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There’s a shift underway in Asia that’s reverberating through global financial markets.

Japan’s stock market, overlooked by investors for decades, is making a furious comeback. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index is edging closer to the record it set on Dec. 29, 1989, which effectively marked the peak of Japan’s economic ascendancy before a collapse that led to decades of low growth.

China, long an impossible-to-ignore market, has been spiraling downward. Stocks in China recently touched lows not seen since a rout in 2015, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was the worst-performing major market in the world last year. Stocks stemmed their slide only when Beijing recently signaled its intention to intervene but remain far below previous highs.

This year was set to be a tumultuous one for global markets, with unpredictable swings as economic fortunes diverge and voters in more than 50 countries go to the polls. But there’s one unforeseen reversal already underway: a change in perception among investors about China and Japan.

Seizing on this shift, Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, addressed more than 3,000 global financiers gathered in Hong Kong this week for a conference sponsored by Goldman Sachs. It was the first time a Japanese prime minister had given a keynote address at the event.

“Now Japan has a golden opportunity to completely overcome low economic growth and a deflationary environment that have persisted for a quarter of a century,” Mr. Kishida said in a video recording. His government, he said, would “demonstrate to all of you Japan’s transition to a new economic stage by mobilizing all the policy tools.”

It’s the kind of message that Japan has been honing for a decade, and now investors want to hear more of it. Foreign investors pumped $2.6 billion into the Japanese stock market last week, adding to $6.5 billion the week before, according to data from Japan Exchange Group. That is a stark shift from the roughly $3.6 billion that was yanked out in December.

All that money has sent Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 surging about 8 percent this month. The market is up over 30 percent over the past 12 months. This week, Toyota rose to a record market value for a Japanese company, about $330 billion, surpassing the mark set in 1987 by the telecom conglomerate NTT.

A combination of factors has contributed to Japan’s recent success. A weak yen has made stocks look cheap to foreign investors, and it has been a boon to exporters and multinationals based in Japan that make their profits overseas. Important reforms to the corporate sector have given shareholders more rights, enabling them to call for changes in strategy and management. Unlike inflation in other parts of the world, rising inflation in Japan has been a sign that things are headed in the right direction, after decades of falling prices and sluggish economic growth dampened appetite among consumers and companies to spend.

And there is one additional factor: geopolitics. The longer-term prospects for Japan, the third-largest economy, are looking good when parts of the world are souring on the second-largest economy, China.

“One of the best things to happen to Japan is China,” said Seth Fischer, the founder and chief investment officer at Oasis Management, a hedge fund based in Hong Kong.

“Japan has for 10 years been working on creating a more productive corporate environment and a better place to be an equity investor through consistently trying to improve value,” Mr. Fischer said. “People don’t believe the same about China.”

In a recent survey of global fund managers by Bank of America, selling Chinese stocks and buying Japanese stocks were two of the three most popular trade ideas. (The other was to load up on high-flying U.S. tech stocks.)

China’s ruling Communist Party has sought to insert itself into the business sector in recent years, leaving investors worried that politics often trumps the bottom line for many of China’s corporate titans. The blurring of politics and business has also raised concerns in Washington and in European capitals, leading to regulations that have prevented foreign investments into certain sectors and companies.

China has not struggled for economic growth like Japan, but a protracted property market collapse has shredded consumer and investor confidence. Lingering issues with China’s economy have exacerbated weakness in the country’s currency, the yuan.

Much of the negative sentiment has played out in Hong Kong, an open market where global investors traditionally place their bets on China and its companies. The market was pummeled last year, and it slipped further over the first three weeks of this year.

Beijing intervened this week to try to reverse the sell-off. On Monday, the country’s No. 2 official, Premier Li Qiang, called on the authorities to be more “forceful” and take more measures to “improve market confidence.” His speech lifted stocks, as did a report from Bloomberg, citing unnamed officials, that the authorities were contemplating a $278 billion market rescue.

Then on Wednesday, the central bank, the People’s Bank of China, freed commercial banks to do more lending, essentially pumping $139 billion into the market by lowering the amount of money banks are required to keep in reserve. Regulators also loosened rules for how indebted property developers could pay back loans.

The words and actions propelled the market higher this week, with the Hang Seng Index posting three of its best days this year. China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen markets also bounced, though not by as much.

But many investors say the measures have failed to address a much bigger problem: China’s economic trajectory. They remain disappointed with China’s response to its broader economic slump and its perceived reluctance to pull off a showstopping stimulus, as it did in previous periods of economic stress.

“We hope it will still happen,” said Daniel Morris, an analyst at BNP Paribas, referring to a more substantial effort to prop up markets. “But we don’t have confidence that it will. I honestly would have thought that at the end of last year all the bad news had to be priced in, and yet we have fallen further again this year.”

Economists, financiers and corporate executives around the world looked to China last year for an economic rebound after its government scrapped its “zero Covid” policy, punishing lockdowns that at times put the country into an economic freeze. But Chinese consumers didn’t participate in the kind of “revenge spending” seen elsewhere after reopenings, and a property crisis has weighed on families, many of whom have nearly three-quarters of their savings tied up in real estate.

“There is not much confidence domestically, and then you have a government that isn’t very interested in supporting the economy,” said Louis Kuijs, chief Asia economist at S&P Global Ratings. “Markets somehow had expected much more and are becoming increasingly disappointed and disillusioned.”

And the ranks of the disillusioned include some Chinese investors, who have been moving money into exchange-traded funds that track Japanese stocks. At times these funds’ prices have traded far above the value of their underlying assets, a sign of investors’ enthusiasm to invest.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken wrapped up a four-nation tour through Africa on Thursday with a visit to Angola, an oil-rich former Cold War battleground that has become the site of a struggle for 21st-century economic influence.

During his visit to the coastal capital, Luanda, Mr. Blinken spotlighted major American investments in Angola, including more than $900 million for solar energy projects and $250 million to upgrade a rail corridor that carries critical minerals, including cobalt and copper, from central Africa to Angola’s Atlantic port of Lobito.

Those solar investments help to advance President Biden’s climate agenda while the transportation improvements further his goal of diversifying American supply chains — in part to reduce U.S. dependence on Chinese control of the vital ingredients for a modern economy.

Just over 20 years since the end of Angola’s civil war, which left perhaps as many as one million people dead, the country has rebuilt, modernized and developed friendly relations with Washington, which once funded rebels against a government backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Speaking at a news conference alongside Téte António, Angola’s foreign minister, Mr. Blinken proclaimed that U.S.-Angola relations were at their “strongest” point in their history.

Unspoken was Angola’s economic links to China, which has lent Angola nearly $43 billion.

Those financial ties between Beijing and Luanda are one of several relationships that have alarmed U.S. military officials, who warn that China is seeking to establish a naval base with Atlantic Ocean access.

In March 2022, the top U.S. commander for Africa, Stephen J. Townsend, said he worried most that Equatorial Guinea would grant China such a base, but that Beijing had made progress toward that goal in other African nations. Some analysts place Angola on that list.

U.S. officials have been quietly lobbying western African nations to deny China an Atlantic-facing military presence, said Cameron Hudson, who served as National Security Council director of African affairs in the Bush administration. He noted that all four of Mr. Blinken’s stops this week — which also included Cape Verde, Ivory Coast and Nigeria — have Atlantic coasts.

Chinese bases were not a specific subject of Mr. Blinken’s discussions this week, but the generally closer ties with Africa that the Biden administration has been developing, including through the new Angola investments, make it easier for other officials to make a case against worrisome Chinese military influence.

Rather than overt talk of China, there was much emphasis during Mr. Blinken’s trip on what officials called an effort to treat African nations as partners and not as pieces on a global chessboard, reflecting a view among Biden officials that Africans resent being treated like pawns in a new Cold War of sorts with Beijing, or with Russia, which has recently expanded its interests in Africa through the Wagner mercenary group.

But Africans themselves brought up the issue of geopolitical competition more than once during Mr. Blinken’s visit. In the Ivory Coast capital, Abidjan, a local television reporter said to Mr. Blinken: “Africa in recent years seems to have become a battleground for influence among major powers. At what point do we think about the future of Africans?”

“It’s not for us to say they have to choose,” Mr. Blinken replied. “On the contrary, for us, the question is to present a good choice. And then people will decide.”

Without mentioning China by name, Mr. Blinken noted that “some countries” might lend African nations money that creates unsustainable debt and that these other countries might import workers rather than hire locals. The U.S. investments, by contrast, can “bring everyone upward,” he said.

In Angola, Biden administration officials seemed especially proud of U.S. backing for the Lobito Corridor rail project, which they consider a model for a planned wave of American investment in the continent. The corridor will contribute to Mr. Biden’s agenda of “de-risking” American reliance on critical minerals controlled by China. The Democratic Republic of Congo provides more than half the world’s supply of cobalt, which is used to make lithium-ion batteries; about three-quarters of that country’s supply is mined by China.

U.S. officials say the rail corridor, also funded by the European Union and African entities, will stimulate long-term African economic growth by attracting related investments. And they expect it to be profitable, unlike some major Chinese infrastructure investments spawned by Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative over the past decade.

The project, they say, will also create jobs at home, furthering Mr. Biden’s goal of “a foreign policy for the middle class.” Work on the more-than-800-mile corridor’s 186 bridges will use American steel and create 600 direct jobs, according to a fact sheet from Acrow, an American bridge-building company participating in the project.

Speaking in Luanda, a port city where oil tankers steam in and out of the harbor, Mr. Blinken said that the rail project has “genuinely transformative potential” for Angola and the region.

Another question that came up more than once during the trip was whether Mr. Biden would make good on a 2022 promise to visit Africa himself.

Asked on Thursday whether the president may yet visit, Mr. Blinken said his boss would “welcome the opportunity” to visit. “Of course, we have an election this year in the United States, so there are challenges to schedules,” he added.

Ingenuity, the little Mars helicopter that could, can’t anymore.

At least one rotor broke during the robotic flying machine’s most recent flight last week, NASA officials announced on Thursday. Ingenuity remains in contact with its companion, the Perseverance rover, which has been exploring a dried-up riverbed for signs of extinct Martian life.

Ingenuity will now be left behind.

“It is bittersweet that I must announce that Ingenuity, the little helicopter that could — and it kept saying, ‘I think I can, I think I can’ — well, it has now taken its last flight on Mars,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, announced in a video message posted on X.

Ingenuity arrived on Mars in the undercarriage of the Perseverance rover in February 2021. The helicopter was a late addition to the mission, a low-cost, high-risk, high-reward technology demonstration using many off-the-shelf components, providing important lessons for future mission designers during its 72 flights through the planet’s thin atmosphere.

“They can rely on what we’ve accomplished,” Theodore Tzanetos, the Ingenuity project manager, said in a news conference on Thursday evening. “They can point to the fact that a cellphone processor from 2015 can survive the radiation environment on Mars for two and a half years. Lithium-ion battery cells that are commercial, off the shelf, can survive for two and a half years, Those are massive victories for engineers around NASA.”

On April 19, 2021, Ingenuity became the first plane or helicopter to take off on another planet, the aircraft’s rotors spinning 2,400 times a minute to generate sufficient lift in an atmosphere that is only one one-hundredth as dense as Earth’s. NASA officials called the flight a “Wright brothers moment” for planetary exploration.

The plan then was to conduct a demonstration of the novel technology: five flights in 30 days.

Perseverance was then to leave Ingenuity behind and begin studying ancient sedimentary rocks along the rim of Jezero crater, which held a lake of water several billion years ago.

Ingenuity aced the five flights, and it worked so well that mission managers decided to bring the helicopter along to scout the terrain ahead of the rover. Over the next thousand days, Ingenuity continued to go up and down, up and down, up and down. It experienced glitches along the way, making three emergency landings. It survived dust storms and the cold Martian winter, which the aircraft was not designed for. Engineers upgraded its software so that Ingenuity could choose its own landing sites.

“It’s almost an understatement to say that it has surpassed expectations,” said Lori Glaze, NASA’s associate administrator for the science directorate.

In an interview, MiMi Aung, who shepherded the helicopter project from early out-of-control experiments on Earth through Ingenuity’s first flights on Mars, said she felt “A little sad, but, I must say, mostly super proud of the whole team.” She recalled how Ingenuity’s first flight was delayed by a software glitch. Back then, she and her colleagues took meticulous care to ensure that a fix did not cause more serious problems.

“Ingenuity could die any day,” she said. “Before or right after the first flight.”

The helicopter team had prepared for what they described as a 30-day sprint. “Seventy-two flights was not in our imagination,” said Ms. Aung, who left NASA in mid-2021 to work on Project Kuiper, Amazon’s effort to beam internet from space.

The mission instead turned into an open-ended marathon. Mr. Tzanetos said that in the back of their minds, team members knew that each passing day could be the last day for Ingenuity. But the helicopter seemed to always bounce back from any challenge.

Other than one nonessential sensor that had failed, “The rest of the subsystems, from the solar panels to the battery, have been aging remarkably well,” Mr. Tzanetos said. “Our electronics, avionics, processor all seem to be doing just fine.”

On Jan. 18, during its 72nd flight, Ingenuity fell out of touch with Perseverance while descending. Communications were re-established the next day, but then a shadow in a photo sent back a few days later revealed that about one-quarter of one of the rotor blades had broken off.

“There was the initial moment, obviously, of sadness seeing that photo come down and pop onscreen, which gives a certainty of what occurred,” Mr. Tzanetos said. “But that’s very quickly replaced with happiness and pride and a feeling of celebration for what we pulled off.”

Mr. Tzanetos noted that on Thursday evening, it would be 1,000 Martian days, known also as sols, since Ingenuity had been dropped onto the surface of Mars by Perseverance.

“She picked a very fitting time to come to the end of the mission here,” he said.

Ingenuity had been flying over terrain that Mr. Tzanetos described as “some of the most challenging” — not because of obstacles but because it was so bland, with few rocks or other features. The previous flight had ended with an emergency landing because the navigation system was having trouble tracking its position.

The 72nd flight was intended as a 30-second up-and-down to check that everything was working, but again the bland terrain caused problems. “Because of the navigation challenges, we had a rotor strike with the surface,” Mr. Tzanetos said. “That would have resulted in a power brownout, which caused the communications loss.”

With at least part of one blade broken off, the helicopter would not be able to generate enough lift, and the rotor would be unbalanced, meaning that the helicopter would be likely to shake itself apart if it tried to take off again.

“There are some lessons in that for us,” said Havard Grip, the chief pilot for Ingenuity. “We now know that kind of terrain can be a trap for a system like this.”

Dr. Grip said that a higher-resolution camera, able to pick out more details in even a bland landscape, would likely have helped.

The Ingenuity team will conduct a few final tests on Ingenuity’s systems and download images and data remaining in the helicopter’s memory.

NASA engineers are investigating what caused the dropout in communication and whether the rotor blade hit the ground when Ingenuity landed.

Future Mars helicopters are in the planning stages, including a couple that could accompany a mission to bring back to Earth rock and soil samples that Perseverance has been collecting. But that Mars sample mission, which has encountered technological and budgetary challenges, is being reconsidered, and the helicopters may be dropped.

“Ingenuity was based off of theories,” Mr. Tzanetos said. “We now have facts, and future aircraft designs are going to rely on all the data we’ve collected from ingenuity.”

Representative Lauren Boebert, the far-right firebrand, faced off against eight Republican opponents on Thursday night in a debate in the new Colorado district she is seeking to represent in Congress.

After barely managing to win re-election in Colorado’s Third Congressional District against a Democrat in 2022, she is running this year in a much more conservative district, the Fourth. On Thursday evening, Ms. Boebert appeared at ease delivering fiery rhetoric and espousing her pro-Trump, hard-right stances among similarly conservative peers at the debate in Fort Lupton.

“Everyone will talk like a Freedom Caucus member, but there is only one who governs as a Freedom Caucus member,” Ms. Boebert said in her opening statement, adding that she did not expect a “coronation” in her new district and that she looked forward to “earning your vote.”

But Ms. Boebert also faced steady criticism from her rivals about switching districts — having relocated to the other side of the state to improve her chances after a strong primary challenger emerged in the Third District.

State Representative Mike Lynch suggested that Ms. Boebert was a “carpetbagger” after she brought up a drunken-driving arrest that forced Mr. Lynch to step down on Wednesday as the minority leader for Republicans in the statehouse.

The candidates mostly avoided mentioning what had landed Ms. Boebert in their district in the first place: an incident in September in which Ms. Boebert — then in the midst of completing her divorce with her husband — was caught on a security camera vaping and groping her date at a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice.”

Ms. Boebert said at the debate that she needed a “fresh start” after her divorce. “My boys need some freedom from what has been going on,” she added. “And this move is the right move for me and for them.”

At one point, candidates were asked to raise their hands if they had ever been arrested. Six of the nine candidates onstage raised their hands, to cheers and applause from the audience. Trent Leisy, a Navy veteran and business owner, high-fived Mr. Lynch and Ms. Boebert while their hands were raised.

Ms. Boebert said in that segment that she had been arrested only once, for failing to appear in court for careless driving, what she called in the debate “a simple traffic violation that was unpaid.” But the local news media have reported at least two additional arrests. In one incident in 2015, Ms. Boebert told police officers who were arresting her that she “had friends at Fox News” and that the arrest would be national news.

The candidates in the race — 11 in total — are competing to succeed Representative Ken Buck, the Republican incumbent, who announced he would not seek re-election in November. Mr. Buck cited election denialism — the widespread belief by many Republicans that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump — as part of the reason for his decision, as well as the refusal of many of his Republican colleagues to condemn the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

Ms. Boebert, in contrast, has fervently promoted those false claims about the 2020 election. In the debate on Thursday, she was one of a few candidates onstage who raised their hands when asked if the 2020 election had been stolen from Mr. Trump.

Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District is significantly more conservative than the Third, and Ms. Boebert’s move is expected to make it easier for a less divisive Republican to win in her old district. An analysis by the Cook Political Report after Ms. Boebert’s district switch said her old seat would lean Republican in the November election.

And the winner of the primary in her new district is likely to be in a strong position to win a district where Mr. Buck earned 60 percent of the vote in 2022. Ms. Boebert barely won re-election that year, pulling ahead of her Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, with roughly 500 votes.

A former employee of World Wrestling Entertainment sued Vince McMahon, the longtime chairman and chief executive of W.W.E., in federal court on Thursday, accusing him of physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault and trafficking.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, alleges that Mr. McMahon, who was subject to an internal investigation in 2022 over allegations of misconduct, sexually exploited and trafficked the former employee, Janel Grant, from 2019 to 2022. Another W.W.E. executive, John Laurinaitis, and the company itself are also named as defendants.

Mr. McMahon also pressured Ms. Grant to sign a nondisclosure agreement, the suit says, in which he agreed to pay her $3 million in exchange for not discussing their relationship.

The lawsuit seeks to void the nondisclosure agreement. It also seeks unspecified amounts in punitive damages and legal fees. Ann Callis, a lawyer for Ms. Grant, declined to comment on the suit on Thursday.

Ms. Grant’s complaint, which was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, includes graphic descriptions of sex acts, threats and intimidation that she says she faced over several years as Mr. McMahon, 78, gained control over her professional and personal lives and wielded that power to abuse her psychologically and sexually.

When Ms. Grant met Mr. McMahon in 2019, the complaint says, her parents had recently died, and she was unemployed. Mutual friends suggested that she contact Mr. McMahon about a possible job at W.W.E. When the two met, Mr. McMahon greeted her wearing only his underwear, according to the complaint.

After promising her a position with power and a high salary within W.W.E., Mr. McMahon eventually offered Ms. Grant an entry-level position on the company’s legal staff in June 2019, in exchange for sex, according to the lawsuit.

Ms. Grant “felt trapped in an impossible situation,” the complaint says, “submitting to McMahon’s sexual demands or facing ruin.”

Once she was working at W.W.E. headquarters in Stamford, Conn., the abuse intensified, the lawsuit says. Mr. McMahon took nude photos of her and filmed them having sex, the complaint says. He showed the photos and videos to other employees and later used them to intimidate her into silence, according to the complaint.

The relationship grew increasingly violent and coercive, according to the lawsuit. Mr. McMahon pressured Ms. Grant into having sex with other people, the complaint says, including the other executive named as a defendant, Mr. Laurinaitis. In one episode described in the suit, Ms. Grant says that Mr. McMahon and Mr. Laurinaitis locked her in an office and took turns raping her.

In 2022, Mr. McMahon told Ms. Grant that his wife had learned of their relationship and that “Ms. Grant’s time at W.W.E. was at an end,” the lawsuit says, and he began to pressure Ms. Grant to sign a nondisclosure agreement to guarantee her silence. In exchange, Mr. McMahon promised her $3 million, the complaint says. He paid the first $1 million but failed to make further payments, according to the suit.

But the sexual coercion continued into March 2022, two months after Mr. McMahon had signed the nondisclosure agreement, according to the complaint, which mentions Mr. McMahon’s business negotiations with a person described in the complaint as a “W.W.E. Superstar.” To persuade the wrestler to sign a new contract with W.W.E., Mr. McMahon offered sex with Ms. Grant as “part of the deal,” according to a screenshot of a text message included in the lawsuit.

Ms. Grant’s lawsuit says that the abuse she suffered at the hands of Mr. McMahon and others has caused “debilitating” post-traumatic stress and thoughts of suicide. When she was forced out of W.W.E., she obtained a job in the operations department of her apartment building. She lost that job, according to the lawsuit, because lingering trauma left her unable to leave her home “for weeks at a time.”

Lawyers for Mr. McMahon could not be reached for comment on Thursday. W.W.E.’s parent company, T.K.O. Group, said in a statement: “Mr. McMahon does not control T.K.O. nor does he oversee the day-to-day operations of W.W.E. While this matter predates our T.K.O. executive team’s tenure at the company, we take Ms. Grant’s horrific allegations very seriously and are addressing this matter internally.”

The legal action raises new questions about the investigation conducted in 2022 by a special committee of W.W.E.’s board of directors into Mr. McMahon’s conduct. The investigators found that Mr. McMahon had spent $14.6 million between 2006 and 2022 on payments to women who had accused him of sexual misconduct and that the payments should have been recorded as business expenses. Further investigation by the company found that Mr. McMahon had made additional payments totaling $5 million to two other women.

The board’s investigating committee “never even bothered to interview” Ms. Grant, according to her lawsuit, which describes the investigation as a “sham.”

Jeff Speed, who led the investigation as a board member, described it as thorough and emphasized that Mr. McMahon had “publicly left the company” while it proceeded.

“I remain confident in our investigation which included outreach to Ms. Grant and engagement with her lawyer,” Mr. Speed said in an email sent Thursday by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett L.L.P., the law firm hired to represent the committee.

Mr. Speed, who left the W.W.E. board in 2023, added that he recognized “the horrific nature of the allegations” in the lawsuit but that he was “not at liberty to comment on what was and was not learned during our investigation.”

Mr. McMahon temporarily resigned from the company during the investigation, though he remained “a stockholder with a controlling interest,” according to the company’s quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in August 2023. In another S.E.C. filing, W.W.E. disclosed that federal investigators had executed a search warrant and had subpoenaed Mr. McMahon. Federal regulatory and law enforcement agencies also demanded that the company hand over documents.

No criminal charges were filed against Mr. McMahon, who denied “any intentional wrongdoing” in a statement last year. He agreed to reimburse the company for the cost of the investigation and returned to lead W.W.E. in early 2023.

Soon after his return, Mr. McMahon negotiated a deal to sell the company to Endeavor Group, which owns the mixed-martial-arts league U.F.C. Mr. McMahon retained 28 million shares in the combined company, now called T.K.O. Group, where he is also the executive chairman.

Alabama carried out on Thursday the first execution using nitrogen gas in the United States, an untested method that was the subject of debate before it was used. The inmate, Kenneth Smith, was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m. Central time at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., after the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal to stay the execution.

Here are a few things to know about the case.

Who was Kenneth Smith, and what was his crime?

Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was one of three men convicted in the stabbing murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, 45, whose husband, a pastor, had recruited them to kill her in March 1988 in Colbert County, Ala.

According to court documents, Ms. Sennett, a mother of two, was stabbed 10 times in the attack by Mr. Smith and another man. Charles Sennett Sr., Ms. Sennett’s husband, had recruited a man to handle her killing, who in turn recruited Mr. Smith and another man.

Mr. Sennett arranged the murder in part to collect on an insurance policy that he had taken out on his wife, according to court records. He had promised the men $1,000 each for the killing.

What were the circumstances around his death sentence?

Mr. Smith was convicted in 1996. At his sentencing, 11 out of 12 jurors voted to spare his life and to sentence him to life in prison, but the judge in the case, N. Pride Tompkins, decided to overrule their decision and condemned him to death.

In 2017, Alabama stopped allowing judges to overrule death penalty juries in such a way, and such rulings are no longer allowed anywhere in the United States.

Mr. Smith, who was 22 years old at the time of the crime, had said that he did not believe that it was just for the judge to override the jury’s sentence in his case.

In a statement, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama previously said that while Alabama had made a “necessary” change to ban judges from overruling jurors’ recommendations, lawmakers had chosen not to make the law retroactive in order to honor sentences that had already been handed down and the victims’ relatives who were relying on them for justice.

What happened to Ms. Sennett’s husband and the others?

Mr. Sennett killed himself shortly after the murder of his wife.

One of the other men involved in the murder, John Forrest Parker, was executed by lethal injection in 2010, and another, Billy Gray Williams, was sentenced to life in prison and died behind bars in 2020.

The state tried to execute Mr. Smith before. What happened?

In November 2022, the state tried to execute Mr. Smith using lethal injection. But that night, a team of correctional facility workers tried and repeatedly failed to insert an intravenous line into Mr. Smith’s arms and hands and, eventually, a vein near his heart.

Finally, after multiple attempts, prison officials decided that they did not have the time to carry out the execution before the death warrant expired at midnight.

What is known about this method using nitrogen?

The method, known as nitrogen hypoxia, has been used in assisted suicides in Europe. Mr. Smith was fitted with a mask and administered a flow of nitrogen gas, effectively depriving him of oxygen until he dies.

Lawyers for the state argued that death by nitrogen hypoxia is painless, with unconsciousness occurring in a matter of seconds, followed by stoppage of the heart.

They also noted that Mr. Smith and his lawyers themselves identified the method as preferable to the troubled practice of lethal injection in the state.

But before the execution, Mr. Smith’s lawyers argued that Alabama was not adequately prepared to carry out the execution, and that a mask — rather than a bag or other enclosure — could allow in enough oxygen to prolong the process and cause suffering.

On Thursday, Alabama officials said the process had proved to be effective and humane.

Mr. Smith appeared conscious for several minutes after the nitrogen gas began entering his mask, according to a report from Alabama journalists who witnessed the execution. He then “shook and writhed” before breathing heavily for several minutes. Eventually, his breathing slowed, then stopped.

What was the stance of the victim’s family?

“Some of these people out there say, ‘Well, he doesn’t need to suffer like that,’” Charles Sennett Jr., one of Ms. Sennett’s sons, told the local station WAAY31 this month. “Well, he didn’t ask Mama how to suffer. They just did it. They stabbed her multiple times.”

Another son, Michael Sennett, told NBC News in December that he was frustrated that the state had taken so long to carry out an execution that the judge ordered decades ago.

“It doesn’t matter to me how he goes out, so long as he goes,” he said, noting that Mr. Smith had been in prison “twice as long as I knew my mom.”

In Haiti, as the number of murders soar and kidnappings rise, even the police are fleeing.

With no elected president in office and a prime minister widely seen as illegitimate, calls for the government’s ouster are now being heard from an unlikely source: a brigade of armed officers ostensibly responsible for protecting environmentally sensitive areas.

Armed uniformed members of the brigade clashed with government forces in northern Haiti this week, heightening tensions in an already volatile nation where gangs have seized control over large swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and are wreaking havoc in rural areas.

The environmental group, the Brigade for the Security of Protected Areas (known as B-SAP), became angry after the prime minister fired its leader. On Wednesday, the group’s officers attempted to invade the local customs office, and Haitian National Police units repelled them using tear gas.

Just as worrisome to analysts is the allegiance some of the group’s leaders have publicly declared to Guy Philippe, a former police commander and coup-plotter who recently returned to Haiti after serving six years in a U.S. federal prison.

In the less than 60 days since Mr. Philippe returned home, he has been traveling the country, shoring up support for his so-called revolution.

“We’re talking about a revolution, but not a revolution in blood,” Mr. Philippe said in an interview. “We haven’t killed anyone. It’s all about peaceful demonstrations.”

Mr. Philippe was a leader of the 2004 coup that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Wanted for years by the United States for drug trafficking, Mr. Philippe lived freely in southern Haiti as a fugitive.

He was arrested in 2017, just before taking office as an elected senator, sentenced in U.S. federal court to nine years for money laundering and was deported to Haiti in November, which many experts saw as an astonishing move bound to inflame a troubled political landscape.

“This is a guy who has been maneuvering and plotting for 20 years to seize power in Haiti,” said James B. Foley, who was the U.S. ambassador there during the 2004 coup. “We indicted him, extradited him and sidelined him, and now we have sent him back into a Haiti that is in total anarchy, and the result is obvious and predictable and horrible.”

Mr. Philippe, who has been living in his home base, Pestel, Haiti, since his return, said he planned to go to Port-au-Prince in the coming days to stage protests, and expected that the vast majority of the population would support him in demanding the resignation of the prime minister, Ariel Henry.

Because many Haitians are disappointed in the National Police’s inability to tackle the gangs, Mr. Phillippe may be right, analysts said.

“If it was a coup, it would be a legitimate coup, but we’re not making any coup,” Mr. Philippe said. “We’re not here to seize power with force.”

In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Henry said he was alarmed by the inappropriate actions of many members of B-SAP, which he noted had no legal or administrative framework. News coverage of the rogue officers risked creating confusion about the environmental surveillance group’s legitimate work, he said. On Tuesday, he added, the government created a commission to review the agency’s work.

As for Mr. Philippe, the prime minister’s office said, “Ariel Henry is responsible for applying the law.”

The United States has strongly pushed for a planned security mission to Haiti led by Kenya, which some analysts view as a tacit endorsement of Mr. Henry’s leadership.

Mr. Philippe said he “has friends” in the environmental group in the north, an alliance that could prove dangerous. Haiti, once home to a secret police force known as the tonton macoutes, has a long history of paramilitary forces that commit atrocities.

Mr. Philippe said he considered the head of the environmental brigade “an ally” with the same aim of getting the prime minister to step down.

According to a local newspaper, Mr. Phillippe and the brigade are coordinating efforts aimed at opposing the current government.

“B-SAP is not the armed wing of the opposition,” said Jeantel Joseph, who was fired this week as the head of the agency, and led the group’s protests this week.

Mr. Joseph said he and Mr. Philippe belong to a larger consortium of political parties, trade unions and grass roots organizations committed to ending Mr. Henry’s time in office — peacefully, he added. With their two movements — Mr. Joseph in the north and Mr. Philippe in the south – the prime minister will have to back down, he said.

The environmental brigade he led, he said, is not a threat and simply provided security for demonstrations.

“There was never any question of taking power by force of arms,” Mr. Joseph said.

Haiti’s condition could not be more dire. Out of a force of about 15,000 officers, nearly 3,000 police officers have abandoned their posts in the past two years, according to police figures.

The United Nations reported this week that more than 4,700 people were killed in Haiti last year — more than double the number in 2022 — and nearly 2,500 were kidnapped. A group of local nuns was held for nearly a week, before being released on Wednesday.

More than 150,000 people fled last year to the United States.

Security worsened after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. It has not been safe enough to hold elections, and the appointed prime minister, Mr. Henry, has called for international intervention.

Last fall, the United Nations approved a multinational security mission to be led by Kenya, but it has been delayed by domestic court rulings. Kenya has pledged at least 1,000 security personnel, and several other nations are expected to offer resources.

The deployment has been delayed by objections over whether the Kenyan government followed proper protocols to authorize the mission. A court decision is expected on Friday.

Mr. Philippe has publicly denounced the Kenya mission, saying it would support Mr. Henry’s administration and support “imperialism.” Mr. Philippe released a video calling the Kenyans “African brothers” but warning that if they accepted the deployment, they would be viewed as “enemies.”

The B-SAP group is supposed to work to protect environmentally sensitive areas, but it often operates independently and far from such regions, a recent United Nations report said, calling into question the scope of the group’s mission.

It was started in 2018 under Mr. Moïse with 100 people, though Mr. Henry’s government seems to have little control over its actions or a sense of how many members it has.

On Tuesday, Mr. Henry fired the man in charge of the agency that runs B-SAP, which angered the group’s members. Videos shared on social media showed hundreds of them chanting in the streets of Ouanaminthe, in northeast Haiti, demanding the return of their boss and the ouster of Mr. Henry.

In the Northeast, near the border with the Dominican Republic, B-SAP agents fired into the air and ordered citizens to return home.

B-SAP has been accused of participating in crimes, said Gédéon Jean, the head of the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights, a Haitian organization that suspended operations in November because of rising levels of violence.

The risk is even more serious if the group allies itself with local gangs, he said.
“What you have is a very disruptive figure in this region,” Robert Muggah, who led a study on Haiti’s criminal syndicates for the United Nations, said, referring to Mr. Philippe.

It’s unclear whether Mr. Philippe plans to run for office — or to try to lead a revolt, seizing control by mobilizing former military personnel and current and former police officers who support him, Mr. Muggah said.

“I think everybody expects that he has presidential ambitions, but the path to the presidency for him is not yet clear,” he said.

Mr. Philippe is operating in a power vacuum where no one has stood up to the prime minister because they are powerless or profiting from the dysfunction, Ms. Phillips, the California lawyer, said.

“Philippe,” she said, “is all about power.”

Mr. Philippe insisted that he would “let the people decide” who should assume Haiti’s presidency. He blamed the United States for backing Mr. Henry and said the goal was to end gangs, hunger and poverty.

“We’re fighting for a better Haiti,” he said. “We’re tired. Everyone is tired.”

Andre Paultre contributed reporting.

After a portion of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner’s fuselage blew out in midair minutes after taking off from Portland, Ore., on Jan. 5, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded about 170 Max 9 planes, causing airlines that rely heavily on the aircraft to cancel thousands of flights and inconveniencing many passengers.

On Wednesday, the F.A.A. approved inspection and maintenance procedures for the planes, clearing the way for the grounded Max 9 planes to fly again.

Airlines said they planned to resume flying the Max 9s this week. Here’s what passengers should know about the plane and their rights if they want to avoid flying on it.

Which airlines use the Max 9?

Of the 215 Boeing Max 9 airplanes flown globally, United Airlines operates 79, the most of any airline, and Alaska has 65, according to Cirium, an aviation data provider. Their combined fleets represent about 70 percent of the Max 9 jets in service.

Other operators relying on the Max 9 include Panama’s Copa Airlines, Aeromexico, Turkish Airlines, FlyDubai and Icelandair.

Airlines generally share detailed information about all the planes in their fleets on their websites.

When will the airlines resume flying the Max 9?

Alaska said in a statement that final inspections, which take up to 12 hours for each plane, are underway. The airline said that it planned to bring the “first few planes” back for scheduled flights on Friday.

United said in a statement that it was preparing Max 9 planes to return to service beginning on Sunday. However, the planes “may be used as spares” as soon as this Friday, said United Airlines spokesman Josh Freed.

Copa, which grounded 21 Max 9 planes, said in a statement that it would be “gradually reinstating flights that had previously been canceled” beginning on Thursday and returning to a full schedule on Sunday.

How can I tell if I am booked on a Max 9?

Travelers can typically find information about their plane type when they book their flights online, either during the seat-selection process or elsewhere on the airline’s website.

Passengers may also be able to find the aircraft type on an airline’s mobile app, in the details of their reservation after they’ve booked. For Alaska, this is available in the app’s “Details” section. Flight tracking websites, such as FlightAware, also have plane information if users search for specific flights using the flight number.

But this is no guarantee. Even if passengers know in advance what plane they are scheduled to fly on, that is always subject to change. Airlines swap out aircraft at the last minute, depending on factors such as weather and logistics.

What if I don’t want to fly on a Max 9?

United and Alaska have both issued flight waivers because of the Max 9 inspections that allow passengers to cancel or change their flights without incurring fees. Alaska’s waiver applies to flights through Feb. 2. “After that, guests can call our reservations team and we’ll put them on a different flight without an additional charge, which includes our Saver fares,” an Alaska spokesperson said.

United’s waiver is for flights through Jan. 28.

Airlines have varying policies covering cancellations and refunds, which depend on factors such as when you booked, how far in advance you want to cancel, and what type of fare you have purchased. Once the Max 9 waivers expire, passengers won’t have the same rights to penalty-free rebookings or refunds for flights they opt to cancel themselves.

For future bookings, Kayak has created a new filter that excludes Max 9 flights. That would often mean booking on a carrier that does not use the planes. But on certain routes with a limited number of carriers, that may not be an option. For example, Alaska is the sole carrier flying nonstop between Anchorage and Kona, on Hawaii’s Big Island. The airline has often used a Max 9 on this route, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking website.

But experts suggest it may not make sense to avoid the planes, which have been under rigorous inspection.

“It’s not clear or rational why anyone would avoid the most recently inspected aircraft in the sky,” said the aviation analyst Robert W. Mann Jr., emphasizing that the Max 8 resumed flying several years after two deadly crashes that killed 346 people.

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Former President Donald J. Trump took the stand in his own defense on Thursday in the trial of E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, a civil case that grew out of her accusation that he raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.

His testimony, after days of anticipation, lasted less than five minutes.

“The defense calls President Donald Trump,” Alina Habba, his lead lawyer, told the court.

She asked the former president whether he stood by his remarks in a deposition in which he had called Ms. Carroll a liar.

“One hundred percent, yes,” Mr. Trump said. “She said something; I considered it a false accusation.”

Mr. Trump’s brief appearance came after much debate before the trial over whether the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, should ensure Mr. Trump did not stray from the sole issue in the case — damages. Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, had written to the judge, saying Trump might see a political benefit “from intentionally turning this trial into a circus.”

In the end, both sides seemed to attain at least part of their goals on Thursday: Mr. Trump answered the handful of questions his lawyer asked, and he did not embark on a rant about Ms. Carroll.

The only issue facing the nine-member jury considering the case is how much money, if any, Mr. Trump must pay Ms. Carroll in damages for defaming her in June 2019 after she first publicly accused him, in a book excerpt in New York magazine, of attacking her. At the time, Mr. Trump, who was still in office, called her accusation “totally false,” and said he had never met Ms. Carroll and that she was just trying to sell a book.

Ms. Carroll, 80, is seeking at least $10 million for harm she says was done to her reputation, as well as punitive damages in an effort to stop Mr. Trump, 77, from continuing to defame her, as he has in social media posts, on CNN, in news conferences and on the campaign trail.

She has already won a civil verdict in a trial last year over the dressing-room assault and a different defamation claim. In May, a jury awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million after finding Mr. Trump had sexually abused her and also had defamed her in a post on his Truth Social website in 2022. Judge Kaplan ruled that those findings applied in the current trial, and that in court, Mr. Trump could not contest Ms. Carroll’s version of events or claim that she fabricated her story.

The civil case is just part of a welter of legal troubles Mr. Trump faces, including four criminal indictments comprising 91 felony counts. As he seeks a return to the White House, Mr. Trump has been alternating campaign stops with court appearances, using his time in the courtroom as an opportunity to reach voters and complain that he has been mistreated.

In those appearances he has continued to lash out, again calling Ms. Carroll a liar and labeling Judge Kaplan “a Trump-hating guy.”

With Mr. Trump’s complaints have come vocal attacks on the judge and the plaintiff from the former president’s supporters. The jurors, under an order by Judge Kaplan, are anonymous, referred to only by number. The judge even counseled them not to divulge their identities to one another.

On Thursday morning, Mr. Trump was joined in court by several lawyers in addition to his civil trial team, including his legal adviser Boris Epshteyn and Susan R. Necheles, who is representing Trump in a criminal case in Manhattan. Mr. Epshteyn conferred quietly during the day with Ms. Necheles and he also passed notes to Ms. Habba as she questioned a witness.

During the morning, Ms. Carroll’s lawyers played for the jury an excerpt from a video deposition Mr. Trump gave in another case against him: the civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general. In the recording, Mr. Trump discusses the value of his properties and estimates that his brand alone is worth “maybe $10 billion.”

The recording could help demonstrate to jurors Mr. Trump’s assessment of his wealth, which could prove advantageous when Ms. Carroll’s lawyers ask the jury to impose sizable punitive damages.

Early in the afternoon, it was time for the former president to testify in his own defense, as he had promised for days. Mr. Trump has said he regretted not appearing in the trial last spring; he has said that his lawyer at the time advised him not to attend.

His testimony came only after Judge Kaplan quizzed Ms. Habba, out of the jury’s presence, about what the former president would say — an effort to ensure he did not stray beyond the scope of the case.

Mr. Trump appeared upset with the limitations; at one point before the jury entered the courtroom, he said, gesturing for emphasis, “I never met the woman. I don’t know who the woman is.”

The judge interjected: “Mr. Trump, keep your voice down.”

Finally, he took the stand. Ms. Habba asked Mr. Trump whether he had intended to hurt Ms. Carroll with his statements.

“No,” Mr. Trump said. “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and, frankly, the presidency.” Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Ms. Kaplan, immediately objected.

Judge Kaplan sustained the objection, saying, “Everything after ‘no’ is stricken — the jury will disregard it.”

The cross-examination was similarly brief: Ms. Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, asked whether this was the first trial Mr. Trump had attended in which Ms. Carroll was the plaintiff. He said yes.

Ms. Habba, in response, then asked if Mr. Trump had been listening to the advice of the lawyer then representing him — prompting an objection from Ms. Kaplan. The judge sustained the objection. Mr. Trump was excused.

The jurors remained poker-faced as Mr. Trump testified; some looked at him, while others looked down. As Mr. Trump stepped off the witness stand and returned to the defense table, he looked directly ahead and did not make eye contact with the jurors.

Lawyers for Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump are expected to make closing arguments before the jury for much of Friday morning, and the jury then will begin deliberating. A verdict could come Friday. In the earlier trial, the jury deliberated for less than three hours.

On Thursday, after Mr. Trump’s brief testimony, he walked slowly as he left the courtroom.

“This is not America,” he said loudly. “Not America. This is not America.”

Olivia Bensimon, Anusha Bayya and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.