohio; in his home office, a sign above a doorway announced in flowing script his devotion to his job.“I want to thank the Good Lord,” it read, “for making me a F.B.I. Agent.”But Charles Franklin McGonigal was no ordinary agent. As the chief of counterintelligence for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York, he was tasked with rooting out foreign efforts to steal vital national security and economic secrets in one of the world’s most fertile cities for spying.Apart from his outward image as a wholesome and responsible G-man, however, there was another, less visible side to Mr. McGonigal, federal prosecutors and his former colleagues say. He held off-the-books meetings with foreign politicians and businessmen and accepted illicit payments while doing favors for associates, according to federal indictments filed against him in two states earlier this year.Mr. McGonigal’s arrest, in part based on accusations that he had worked for a Russian oligarch, came at a time when U.S.-Russia relations had reached their lowest point since the Cold War, leading to questions about whether one of the country’s most trusted spy hunters had become a spy himself. But a close look at Mr. McGonigal’s life and career reveals an arc that appears to have little or nothing to do with espionage and international intrigue. Instead, it seems to be a quintessentially American story about greed.Smooth and politic while navigating an upward trajectory through the F.B.I.’s bureaucracy, he was a different man with subordinates, flashing his temper at the smallest provocation, former associates say. An expert in Russian counterintelligence, he spoke publicly of international security threats. At the same time, prosecutors say, he was privately courting the oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, who figured prominently in the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.Now, Mr. McGonigal, 55, appears set to become one of the highest-ranking F.B.I. agents ever to be convicted of a crime. He is scheduled to appear in federal court in New York on Tuesday for a possible guilty plea in the case involving Mr. Deripaska, and is in talks to resolve an indictment brought by federal prosecutors in Washington. Until any deal is finalized, it could still fall apart, and Mr. McGonigal, who has so far pleaded not guilty, could go to trial.The case has raised unsettling questions about the F.B.I.’s ability to detect corruption within its ranks. Prosecutors suggested that Mr. McGonigal traveled extensively while at the bureau, meeting with foreign officials and businesspeople who, on the surface, had nothing to do with his job. Agents are required to report such contacts and certain financial transactions and to take lie-detector tests, but the bureau relies heavily on the integrity of the people it has placed in positions of trust.Over more than three years, the investigation has so far produced no evidence that Mr. McGonigal provided national security secrets to the Russians or to anyone else, according to American officials who requested anonymity to discuss ongoing cases. Although the officials said Mr. McGonigal appears to have been engaged in simple graft, his actions stunned many in the F.B.I., where a core tenet is drilled into every agent: “Never embarrass the bureau.”The F.B.I.’s director, Christopher A. Wray, said the charges demonstrated “the F.B.I.’s willingness as an organization to shine a bright light on conduct that is totally unacceptable, including when it happens from one of our own people, and to hold those people accountable.”Peter J. Lapp, a former F.B.I. agent who once worked for Mr. McGonigal, said that the openness with which he seems to have crossed legal lines — “doing it right in front of everyone” — took audacity. But the charges did not explain what he called “the great mystery.”“Why did he need so much money?”While investigators have described brazen attempts to profit from his F.B.I. career, the actual crimes Mr. McGonigal is charged with are technical. Between the two indictments, he is accused of concealing details of his finances and activities overseas, violating U.S. sanctions and laundering money. Some charges carry potential prison sentences of up to 20 years, but a judge could impose far less.Mr. McGonigal was accused of working for Oleg Deripaska, second from left, shown here with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in a photo from the Russian presidential press service.Mikhail Klimentyev, Presidential Press Service/RIA-Novosti, via Associated PressSeth D. DuCharme, Mr. McGonigal’s lawyer, said at a recent hearing in New York that the indictment was more dramatic than the case actually seemed to be.“Every time I hear the government describe this as a small white-collar case, I feel a little more comforted,” he said.And the Washington prosecution, Mr. DuCharme has said, is basically “about some omissions on government forms.”What most shocked former colleagues was Mr. McGonigal’s boldness. He had behaved in ways that he most likely knew would get him caught. In 2020, two years after his retirement, he spoke on a panel about the corruption of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., Russia’s counterpart to the F.B.I., including its agents’ participation in money laundering and acting as “private contractors” for businessmen and criminals.“It has really become an organization that is rogue, in my opinion, and is at the behest of those who can pay for the services they offer,” he said.By then, prosecutors said, Mr. McGonigal had already accepted cash from a former Albanian intelligence officer — and had begun working with Mr. Deripaska.An unpolished edgeIn the Cleveland suburbs where he grew up, one of four siblings in a family of modest means, Mr. McGonigal went by “Chuck,” studied martial arts and liked to drive fast cars and party on weekends, according to his high school yearbook.After graduating from Kent State University, and working briefly for the National Bank of Canada in New York City, Mr. McGonigal joined the F.B.I. Assigned to investigations into the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island and the Sept. 11 attacks, he gradually climbed the ranks, eventually supervising a counterespionage squad at the agency’s Washington field office. He was aided by a gift for “briefing up” — impressing superiors with analysis and presentations.“He was a very hard-working, intelligent, nice guy — always, ‘Yes, sir. No, sir,’” said another colleague, Clayt Lemme, who worked as special agent in charge of counterintelligence, two levels above Mr. McGonigal, at the F.B.I.’s Washington field office.He revealed a less polished side, though, when underlings displeased him, erupting in tirades while spraying spit. Mr. Lapp, his former employee, said it became a running joke: Offending agents got a second shower — “the McGonigal hot wash” — when he yelled at them.Mr. McGonigal and his wife, Pamela, who had been a year behind him at Kent State, bought a red brick rambler in hilly North Chevy Chase, Md., where they raised their son and daughter. He joined Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, a nearby Catholic church. He registered to vote as a Republican and coached the Washington field office’s softball squad. His den became a man cave, its walls covered in posters paying homage to the Ohio State Buckeyes, the Cleveland Browns and other teams.Before Mr. McGonigal retired from the F.B.I., he and his wife had raised two children in a quiet suburb of Washington.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesThough Mr. McGonigal took pride in his home state, he also played down his humble roots, leaving Kent State off his official bio and accentuating the graduate degree he later earned at Johns Hopkins University.All the while, he had access to some of the F.B.I.’s most sensitive and important information, even helping to lead the investigation in 2012 into the compromise of C.I.A. informants in China.By early 2016, Mr. McGonigal was running the bureau’s Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section in Washington, where agents analyzed Russian and Chinese hacking and other foreign intelligence activities.In that senior position, Mr. McGonigal became aware of the initial criminal referral that led to the investigation known as Crossfire Hurricane — an inquiry into whether Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign and associates were coordinating with Russia.That October, then-director James B. Comey appointed Mr. McGonigal special agent in charge of counterintelligence in New York, overseeing hundreds of agents and support staff. It was a return to where Mr. McGonigal had gotten his start, but in a vastly more important role.The job would be the culmination of Mr. McGonigal’s law enforcement career.“If you want to learn and work counterintelligence, New York City is the pre-eminent field office,” Mr. McGonigal told a gathering at the Foreign Policy Association seven months after his appointment, adding that audience members who traveled overseas should expect to be under surveillance by foreign intelligence agencies.Despite urging caution, it seems that Mr. McGonigal had already thrown it aside in his own life.He had left his family in Maryland, and, soon after moving to New York, begun an affair with a woman who socialized in law-enforcement circles.Mr. McGonigal met the woman, Allison Guerriero, 49, of Florham Park, N.J., through her work volunteering at a nonprofit organization called the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation, which says it raises money for the families of federal agents injured or killed in the line of duty — in part by hosting galas and golf outings with celebrities such as the “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf and the actor Stephen Baldwin.Ms. Guerriero, who has been publicly critical of Mr. McGonigal since his arrest, has said he led her to believe his marriage was dead, only to end their affair after he retired from the F.BI. in 2018. In the aftermath, Pamela McGonigal, citing harassment, obtained a restraining order against Ms. Guerriero, who has acknowledged overstepping during periods of alcohol abuse.Ms. Guerriero has said that, in her anger, she drunkenly sent an email to the head of the F.B.I.’s New York office suggesting he investigate Mr. McGonigal, which has led some to suspect that his marital indiscretion was what ultimately led to the federal inquiry that resulted in his arrest.During their 18-month relationship, Ms. Guerriero said, she and Mr. McGonigal sometimes stayed at a Brooklyn apartment and enjoyed the swirl of the city. He loved Sparks Steak House and other upscale restaurants and was fastidious about his appearance.“Suits, shoes, expensive ties,” Ms. Guerriero said. “If he went out, he would have to be dressed to the nines.”Over dinner in Manhattan one evening in 2017, Mr. McGonigal was introduced to a man who would figure heavily into his undoing: Agron Neza, an Albanian-born businessman living in Leonia, N.J., who is labeled “Person A” in the Washington indictment. As a young man, Mr. Neza had worked for the Albanian State Intelligence Service before moving to the United States. Now, balding and bearded, Mr. Neza was brokering deals overseas.In August 2017, according to prosecutors, Mr. McGonigal proposed the men make their own deal, in which Mr. Neza would lend him $225,000 in cash.The Vienna clientProsecutors have not said why Mr. McGonigal needed that money or what he may have agreed to do in return. But over the next several months, they said, he injected himself into foreign political and business affairs, apparently while trading on his F.B.I. position, in dealings that would culminate in his arrest.He befriended the prime minister of Albania, Edi Rama, and used his position to drum up foreign business for his associates, according to the indictment filed against him in Washington.On one occasion, Mr. McGonigal opened an F.B.I. investigation into a lobbyist for the Albanian prime minister’s main political rival, the prosecutors said. On another, prosecutors said, he helped secure an oil drilling license benefiting Mr. Neza and others.Prosecutors said Mr. McGonigal also cultivated ties to Prime Minister Edi Rama of Albania. The accusations caused a scandal there, with protesters carrying effigies of the two men in prison jumpsuits.Adnan Beci/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAlong the way, there was some indication that the F.B.I. was aware of his dealings with the Albanians. According to two people who spoke with him, Mr. McGonigal said the F.B.I. had authorized him to approach U.S. contractors about working with Mr. Rama to help reform the Albanian government, which had long been plagued by corruption and inefficiency. Perhaps none of Mr. McGonigal’s associations was as alarming as the one prosecutors said he had with the Russian oligarch, Mr. Deripaska. A billionaire metals magnate seen as shrewd and ruthless, Mr. Deripaska built his fortune after the fall of the Soviet Union, as state resources were taken over by businessmen with close ties to the Kremlin. He also cultivated ties to the West, hosting parties in Europe, courting politicians and hiring lawyers and lobbyists to look after his interests.He did business with Paul Manafort, a lobbyist and political adviser who later served as chairman of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. F.B.I. agents attempted to recruit Mr. Deripaska as an informant, in part to find out whether Mr. Manafort had been a link to the Kremlin, which Mr. Deripaska denied.In April 2018, the Treasury Department added Mr. Deripaska to its sanctions list, citing his ties to the Kremlin and accusations that he laundered money and threatened rivals, among other things. Before the sanctions were made public, Mr. McGonigal reviewed a list with Mr. Deripaska’s name on it, the New York indictment said.By late 2018, prosecutors suggested, he was laying the groundwork for a future business relationship with Mr. Deripaska.Mr. McGonigal is accused of setting up an internship at the New York Police Department for the daughter of an unnamed aide to the oligarch — a reference to the Russian businessman Evgeny Fokin, according to people familiar with the case. (A senior police official said that the woman received a multiday “V.I.P.-type” tour of specialized units, not an internship.) Mr. McGonigal had been introduced to Mr. Fokin by a former Russian diplomat who had become an interpreter for U.S. courts, prosecutors said.After retiring from the bureau in late 2018, and taking a job as vice president for security at the real estate firm Brookfield Properties, Mr. McGonigal began working for Mr. Deripaska, prosecutors said. He and the former diplomat connected the oligarch with an American law firm, Kobre & Kim, in 2019 to aid in getting the sanctions lifted.They referred to Mr. Deripaska as “the individual” or “the Vienna client” in electronic communications, and Mr. McGonigal met with Mr. Deripaska and others in London and in Vienna, prosecutors said.Mr. McGonigal was paid $25,000 per month by the law firm for the sanctions-related work, using Mr. Deripaska’s money, prosecutors said.In August 2021, Mr. Fokin retained Mr. McGonigal and the former Russian diplomat for a new brief: investigating a rival oligarch with whom Mr. Deripaska was involved in a business dispute. The two men were paid $218,000, until F.B.I. agents seized their devices that November, prosecutors said.Last year, federal prosecutors in New York charged Mr. Deripaska and others with scheming to evade sanctions by engaging in real-estate deals.In January, F.B.I. agents met Mr. McGonigal at Kennedy Airport and arrested him as he returned from an unrelated business trip to Sri Lanka. He had lost his job at the real-estate firm, but in the following months, the wholesome Midwesterner became a celebrity in Albania, where Mr. Rama’s opponents and the media took to short-handing the scandal in a particular way.They called it “the McGonigal affair.”Susan C. Beachy More

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      Jill Biden Takes the 2024 Campaign to Paris in Another Overseas Appeal

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      As the United States officially rejoined UNESCO, the first lady delivered what sounded like a campaign message, saying the president had rebuilt bonds that frayed under his predecessor.At first glance, Jill Biden’s work on her trips overseas appears to be rooted in the traditional duties of first ladies: She has cheered on American Olympians in Tokyo, made a secret trip to Ukraine to meet with the country’s first lady and attended the royal wedding of the crown prince of Jordan.But in a host of speeches delivered overseas, including in Namibia and France, she has also used her platform for more political purposes, including making her case that President Biden has promoted democracy and revitalized global relationships strained by former President Donald J. Trump.In Paris on Tuesday, the first lady’s presence was a reminder, as the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, that Americans may again be choosing between the two men. Dr. Biden was there to deliver remarks for the official return of the United States to UNESCO, several years after the Trump administration pulled the country — and its funding — from the group.She was also there to deliver a White House message that Mr. Biden had united allies against what she called “Putin’s unjust war” in Ukraine.“When my husband, President Biden, took office two and a half years ago, he made a promise to the American people,” Dr. Biden said, “that he would rebuild the systems that were broken and fortify our institutions, that he would work to bring divided communities back together, that he would put us on a path to a better, brighter future while restoring our leadership on the world stage. And he did.”She told a crowd of hundreds outdoors at the UNESCO headquarters in central Paris that her husband “understands that if we hope to create a better world, the United States can’t go it alone, but we must help lead the way.” The dark-gray sky above her looked ominous, and as she spoke, rain began to fall.During his time in office, Mr. Biden has cast the future as a stark battle between democratic and autocratic forces. But in practice, he has been more nuanced.Like Mr. Trump, he has embraced a working diplomatic relationship with Saudi Arabia despite his complaints about the country’s approach to human rights, and he has imposed tough restrictions on asylum seekers who cross the border the United States shares with Mexico.Still, his administration has worked to reposition the United States as a more collaborative partner than it was under Mr. Trump, who pulled out of several international accords and at one point threatened to pull the United States from NATO. For her part, Dr. Biden’s role has been to promote her husband, if not the details of his policies.Dr. Biden met with Ukrainian refugees at a school in Bucharest, Romania, last year. She has used her platform to underscore President Biden’s foreign policy message.Pool photo by Cristian Nistor“She brings a polish and a warmth and a compassion to the job unrivaled by any first lady I know of, particularly as it relates to Europe,” Mark Gitenstein, a longtime Biden ally and the ambassador to the European Union, said in an interview. Mr. Gitenstein, who has known the first lady since the 1970s, said Dr. Biden has evolved from a reluctant public figure to a first lady eager to validate her husband’s credentials.Mr. Biden has low approval ratings domestically, but recent polling has found support for his approach internationally: Views of the president and of U.S. leadership have remained stable or improved since Mr. Biden was elected, according to a survey of 23 countries published in June by the Pew Research Center.The Biden administration has rejoined several global organizations and pacts that Mr. Trump pulled out of, including the World Health Organization, the Paris climate agreement, the United Nations Human Rights Council and UNESCO. Audrey Azoulay, the director general of UNESCO, told Dr. Biden in a meeting on Tuesday that “it’s important to see the U.S. back at the table.”UNESCO, or the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is best known for designating World Heritage sites, more than 1,150 of them since 1972. They include Yosemite National Park in California, Angkor in Cambodia and the Stone Town of Zanzibar. The organization also keeps an “intangible cultural heritage” list of humanity’s most worthy creations — like the French baguette.The United States had also withdrawn from the agency in 1984, during the Cold War, because the Reagan administration deemed it too susceptible to Moscow’s influence and overly critical of Israel. President George W. Bush pledged in 2002 to rejoin the organization partly to show his willingness for international cooperation in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Citing bias against Israel, the Trump administration again pulled out in 2017.During her trip to Paris, Dr. Biden and her daughter, Ashley Biden, toured the Élysée Palace as the guests of Brigitte Macron, the French first lady. Mrs. Macron is expected to join Dr. Biden on a tour of northern France on Wednesday, according to Dr. Biden’s staff. The first lady is scheduled to visit Mont-Saint-Michel, a UNESCO World Heritage site and a Gothic-style Benedictine abbey on an island off the coast. Dr. Biden is also scheduled to visit the Brittany American Cemetery to honor soldiers who were killed during World War II.This year Dr. Biden has also traveled to Mexico, Kenya, Namibia, Canada, Japan, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco. Sometimes, she is alongside her husband for diplomatic summits, as she was in Mexico, Canada and Japan. But more often than not, she has been the person he chooses to represent him: In May, she traveled to Britain to attend the coronation of King Charles III.Greeting students in Namibia in February, one of Dr. Biden’s many international trips this year.Dirk Heinrich/Associated PressIn Paris, she spoke, as she often does, of her long career as an educator, and of the importance of lifting up women and girls, though Dr. Biden’s policy portfolio does not include ambitious plans for education access or elevating gender issues.“Pursuing legislation or pushing a legacy-defining initiative is not the kind of activist role of first lady she wants to play,” said Michael LaRosa, her former press secretary. “In many ways, she’s much more comfortable as a permanent campaign spouse because the objective of every speech, event or trip, whether it’s political or official, is in service of her husband’s agenda and lifting up his achievements.”Some of her trips have been at the behest of foreign leaders.At the Group of 7 summit in Cornwall, England, in 2021, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan and his wife approached her as she was climbing out of a motorcade and appealed to her to attend the Olympic Games during the pandemic, according to Mr. LaRosa.Dr. Biden attended the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 after an invitation from the Japanese prime minister.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMasked, she cheered on the athletes from the bleachers.When she is on a plane, she and her aides work on speeches, look over her news coverage and talk over glasses of wine. Dr. Biden also takes cat naps, according to Vanessa Valdivia, her press secretary.Aurelien Breeden More

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      The Risks of Sanctions, the Tool America Loves to Use

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      There is nearly universal consensus that certain egregious violations of international laws and norms demand a forceful and concerted response. Think only, for example, of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the development of nuclear weapons capabilities in Iran and North Korea. Harsh economic sanctions have long been viewed as the answer.The eternal question, though, is: What comes next? When do sanctions stop working? Or worse, when do they start working against the United States’ best interests?These are important questions because, over the past two decades, economic sanctions have become a tool of first resort for U.S. policymakers, used for disrupting terrorist networks, trying to stop the development of nuclear weapons and punishing dictators. The number of names on the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions list has risen steadily, from 912 in 2000 to 9,421 in 2021, largely because of the growing use of banking sanctions against individuals. The Trump administration added about three names a day to the list — a rate surpassed last year with the flurry of sanctions that President Biden announced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Given their increasing use, then, it is useful to understand not only how sanctions can be a tool for successful diplomacy but also how, when not employed well, they can ultimately undermine American efforts to promote peace, human rights and democratic norms across the globe.The Invisible Costs of SanctionsPolicymakers turn to sanctions so frequently — the United States accounts for 42 percent of sanctions imposed worldwide since 1950, according to Drexel University’s Global Sanctions Database — in part because they are seen as being low cost, especially compared with military action.In reality, the costs are substantial. They are borne by banks, businesses, civilians and humanitarian groups, which shoulder the burden of putting them into effect, complying with them and mitigating their effects. Sanctions can also take a toll on vulnerable people — often poor and living under repressive governments, as academics are increasingly documenting.Officials rarely factor in such costs. While sanctions are easy to impose — there are dozens of sanctions programs administered by multiple federal agencies — they are politically and bureaucratically difficult to lift, even when they no longer serve U.S. interests. What’s worse, sanctions also escape significant public scrutiny. Few officials are held responsible for whether a particular sanction is working as intended rather than needlessly harming innocent people or undermining foreign policy goals.Mr. Biden came into office promising to rectify that lack of accountability. The Treasury Department conducted a comprehensive review of sanctions in 2021 and released a seven-page summary that October. The review process was an important step. It concluded, among other things, that sanctions should be systematically assessed to make sure they are the right tool for the circumstances, that they be linked to specific outcomes and include our allies where possible and that care should be taken to mitigate “unintended economic and political impacts” on American workers, businesses, allies and other innocent people.The Treasury Department is making some progress in carrying out the review’s recommendations, but Treasury is just one of many government agencies responsible for fulfilling sanctions. Every one of them should conduct regular, data-driven analyses to ensure that the benefits of sanctions outweigh the costs and that sanctions are the right tool, not just the easiest one to reach for. It is also important that the results of such analyses are communicated to Congress and the public.Sanctions Need Clear, Achievable OutcomesWhat is already known is that sanctions are most effective when they have realistic objectives and are paired with promises of relief if those objectives are met. Perhaps the best example is the 1986 law targeting apartheid-era South Africa, which laid out five conditions for sanctions relief, including the release of Nelson Mandela. Sanctions by the United States and other nations helped convince South Africa’s whites-only government that its policies mandating racial segregation were unsustainable.Sanctions on Communist Poland in 1981 in response to the crushing of the Solidarity movement are another example of how this can work. The United States and its allies gradually lifted sanctions with the release of most imprisoned activists, helping usher in a new era of political freedom in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.It’s notable that the sanctions against South Africa and Poland were aimed at bringing about free and fair elections, not regime change. Sanctions aimed at regime change often incentivize defiance, not reform. They have a terrible track record, as the cases of Cuba, Syria and Venezuela make clear.In Venezuela, open-ended sanctions with sweeping ambition — to oust the dictator Nicolás Maduro — have so far achieved the opposite. After he dissolved the democratically elected National Assembly in 2017 and was declared the winner of a sham presidential election in 2018, the Trump administration imposed maximum-pressure sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company to cut off a crucial source of funds to the Maduro dictatorship.While harsh individual sanctions against Mr. Maduro were necessary, the blacklisting of Venezuela’s oil sector has exacerbated a humanitarian crisis: As this editorial board warned, cutting off oil revenue deepened what was already the worst economic contraction in Latin America in decades. Sanctions on the oil industry, which accounts for about 90 percent of the country’s exports, caused dramatic cuts in government revenue and significant increases in poverty, according to a study last year by Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.The policy, meanwhile, failed to push Mr. Maduro out of power. He instead consolidated his grip on Venezuela, blamed its economic misery on American sanctions and drew his country closer to Russia and China. Sanctions are deeply unpopular in Venezuela, according to numerous opinion polls. Even the representative of Venezuela’s opposition in the United States, a group that previously supported broad sanctions, recently called on Mr. Biden to lift oil sanctions.Since taking office, Mr. Biden has taken steps to modify the sanctions against Venezuela to add specific, achievable objectives. His administration lifted some oil sanctions by giving Chevron permission to do limited work in the country, prompted by the spike in oil prices after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.The White House has promised additional relief if Mr. Maduro takes steps toward holding free and fair elections next year. Francisco Palmieri, the State Department’s chief of mission of the Venezuelan affairs unit in Bogotá, Colombia, recently released a detailed list of what has to be done in order for sanctions to be lifted. It includes setting a date for next year’s presidential election, reinstating candidates who have been arbitrarily arrested and releasing political prisoners.Mr. Maduro hasn’t complied so far. On June 30, he barred yet another well-known opposition figure from holding office. Nevertheless, this more modest policy, which supports a gradual return to democracy rather than abrupt regime change, is a better approach.The Biden administration should be more explicit about which sanctions in Venezuela would be lifted and when, especially those on the state-owned oil company. That would make American promises more credible. An agreement in November between Mr. Maduro and the opposition to use Venezuela’s frozen assets for humanitarian purposes was another promising step, but it is in limbo because the funds have yet to be released.The delay is causing Venezuelans to lose hope in a negotiated solution to the crisis, according to Feliciano Reyna, the president and founder of Acción Solidaria, a nonprofit organization that procures supplies for public hospitals in Venezuela. Although he has a special license to import supplies, he said he still had trouble obtaining what he needed. Some companies, he said, preferred not to sell to Venezuela rather than deal with the headache of making sure it was legal — a phenomenon known as overcompliance.“The situation internally is really dire,” Mr. Reyna said.The loss of hope is, in part, why more than seven million Venezuelans have fled their country since 2015, with more than 240,000 arriving at the U.S. southern border in the past two years. Many experts view sanctions as an important driver of migration from Venezuela because they worsen the economic conditions that push people to leave. In response, a group of Democratic lawmakers — including Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas, who co-chairs Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign — implored him to lift sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba.In addition to making good on its commitments in Venezuela, the Biden administration can do much more to show that the United States is changing its sanctions policy to make it more humane. The first step would be to follow through on the recommendations of its 2021 review and formally take the humanitarian cost of any sanction into account before it is imposed. The Treasury Department in May hired two economists to take on that task; that should become standard practice for any agency with the responsibility for carrying out sanctions.Sanctions Need to Be ReversibleOnce the government begins conducting systematic reviews of existing sanctions, it’s crucial to ensure that any sanction imposed can be reversed.Consider the most glaring failure to do this: the open-ended trade embargo against Cuba. President John F. Kennedy put the embargo in place in 1962 with the stated goal of “isolating the present government of Cuba and thereby reducing the threat posed by its alignment with the Communist powers.” In the years since, American presidents have sent wildly different messages about what it would take to remove sanctions. Barack Obama moved to lift many of them in 2014 — an effort that Donald Trump reversed three years later. Last year Mr. Biden lifted some of the Trump-era sanctions. Yet only an act of Congress can end the embargo.Peter Harrell, who served on the National Security Council staff under Mr. Biden, argues that sanctions should automatically expire after a certain number of years unless Congress votes to extend them. That would cut down on cases of zombie sanctions that go on for decades, long after U.S. policymakers have given up on the sanctions’ achieving their goals.For sanctions to incentivize change rather than merely punish actions in the past, the United States should be prepared to lift sanctions — even against odious actors — if the stated criteria are met.Sanctions, as attractive as they are, rarely work without specific goals combined with criteria for sanctions to be lifted. That applies to current as well as future sanctions. Without goals and relief criteria, these measures — among the most severe in the U.S. foreign policy arsenal — risk working against American interests and principles in the long run.Source photograph by Vicki Jauron, Babylon and Beyond Photography, via Getty Images.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Your Thursday Briefing: Biden Vows Not to ‘Waver’ After NATO Summit

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      Also, Chinese hackers hit the State Department, ocean temperatures rise and Milan Kundera dies.President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden met yesterday.Doug Mills/The New York Times‘We will not waver,’ Biden says after the NATO summitPresident Biden concluded the meeting of NATO allies by comparing the battle to expel Russia from Ukraine with the Cold War struggle for freedom in Europe. “We will not waver,” he promised in a speech.Biden seemed to be preparing Americans and the allies for a confrontation that could go on for years. He cast the war, which has been going on for almost a year and a half, as a test of wills with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who is intent on fighting. Biden insisted that NATO’s unity would hold.“Putin still wrongly believes he can outlast Ukraine,” Biden said, describing the Russian leader as a man who made a huge strategic mistake in invading a neighboring country. “After all this time, Putin still doubts our staying power. He is making a bad bet.”Ukraine: The alliance has formed a new council intended to give Ukraine an equal voice on issues related to its security alongside member states. China: Beijing criticized a NATO statement that accused it of a military expansion that threatens the West, saying that the alliance was still stuck in a Cold War mentality.Uncertainty in Russia’s top ranks: Gen. Sergei Surovikin, once a Wagner ally, hasn’t been seen publicly since the mutiny last month. A top lawmaker said he was “taking a rest.”Another top commander was killed in an airstrike in Ukraine. And a third former commander was gunned down while out on a jog.Microsoft said the hack was discovered last month.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersChinese hackers targeted the U.S. State DepartmentChinese hackers targeted specific State Department email accounts in the weeks before Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to China last month, U.S. officials said.The hack, which went undetected for a month, comes at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions between the countries. “The Biden administration is trying to reset relations with Beijing,” Julian Barnes, who covers national security for The Times, told me. “The U.S. does not want that dialogue to end. So there is an interest in downplaying this.”No classified email or cloud systems were said to have been breached, and the hack did not initially appear to be directly related to Blinken’s trip. Still, the attack was sophisticated.The hackers targeted specific accounts, instead of carrying out a broad-brush intrusion, which Chinese hackers are suspected of having done before. U.S. officials did not identify which accounts were targeted. The breach revealed a significant security gap in Microsoft’s cloud, where the U.S. government has been transferring data from internal servers.“We’ve had all these promises that the cloud is not only going to be just as secure, but that it will be more secure,” Julian said. “But here’s an example where basic security was breached and the information was stolen. That has opened us up to a new avenue of attack: Here is the first big cloud attack on the U.S. government email.”Tech: The Biden administration thinks it can slow China’s economic growth and its A.I. industry by cutting it off from semiconductor chips. The plan could handicap China for a generation, but if it backfires it could hasten the very future the U.S. wants to avoid.Elena ShaoAn ocean heat wave threatens marine lifeThe water surrounding Florida is much hotter than most swimming pools in the U.S. are right now. This could pose a severe risk to coral and marine life in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. But the real worry is that it’s only July: Corals usually experience the most heat stress in August and September.The maritime heat wave has pushed water temperatures into the 90s Fahrenheit, or above 32 Celsius. Surface temperatures in these waters are the hottest on record; some beachgoers in Florida even compared the ocean to bath water.The science: When the sea gets too hot, corals bleach, expelling the algae they eat. If waters don’t cool quickly enough, or if bleaching events happen in close succession, the corals die. That can lead to ripple effects across the ecosystem.THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldPresident Mahmoud Abbas’s visit was widely reported as his first to Jenin in more than a decade.Nasser Nasser/Associated PressPresident Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority visited Jenin, the West Bank city targeted by Israeli raids last week, in a show of authority.U.S. inflation cooled in June, offering good news for consumers and the Federal Reserve.Black women in Latin America are more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth because of systemic medical racism and sexism, a U.N. report said.“Succession” got the most nominations for the Emmy Awards.Other Big StoriesA former Mozambican official accused in the $2 billion “tuna” scandal, a scheme that defrauded U.S. investors, was extradited to New York.The BBC staff member suspended on allegations of sexual misconduct was identified by his wife as Huw Edwards, an anchor on the network’s flagship nightly news program.International demand for drugs has unleashed a wave of violence in Ecuador that is unlike anything in the country’s recent history.Snow fell in Johannesburg for the first time in more than a decade.A Morning ReadBhuchung Sonam’s publishing ventures have printed dozens of books.Poras Chaudhary for The New York TimesBuchung Sonam fled Tibet in the 1980s. Later, he co-founded a publishing house for Tibetan writing, hoping literature could be a salve for other exiles.As Beijing tightens its crackdown on Tibet, detaining writers and intellectuals, many say Sonam’s press is helping Tibet’s literature become a proxy for the nation-state.“It’s not like I can live my life on Tibetan land,” said Tenzin Dickie, a writer and editor, “but I can live it in Tibetan literature.”ARTS AND IDEASMilan Kundera in 1984.Francois Lochon/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesMilan Kundera dies at 94“It’s hard to overstate how central Milan Kundera was, in the mid-1980s, to literary culture in America and elsewhere,” my colleague Dwight Garner writes in an appraisal of Kundera’s life.Kundera, who died in Paris this week at 94, wrote mordant, sexually charged novels that captured the suffocating absurdity of life. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” which was adapted into a film, is his most famous book.“He was the best-known Czech writer since Kafka,” Dwight continued, “and his fiction brought news of sophisticated Eastern European societies trembling under the threat of Soviet repression.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Mix this Thai-style vegetable salad.What to WatchIn “Amanda,” a dark Italian comedy, a delusional graduate befriends an agoraphobic misanthrope.FashionMore men are baring their midriffs in crop tops.Tech TipHow does Meta’s Threads stack up against Twitter? Read our review.Now Time to PlayFill in the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Broke ground in a garden (four 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 tomorrow! — AmeliaP.S. Alice Callahan will be our new nutrition reporter.“The Daily” is on the U.S. labor market.We’d love to hear from you. Write: briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Cambodia Strongman Hun Sen Wields Facebook to Undermine Democracy

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      The Cambodian People’s Party created its Cyber War Room about a decade ago. The goal was to support Prime Minister Hun Sen’s regime through social media propagandizing. Led by the prime minister’s son Hun Manet, a troll army used Facebook and other digital platforms to attack his father’s opposition with disinformation and even allegedly wield death threats.Fast forward to the Cambodian election taking place next month. The CPP’s Cyber War Room is back up and running. General Manet, commander of the Cambodian Army and most likely the country’s next prime minister, is reportedly back at the helm, this time defending his father’s legacy and himself.Facebook is extremely popular in Cambodia, with roughly 12 million of the country’s almost 17 million people on the site. Many people in Cambodia use Facebook as a core means of getting information, and social media platforms are critical for the few journalists still producing independent reporting. The populations of many other countries where governments have continually used social media for manipulation, including the Philippines and Turkey, rely heavily on Facebook as well. So why has state-sponsored trolling like this been allowed to endure for 10 years?It will come as no surprise when I say that Big Tech has a lot of problems on its plate, including fury about transnational digital propaganda campaigns, a global outcry about networked disinformation during the pandemic and panic about both real and hypothetic threats of generative A.I.But as one issue pops into the immediate view, the others don’t go anywhere. Instead, the global problems with our online information ecosystem compound. And while society and tech’s most powerful firms jump from one issue to the next, the abusive disinformation practices in places like Cambodia become entrenched. Governments refine their techniques, and opposition groups become less and less present because they are either trolled into submission, arrested, exiled or killed. It all benefits Big Tech, from Meta to Alphabet, which publicly seizes upon the idea du jour while cutting staffs and curbing efforts aimed at combating standing informational issues.What does this mean for the people of Cambodia? For a people who, in living memory, endured the horrors of genocide and totalitarianism?The Cambodian news ecosystem and the lives of Cambodians are controlled by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has led them in some capacity for 38 years. He is quick to justify his long reign by pointing to economic gains before Covid — by which time the country achieved lower-middle-income status through tourism, textile exports and a growing relationship with China. His people have languished in many other ways, however: Environmental degradation is rife, corruption is commonplace, and human rights abuses are worsening.Mr. Sen and his cronies own or control all but the thinnest sliver of the country’s media outlets. They recently banned the main opposition party from running in the coming election because of an alleged clerical error. And curtailing speech on social media has been critical to the consolidation of their power. Facebook, Telegram and other platforms have been central to the CPP’s illicit, strategic and authoritarian control of Cambodia’s information space and, consequently, public opinion.Other despots have made use of highly organized state-sponsored trolling outfits to quash dissent. Some, like Mr. Sen, have also hired their kids to run them. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro’s Office of Hate, run by his sons, used social media to defame journalists and threaten opposition. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the autocrat recently re-elected as president of Turkey, benefited greatly from organized troll armies operating on Twitter. Back in Southeast Asia, the increasingly tyrannical regimes of Thailand, the Philippines and Myanmar have all deployed cyber-troops to do their oppressive bidding.Another factor is central to understanding why social media firms have failed to curb state-sponsored trolling around the globe: language.Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms have overwhelmingly focused their efforts to counter harmful and purposely misleading content in English. One reason is that they are based in the United States. Another is the malignant supremacy of Western concerns. But the larger reason is that social media companies cannot or will not supply the resources necessary to moderating content in other languages — particularly those such as Cambodia’s Khmer, which is complex and spoken by about 18 million people worldwide. That’s a small number when compared with the roughly 1.5 billion who speak English.This issue is a major problem for our own democracy too. During the 2020 and 2022 elections, social media platforms failed spectacularly in quashing hateful and disenfranchising content aimed at the tens of millions of Americans who speak Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and a variety of other languages. This resulted in communities of color and groups already marginalized in our political system bearing the brunt of digital hate and purposely false information about these contests. According to my research and work with community leaders, this structural disinformation causes apathy, anger and civic disenchantment among minority voters, and as a result, many don’t show up to vote.The strength of global democracy is tied to the number of countries around the world that truly practice it. And while the leaders of relatively strong democracies like the United States obsess over information technology problems and political spectacle in Washington, they fail to do their duty to protect the less fortunate, both in their own country and elsewhere. This, in turn, lets social media companies off the hook.I recently returned from a lecture tour in Cambodia, where I spoke to more than 12 groups of professional journalists, citizen reporters, scholars, students and activists about the informational and political challenges they face online and offline. All told me that they still use platforms like Facebook and Telegram to coordinate, organize and share information about breaking news and elections.Facebook is especially popular in the country, in part because of its controversial Free Basics program, which offers free internet in a number of developing countries via a constrained number of websites (including, naturally, Facebook). Critics derided this as less a benevolent bid to connect the world and more a heavy-handed effort to “capture more of the market in the name of connectivity.” The promise of social media — that it can be the conduit for communication in countries with controlled media systems — remains true for the people I spoke to in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville. But this potential is quickly dwindling as people lose faith in the safety of online communication. Meanwhile, Facebook remains a potent means for disseminating propaganda.If Meta, Alphabet and other tech firms do not take swift action to curb state-sponsored trolling, and if policymakers and civil society groups in the United States and other democracies don’t put more pressure on authoritarians like Hun Sen, then Cambodians and many others around the world will lose one of their last means of fighting back. We must speak out about the oppression surrounding the Cambodian election, which takes place on July 23 — and speak out about digital injustice.Samuel Woolley is the author of “Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity” and a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Your Tuesday Briefing: Israel’s Assault on Jenin

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      Also, the U.S. Treasury Secretary will visit Beijing.Good morning. We’re covering Israel’s most intense strikes in the occupied West Bank in decades and Janet Yellen’s upcoming trip to China.Palestinians and Israeli forces clashed in Jenin yesterday.Raneen Sawafta/ReutersA major assault on the West BankIsrael launched the most intense airstrikes on the occupied West Bank in nearly two decades and sent hundreds of ground troops into the crowded Jenin refugee camp, saying it was trying to root out armed militants after a year of escalating violence there. At least eight Palestinians were killed, according to the Palestinian health ministry.The Israeli military said the operation began shortly after 1 a.m. and included several missiles fired by drones. Military officials said the operation was focused on militant targets in the refugee camp, an area of less than a quarter of a square mile abutting the city of Jenin, with about 17,000 residents.On the ground: “The camp is a war zone in the full meaning of the word,” Muhammad Sbaghi, a member of the local committee that helps run the Jenin camp, said after the operation began. He added that residents had feared a large-scale incursion by the Israeli military but had not expected something so violent and destructive.Deaths: So far, this year has been one of the deadliest in more than a decade for Palestinians in the West Bank, with more than 140 deaths over the past six months. It has also been one of the deadliest for Israelis in some time, with nearly 30 killed in Arab attacks.What’s next: A former Israeli national security adviser said he expected Israel to wrap up the operation within a few days to try to avoid the spreading of hostilities to other areas, such as Gaza. There are growing fears that the recent tit-for-tat attacks could spiral out of control.Janet Yellen will try to stabilize the tense U.S.-China relationship this week.Yuri Gripas for The New York TimesA high-stakes visit to ChinaJanet Yellen will travel to China this week for the first time as the U.S. Treasury Secretary, in a bid to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies.Yellen’s trip, which begins on Thursday, follows Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing last month. In recent weeks Yellen has taken a softer tone on China, and she is expected to make the case that the two countries are too intertwined to “decouple” their economies, despite U.S. actions designed to make it less reliant on China to protect its national security.“The visit is Yellen’s biggest test of economic diplomacy to date,” said my colleague Alan Rappeport, who covers economic policy.“The trip is months in the making and comes after President Biden and President Xi agreed last year that they would try to improve the frayed relations between the U.S. and China,” Alan said. “But there are deep differences on a lot of economic policy issues, and Yellen will be working to rebuild trust with her counterparts.”A technology arms race: Citing national security threats, the U.S. is trying to limit China’s access to semiconductors, A.I. and other sensitive high-end technology. China cited cybersecurity problems when it implemented a ban aimed at Micron Technology, a U.S.-based maker of popular memory chips.Economic snapshot: The two economies are in a moment of heightened uncertainty. China’s post-pandemic output is flagging, while the U.S. is trying to avoid a recession while containing inflation.Illustration by Mark Harris; Photographs by Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRussia’s surveillance campaignRussia is incubating a new cottage industry of digital surveillance tools to track its citizens and suppress domestic opposition to the war in Ukraine. Some of the companies are trying to expand operations overseas, raising the risk that the technologies do not remain inside Russia.The technologies have given Russian authorities access to snooping capabilities focused on phones and websites, including the ability to track activity on encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal, identify anonymous social media users and break into people’s accounts, according to documents from Russian surveillance providers obtained by The Times.The tools can also identify whether someone is using multiple phones and map their relationship network, even if the technology doesn’t intercept their messages.Analysis: “There has been a concerted effort in Russia to overhaul the country’s internet regulations to more closely resemble China,” an expert in online oppression said. “Russia will emerge as a competitor to Chinese companies.”THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldRussia has been under pressure from Saudi Arabia and other major producers to cut its oil output.Alexander Manzyuk/ReutersSaudi Arabia and Russia will cut oil production to try to boost weak prices.The unrest in France may be easing.Activists filed a complaint against Harvard for legacy admissions, which they say helps students who are overwhelmingly rich and white.The War in UkraineHeavy fighting was raging on multiple fronts in the east and south, after Ukraine made small gains, a Ukrainian official said.Victoria Amelina, one of Ukraine’s top young writers, died from injuries she sustained in Russia’s attack on a restaurant in Kramatorsk last week.Asia PacificHong Kong issued arrest warrants for eight overseas activists accused of serious national security offenses, Reuters reports.Thailand’s lawmakers will vote for the new prime minister as early as next week, Nikkei reports.England cricket fans are irate about what they say was an unsportsmanlike play from an Australian player in the Ashes series.A Morning Read“We add tuna, and it’s Tunisian,” one chef said.Laura Boushnak for The New York TimesTunisians love canned tuna. They put it on everything from pizza to pastries. But inflation is transforming the staple into a luxury item.And as globalization would have it, very little local Tunisian tuna goes to Tunisians. Most of it is exported, and the country has had to start importing lower-quality fish.ARTS AND IDEAS“I don’t love Indonesia. I am in love with Indonesia,” Josephine Komara said.Ulet Ifansasti for The New York TimesRefashioning an Indonesian art formJosephine Komara is an Indonesian designer of batik, an Indigenous fabric dyeing process. She is one of several designers who are redefining the intricate art form, which was once so locked in tradition that it bordered on staid.Komara changed the ancient art by entwining disparate textile traditions with an aesthetic all her own to create a modern Indonesian silhouette. Through her work, she is determined to raise the profile of Indonesia. Currently, the country boasts no globally iconic brands. But BINhouse, her fashion house, has become a global force in spreading batik’s beauty.“Tradition is the way we are,” Komara said. “Modern is the way we think.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.Here are some recipes, if you’re celebrating the Fourth of July.What to WatchIn “The Passengers of the Night,” a French drama starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, a woman rebuilds her life after her husband leaves her.What to Listen toOur pop music critic has tips for trying vinyl again.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Raise one’s voice (four 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 tomorrow. — AmeliaP.S. For the U.S. holiday, take our quiz about books on American independence.“The Daily” is on the Supreme Court ruling on gay rights and religious freedom.You can reach us at briefing@nytimes.com. We’d love to hear from you. More

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      Elecciones en Guatemala: lo que hay que saber

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      Los comicios en la nación centroamericana están marcados por la exclusión de importantes candidatos y llamados a tomar medidas enérgicas contra la delincuencia.Guatemala, el país más poblado de Centroamérica, votará este domingo en unas elecciones presidenciales que están dirigiendo el foco de atención a la erosión del Estado de derecho en una nación que se ha convertido en una fuente importante de migración hacia Estados Unidos.La incipiente democracia del país tras el fin de una guerra civil hace unas cuatro décadas que dejó cientos de miles de personas desaparecidas o muertas —una de las más sangrientas en la historia reciente latinoamericana— ha decaído en años recientes bajo un gobierno cada vez más autoritario.El poder judicial se ha utilizado como arma arrojadiza y ha forzado al exilio a decenas de jueces y fiscales que se dedicaban a combatir la corrupción. La libertad de prensa también ha recibido ataques: este mes, el editor de un importante periódico que expuso muchos episodios de corrupción fue sentenciado a seis años de prisión tras haber sido acusado de delitos financieros.El Tribunal Supremo Electoral de Guatemala, un país de 18 millones de habitantes, ha incrementado las preocupaciones sobre los ataques a las normas democráticas tras haber descalificado a varios candidatos presidenciales importantes que eran percibidos como una amenaza a la clase política y económica dominante.La descalificación de varios candidatos de la contienda presidencial, entre ellos Carlos Pineda, ha generado dudas sobre la legitimidad de las elecciones del domingo.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesLas tensiones en torno a la inestable democracia de Guatemala han dejado a algunos votantes desilusionados y preguntándose si deberían incluso molestarse en ir a votar.“Creo que no deberían celebrarse las elecciones”, afirmó Óscar Guillén, de 70 años, quien explicó que tenía planeado dejar su voto en blanco para expresar su descontento.Los electores todavía podrán elegir entre un nutrido grupo de más de 20 candidatos, ninguno de los cuales se prevé que obtenga una mayoría el domingo, lo que obligaría a ir a una segunda vuelta el 20 de agosto entre los dos primeros lugares.Las segundas vueltas se han vuelto comunes en Guatemala desde que los acuerdos de paz de 1996 pusieron fin un conflicto interno que duró 36 años y que estuvo marcado por brutales tácticas de contrainsurgencia que resultaron en un genocidio contra la comunidad indígena.El presidente actual de Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, tiene prohibido por ley buscar la reelección. Pero incluso luego de que un aumento pronunciado en los crímenes violentos y un costo de vida extremadamente alto causaron que el mandatario, conservador, sea profundamente impopular, los candidatos líderes en la contienda son de tendencia en general conservadora, lo que sugiere que habrá continuidad con la clase política dominante del país.La votación no es obligatoria en Guatemala y la tasa de abstención, que casi llegó al 40 por ciento en las últimas elecciones presidenciales en 2019, será observada de cerca como un indicador del descontento entre los electores.A continuación, lo que debes saber sobre las elecciones de este domingo.Sandra Torres parece ser la principal candidata, con niveles de apoyo que rondan el 20 por ciento.Daniele Volpe para The New York Times¿Quién se está postulando a la presidencia?Ninguno de los tres candidatos principales tiene proyectado obtener ni siquiera algo cercano a la mayoría necesaria para ganar en primera vuelta el domingo. En diferentes encuestas, Sandra Torres, una ex primera dama, parece ser la principal candidata, con niveles de apoyo que rondan el 20 por ciento. (Según las encuestas, los números del candidato presidencial del partido de Giammattei rondan cifras bajas de un solo dígito)Torres, de 67 años, estuvo casada con Álvaro Colom, presidente de Guatemala de 2008 a 2012 y quien falleció este año, a los 71 años de edad. Se divorciaron en 2011, cuando Torres intentó postularse por primera vez a la presidencia, en un intento de sortear una ley que prohíbe que los familiares del presidente puedan presentarse como candidatos.Torres no logró conseguir la autorización para postularse a la presidencia ese año, pero obtuvo el segundo lugar en las dos elecciones presidenciales más recientes. Después de las elecciones de 2019, fue acusada de cometer violaciones de financiación de campaña y pasó tiempo en arresto domiciliario.A finales del año pasado, un juez sentenció que no había suficientes pruebas para proceder al juicio de Torres, lo que le permitió volver a postularse. Durante la campaña, ha logrado conseguir el apoyo de su partido, la Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), el cual está bien arraigado y es ampliamente conocido en Guatemala.Torres, al igual que sus dos principales rivales, ha expresado admiración hacia la represión a las pandillas ejecutada por el gobierno del país vecino de El Salvador, la cual ha ayudado a disminuir los niveles de violencia, pero también ha planteado preocupaciones referentes a abusos de derechos humanos.Torres también ha prometido ampliar las transferencias de efectivo y la asistencia alimentaria para las familias de bajos recursos, valiéndose de su experiencia como primera dama, cuando fue el rostro de este tipo de iniciativas populares.Otra de las principales candidatas, Zury Ríos, de 55 años, es también una figura conocida en la política guatemalteca. Es la hija de Efraín Ríos Montt, quien fue dictador del país a principios de la década de 1980 y que fue condenado por genocidio en 2013 por intentar exterminar a los ixiles, un pueblo maya indígena de Guatemala.Aunque la evidencia contra su padre fue meticulosamente documentada y detallada en su juicio, Ríos ha negado repetidas veces que haya ocurrido un genocidio. Su partido ultraconservador está liderado por figuras que tienen vínculos con su padre.Sin embargo, aunque Ríos publicita sus credenciales conservadoras y su fe cristiana evangélica, tiene un historial más matizado como exdiputada del Congreso, donde forjó alianzas en un esfuerzo por obtener la aprobación legislativa para proyectos de ley enfocados a mejorar las condiciones para las mujeres y la comunidad LGBTQ.Otro de los principales aspirantes a la presidencia es Edmond Mulet, de 72 años, un abogado y experimentado exdiplomático que ha sido el embajador de Guatemala en Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, así como jefe de la Misión de Estabilización de las Naciones Unidas en Haití.Si bien Mulet ha destacado su experiencia diplomática, también es conocido por su labor como abogado en la década de 1980, cuando fue arrestado en conexión con su trabajo organizando adopciones de niños guatemaltecos por parte de familias canadienses.Aunque fue puesto en libertad rápidamente y ha negado haber cometido algún delito, Mulet ha tenido que invertir tiempo en la campaña para explicar su participación en este episodio.En su campaña, Mulet está representando a un partido nuevo que no ocupa ningún escaño en el Congreso, pero que ha forjado una coalición competitiva de candidatos a nivel local y nacional para las elecciones del domingo. Entre sus propuestas se encuentran la creación de una pensión universal, el incremento de salarios policiales y la construcción de una nueva cárcel de máxima seguridad.Alrededor del 20 por ciento de los legisladores en el congreso de Guatemala enfrentan algún tipo de acusación por corrupción.Daniele Volpe para The New York Times¿Cuáles son los principales temas?Corrupción: Guatemala obtuvo elogios en la última década por sus esfuerzos para reducir la impunidad y la corrupción. Pero esa iniciativa, liderada por una comisión de investigadores internacionales respaldada por la ONU, fue sistemáticamente desmantelada en años recientes cuando los intereses políticos y económicos arraigados comenzaron a acosar a jueces y fiscales anticorrupción y a obligarlos a salir del país.Según grupos defensores de libertades civiles, la exclusión de candidatos importantes en las elecciones refleja cómo la élite está firmemente reafirmando su poder.Familiares alrededor del ataúd de Miguel Rojché Zapalu, uno de los hombres guatemaltecos que murieron en un incendio en un centro migratorio cerca de la frontera con Estados Unidos, durante su funeral en abril en Chicacao, una comunidad indígena.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesMigración: Los guatemaltecos figuran entre los grupos de migrantes de más rápido crecimiento en Estados Unidos. El número de migrantes que llegan anualmente se ha incrementado cerca de 33 por ciento entre 2010 y 2021, de 830.000 a más de 1,1 millón.Existen varios factores que impulsan a los guatemaltecos a emigrar, en el que destaca la falta de oportunidades económicas: cerca del 59 por ciento de la población vive por debajo de la línea de pobreza.El gobierno de EE. UU. le dio prioridad a la lucha contra la corrupción y el fortalecimiento de la democracia en Guatemala y otros países centroamericanos al principio del mandato del presidente Biden, argumentando que eso evitaría que la gente abandonara su tierra natal.Pero esos esfuerzos han hecho muy poco para prevenir un retroceso de la democracia en la región o para reducir de forma notable el flujo de migrantes.Un acusado es escoltado a una audiencia en unn tribunal de Ciudad de Guatemala.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesDelincuencia: Un tema importante durante toda la campaña electoral en Guatemala han sido los llamados a emular la represión a las pandillas realizada por el El Salvador, tras señalar la creciente frustración con los altos niveles de crímenes violentos.La cantidad de homicidios en Guatemala —impulsada en parte por pandillas poderosas— se incrementó casi 6 por ciento en 2022 con respecto al año anterior, y también ha habido un aumento marcado en el número de víctimas de homicidio que han mostrado señales de tortura. Muchos guatemaltecos citan el temor a la extorsión y el crimen como razones para emigrar. More