Category: News

It’s crunchtime for Donald J. Trump.

In six days, the former president must secure an appeal bond for roughly half a billion dollars in his civil fraud case in New York, a possibility that was called into question on Monday.

In a court filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers revealed that he had been unable to secure an appeal bond despite “diligent efforts” that included approaching about 30 bond companies.

While Mr. Trump this month managed to post a $91.6 million bond in his defamation case against the writer E. Jean Carroll, securing the deal at the 11th hour from a large insurance company, he lacks the assets needed to secure the far bigger guarantee for the fraud case.

If he cannot produce the bond by March 25, Mr. Trump faces the possibility of financial disaster and humiliation. New York’s attorney general, who brought the fraud case, would be entitled to collect the $454 million and could seek to seize Mr. Trump’s New York properties or freeze his bank accounts.

And Mr. Trump’s money problems spread well beyond New York. As the presumptive Republican nominee for president, he is facing increased pressure to raise money to fund his campaign, lagging behind his opponent, President Biden, in fund-raising.

Here’s what we know about Mr. Trump’s financial problems:

Why does Mr. Trump owe so much?

Attorney General Letitia James took Mr. Trump to trial last fall and accused him of fraudulently inflating the value of his assets to obtain favorable loan terms.

Mr. Trump lost, and Justice Arthur F. Engoron imposed a judgment of $355 million plus interest, amounting to $454 million. Although Ms. James could have moved to collect immediately, she offered a 30-day grace period, which ends on March 25.

Mr. Trump is now on the hook for the entirety of the judgment while he appeals. He can either come up with the money himself or, more likely, obtain a bond from a company that would promise to pay if Mr. Trump lost his appeal and defaulted.

For a bond of this size, Mr. Trump would need to pledge a significant amount of collateral — as much as $557 million, his lawyers said — including as much cash as possible, as well as any stocks and bonds he could sell quickly. He would also owe the bond company a fee that could amount to $20 million.

Does he have the money to cover it?

Short answer: no.

While Mr. Trump has long bragged about his wealth, his true financial position remains something of a mystery. A recent New York Times analysis found that Mr. Trump had more than $350 million in cash, but most of his other money was tied up in his real estate holdings.

In other words, he is not liquid enough to offer the collateral required for a bond this big.

And he has less cash available today than he did even a week ago. Mr. Trump had to post a $91.6 million bond in the defamation case he lost to E. Jean Carroll. To secure the bond, Mr. Trump most likely had to pledge more than $100 million in collateral to Chubb, the giant insurance company that provided the bond.

What comes next?

Mr. Trump has appealed the $454 million judgment and asked a higher New York court either to pause it or to accept a lesser bond of $100 million. Ms. James could also grant additional time for Mr. Trump to pay or show mercy to the former president by offering a counterproposal.

He might appeal to the state’s highest court, quickly sell an asset or seek help from a wealthy supporter.

And if all else fails, as a last resort, he could have the corporate entities implicated in the fraud case file for bankruptcy, which would automatically halt the judgment against those entities.

But Mr. Trump is likely to balk at a bankruptcy filing.

If none of these options happens by March 25, and Mr. Trump misses the deadline, Ms. James would be free to collect the money owed to the state.

Could he use campaign money to pay Ms. James?

Probably not.

A super PAC supporting his candidacy can raise unlimited amounts but is legally banned from coordinating with him and cannot pay the judgment.

And although the former president has used a political action committee under his control to pay for lawyers and witnesses in his legal cases, that group lacks the kind of money needed to address the $454 million penalty.

He is now scrambling to raise campaign cash as he faces a significant financial disparity with his election opponent, Mr. Biden. Mr. Biden’s campaign recently announced that it had entered March with $155 million cash on hand. While the Trump operation has not released a more recent total, between his campaign account and the Republican National Committee, there was about $40 million at the end of January.

What else is happening on March 25?

Mr. Trump also has a crucial hearing in his Manhattan criminal case, which could be the first prosecution of a former American president.

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, filed charges against Mr. Trump that accuse him of covering up a sex scandal involving a porn star to bolster his 2016 presidential campaign. The case is now proceeding to trial.

Jury selection was originally scheduled to start on March 25, but the trial was delayed late last week after the disclosure of more than 100,000 pages of records that had been in the possession of the federal prosecutors.

While the documents have now been turned over, the trial was postponed to mid-April to give Mr. Trump’s lawyers time to review the papers.

Justice Juan M. Merchan set the March 25 hearing to determine if the trial should be delayed further and to rule on Mr. Trump’s motion for an outright dismissal.

The Manhattan case is among four criminal prosecutions Mr. Trump faces.

When Catherine, Princess of Wales, confessed last week to digitally altering a photo of her with her children, news agencies began examining Catherine’s gallery of royal family photos for other examples of doctoring.

It didn’t take long: On Monday, Getty Images placed an editorial advisory on a second photo taken by Catherine, of Queen Elizabeth II surrounded by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, saying the image had been altered before it was released by the palace.

In a statement, the news agency said that “in accordance with its editorial policy it has placed an editor’s note on a handout image stating the image has been digitally enhanced at source.”

The second altered photo raises further thorny questions about how Britain’s royal family communicates with the public. It also piles more scrutiny on Catherine, who has been caught in a maelstrom of rumors and speculation since she underwent abdominal surgery in January and receded from the public eye.

The Mother’s Day photo of her with her children, taken by her husband, Prince William, and released 10 days ago, was meant to calm the storm of questions. But it ignited a fresh round of speculation after The Associated Press, Reuters, Getty and other agencies recalled the image, saying it had been improperly manipulated.

A keen amateur photographer, Catherine has documented the royal family in many private moments, and sometimes tweaking the results, she admitted last week. Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace, where she and William have their offices, have distributed these photos to the news media, and they regularly appear on the front pages of British papers.

The picture of the queen flanked by 10 children, which was shot by Catherine at Balmoral Castle in Scotland in August 2022, appears to have multiple visual inconsistencies. Most conspicuously, there is a mismatch in the vertical line on the queen’s tartan skirt.

Kensington Palace declined to comment on the photo, which it released last year on what would have been the queen’s 97th birthday.

Catherine apologized on social media for the Mother’s Day picture, posting, “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.”

As the rumors continued to fly, the palace refused to comment on a video that surfaced on Monday, which appeared to show Catherine and William walking out of a food shop near their home in Windsor, west of London.

If authenticated, the video, posted on the American celebrity gossip site TMZ, would be the first footage of Catherine since before she entered the hospital. It also appeared on the website of the British tabloid The Sun, which published stills on its front page on Tuesday, as did another tabloid, The Daily Mail.

The video appears to show Catherine, in athletic clothing, striding into a parking lot with William, who is wearing a baseball cap. Both are carrying bags of groceries. The Sun reported earlier that Catherine had been seen shopping on Saturday and watching her children play sports on Sunday.

“Great to see you again, Kate!” said the paper, which has been among the most devoted backers of the 42-year-old princess.

The heavy coverage was in stark contrast to how the tabloids handled a paparazzi shot of Catherine riding in a car with her mother, which was posted on TMZ two weeks ago. The papers declined to publish that photo even though it had circulated widely on social media, citing Kensington Palace’s appeal that Catherine be allowed to recuperate from her medical treatment in private.

The British news media has struggled to balance its customary respect for privacy in royal health matters with what has become an epic daily slurry of online speculation about the condition of Catherine, as well as that of King Charles III. Buckingham Palace announced last month that the king had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer after undergoing surgery for an enlarged prostate in January.

While Charles has appeared in recent photos and videos, including with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, that has not stopped rampant speculation about the gravity of his illness — or even unfounded rumors of his death, which featured in spurious news reports in Russia on Monday.

Telegram channels reported that Charles had died, citing a phony news release from Buckingham Palace, dated March 18, which said, “The king passed away unexpectedly yesterday afternoon.” The format and terse wording was not unlike that used by the palace in September 2022 to report the death of Elizabeth.

The rumor that Charles had become one of Britain’s shortest-serving monarchs spread so rapidly in Russia that it began to compete with analysis of last weekend’s rubber-stamp election that set President Vladimir V. Putin on a course to be Russia’s longest serving leader since Catherine the Great in the 1700s.

After the false story was picked up by news sites like Sputnik and spread to Ukraine, the British embassies in both countries felt obliged to issue denials, both falling back on a term popularized by former President Donald J. Trump in the United States.

“Reports of the death of King Charles III of Great Britain are fake!” the embassy in Moscow posted on X. “We would like to inform you that the news about the death of King Charles III is fake,” posted the embassy in Kyiv.

An official at Buckingham Palace told reporters that the palace would not dignify the reports with any response.

A new $120 million pledge to lift President Biden and his allies will push the total expected spending from outside groups working to re-elect Mr. Biden to $1 billion this year.

The League of Conservation Voters, a leading climate organization that is among the biggest spenders on progressive causes, announced its plans for backing Mr. Biden on Tuesday, at a moment when his Republican challenger, former President Donald J. Trump, is struggling to raise funds. Mr. Biden’s campaign, independent of the outside groups, expects to raise and spend $2 billion as part of his re-election bid.

Republican groups are likely to spend big ahead of November, as well, but it is difficult to make direct comparisons between the Democratic organizations and their Republican counterparts. Democratic and progressive organizations often announce their spending plans before they have raised the funds, which often come in from small donors. Republican groups that rely more on major donors tend not to telegraph their plans.

The pro-Biden outside money originates from nearly a dozen organizations that include climate groups, labor unions and traditional super PACs. There are left-wing groups like MoveOn and moderate Republicans like Republican Voters Against Trump.

The largest spenders so far are Future Forward, the super PAC blessed by the Biden campaign, which has reserved more than $250 million in television advertising; the Service Employees International Union, which said last week that it would spend $200 million to back Mr. Biden and fellow Democrats; and American Bridge, the Democratic research organization that said in January that it planned to spend $140 million on an anti-Trump advertising campaign in battleground states.

“The sheer scale of what we’re talking about has never been seen before in our country’s history,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United, the government reform advocacy group working to limit the ability of these types of outside groups to spend unlimited sums on elections.

On Wednesday, the League of Conservation Voters is scheduled to host its annual dinner in Washington. Those expected to attend include Vice President Kamala Harris, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the New York Democrat who is the House minority leader, and a handful of other Democratic members of Congress.

Pete Maysmith, the league’s senior vice president for campaigns, said the group’s funding would subsidize both an advertising campaign on television and digital platforms and also a field program that will encourage its members and supporters to tell their friends to vote for Mr. Biden.

“It’s hard to imagine higher stakes in these elections,” Mr. Maysmith said. “We will be communicating with voters in the battleground states and in the key races about the stakes, why President Biden has been such a champ on climate change and the obvious and extreme peril of having Donald Trump and his MAGA acolytes and big oil pleasers back in office for another four years.”

Stephanie Schriock, the former president of Emily’s List, the group that supports and funds Democratic women running for office, said she expected the amount of outside money backing Mr. Biden to reach $2.5 billion to $3 billion, with large sums to be spent on legal issues and get-out-the-vote efforts this fall.

Major Democratic donors, Ms. Schriock said, have been animated in recent weeks as Mr. Trump neared and then clinched the Republican presidential nomination.

“Folks just did not want to believe that it was going to be Donald Trump again,” she said. “The whole concept that this was happening again just sort of froze them and since Super Tuesday that has changed. People are like, ‘Oh, this is happening and this is real.’”

The $1 billion in Democratic money pledged on Mr. Biden’s behalf does not include an additional $239 million in advertising reservations made by Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC devoted to electing Senate Democrats. The super PAC that backs House Democrats, House Majority PAC, has not yet made its advertising reservations. A spokesman on Monday declined to reveal the group’s plans.

Nor does the $1 billion account for an expected influx in the tens of millions — if not more — from organizations that support Democrats including Planned Parenthood, and the political groups backed by Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor. Neither Planned Parenthood nor Mr. Bloomberg’s groups have announced their spending plans for the 2024 election, but past outlays have been significant.

One Republican group that has made public its plans is Faith & Freedom, the conservative organization led by Ralph Reed, a Trump ally, which said last week that it would spend $62 million to register and turn out evangelical voters for Mr. Trump.

Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC that backs Senate Republican candidates, has also reserved $130 million in advertising time for the Senate races in Ohio and Montana.

The main Trump super PAC has spent $380,000 on radio ads targeting Black voters. On the day of Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address this month, another pro-Trump super PAC spent $500,000 on TV ads.

The disparity between the pro-Biden and pro-Trump outside groups echoes the cash advantage Mr. Biden’s campaign has over Mr. Trump’s.

Mr. Biden’s campaign announced on Sunday that it, along with the Democratic National Committee and affiliated fund-raising organizations, entered March with $155 million in cash on hand. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee had around $40 million at the end of January. The groups have not released a more recent total.

The Biden campaign is forbidden from coordinating with the outside groups but has encouraged their help publicly.

“These are real and meaningful investments that we expect will go to reaching the voters who will decide this election, while Donald Trump and a cash-strapped Republican Party continue to show zero interest or ability to build a winning coalition,” said Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager.

Mr. Maysmith, at the League of Conservation Voters, said his group would work in tandem with other pro-Biden super PACs to avoid duplication and amplify their efforts. He said there were already plans underway to speak to voters who are inclined to back Mr. Biden’s climate agenda but who have concerns about his age.

“If they are raising a concern about the president’s age, we are absolutely ready to hear that, acknowledge that and then articulate why the president might not be the youngest guy out there, but he has delivered more on climate change than any other president in the history of this country,” Mr. Maysmith said.

Other groups backing Mr. Biden that have announced their 2024 spending plans include VoteVets, the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country, and Climate Power, which announced an $80 million plan last year.

Ms. Muller said the enormous expenditures by outside groups could, if Mr. Biden is re-elected with Democratic majorities in Congress, lead to long-sought limits on the flow of such large sums into the American political ecosystem.

“It is possible for the voters’ trust to continue to be eroded,” she said. “There’s not too much room left for it to fall.”

Hong Kong on Tuesday passed national security laws at the behest of Beijing, thwarting decades of public resistance in a move that critics say will strike a lasting blow to the partial autonomy the city had been promised by China.

Hong Kong already had a national security law, one that was imposed directly by China’s Communist Party leaders in 2020, after months of antigovernment demonstrations in the city. That law effectively silenced dissent in Hong Kong, sending opposition figures to jail or into exile.

The new legislation, which was passed with extraordinary speed, grants the authorities even more powers to crack down on opposition to Beijing and the Hong Kong government, establishing penalties — including life imprisonment — for political crimes like treason and insurrection, which are vaguely defined. It also targets offenses like “external interference” and the theft of state secrets, creating potential risks for multinational companies and international groups operating in the Asian financial center.

Analysts say the legislation, which will take effect on March 23, could have a chilling effect on a wide range of people, including entrepreneurs, civil servants, lawyers, diplomats, journalists and academics, raising questions about Hong Kong’s status as an international city.

In the eyes of Beijing, these laws are long overdue.

When Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to Chinese rule in 1997, it was given a mini-constitution designed to protect civil liberties unknown in mainland China, such as freedom of expression, assembly and the media. But China also insisted on a provision called Article 23, which required Hong Kong to draft a package of internal security laws to replace colonial-era sedition laws.

The first attempts to pass such legislation, in 2003, set off mass protests involving hundreds of thousands of people. Top officials resigned, and in the years that followed, city leaders were reluctant to raise the matter again, for fear of public backlash.

But in recent months, the Chinese Communist Party has urged the Hong Kong government to enact Article 23 laws. The city’s Beijing-backed leader, John Lee, has said the laws are needed to root out unrest and to fight what he calls espionage efforts by Western intelligence agencies.

There was little chance that China’s will would not be heeded; Hong Kong’s legislature has been overwhelmingly stacked with pro-Beijing lawmakers since China overhauled the electoral system to exclude candidates who aren’t considered “patriots.”

The new laws take aim at five types of offenses: treason, insurrection, theft of state secrets, sabotage and external interference. They also introduce key changes to due process. In some instances, the police may now seek permission from magistrates to prevent suspects from consulting with the lawyers of their choice, if that is deemed a threat to national security.

Human rights groups said that in swiftly passing the law, the authorities had reversed course on the freedoms once promised to the city.

Amnesty International said that the overarching purpose of the laws was to “stifle any and all criticism of the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities and their policies, within the city and globally.” The government has criticized rights advocacy groups based overseas as “anti-China” and “anti-government” organizations.

The legislation also empowers the city’s leader, known as the chief executive, to make new, related laws, which can carry penalties of up to seven years in prison, without going through the legislature. The leader would consult the cabinet before enacting any such law; the legislative council, known as the LegCo, would be able to amend or reject the law later.

Such a mechanism would not be new to Hong Kong, but it raises the potential for abuse, given how broadly written the new legislation is, said Thomas E. Kellogg, the executive director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University.

“This is deeply disturbing,” Professor Kellogg wrote in an email. “The LegCo is handing the chief executive the power to expand the law even further, in ways that could further infringe on basic rights.”

The legislation’s vague wording — for example, in how it defines offenses like the theft of state secrets — is comparable to language found in security legislation in mainland China. And under the new laws, someone who shares “information that appears to be confidential matter,” even if it is not classified as a state secret, could be punished if that person intended to endanger national security, in the eyes of the authorities.

Business leaders in Hong Kong say such changes could raise the cost of operating in the city by requiring companies to scrutinize documents and other information shared by employees, to ensure that they do not inadvertently violate the new law.

One risk is that Hong Kong’s comparative business advantage over the mainland could be eroded, said Johannes Hack, the president of the German Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.

“Part of the unique value Hong Kong has for Western (German) stakeholders is the openness of the city and we feel the balance between openness and the desire for security needs to be well calibrated,” he wrote in a message on WhatsApp.

Olivia Wang contributed reporting.

President Biden plans to visit Nevada and Arizona this week to champion his economic policies and attack Republicans on immigration and abortion as he seeks to shore up a crucial but wavering Latino electorate in the two battleground states.

Mr. Biden will begin his trip on Tuesday in Reno, Nev., where he plans to promote his economic agenda and denounce former President Donald J. Trump over abortion rights. He then plans to travel to Las Vegas to trumpet his efforts to cut housing costs before heading on Wednesday to Phoenix, where he is set to make a manufacturing announcement.

The trip will seek to turn what polls have shown to be three of Mr. Biden’s biggest weaknesses — the economy, immigration and slipping support among Latinos — into strengths, and it comes as the president has adopted an aggressive new tone as he opens the general election campaign against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Biden will particularly have his eye on Latino voters, who are increasingly gravitating toward Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden’s campaign is set to air two interviews with the president on radio stations appealing to Latino audiences, kick off an organizing program to rally Latino voters and attack Republicans for restricting abortion rights and sinking a bipartisan immigration package full of measures to tighten border security.

“The Latino vote was critical to the president’s victory in 2020, and 2024 will be no different,” Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, said in a statement. “Our community has deep roots in organizing, and we are excited to harness that skill set to fight for our families, our communities, and against Donald Trump’s anti-Latino agenda.”

Democrats have in recent years relied on Latino voters, particularly in states like Nevada and Arizona, which could tip the 2024 presidential election. Latinos make up roughly one in four eligible voters in Arizona and Nevada — states Mr. Biden won in 2020. But Mr. Trump has found support among many in the diverse Latino electorate, including evangelicals and those focused on border security. Mr. Trump has appealed in particular to Latinos without college degrees, an educational divide that has captured the attention of the White House.

Surveys show Mr. Trump winning more than 40 percent of Latino voters, a level not achieved by a Republican in two decades. Some polls even show Mr. Trump ahead of Mr. Biden among Latino voters after Mr. Biden won nearly 60 percent of their vote in 2020.

Mr. Biden’s campaign aides say they are prepared to go on the offensive on an issue that resonates in both states and was once viewed in the White House as a political vulnerability: immigration and the border. In a memo written by Ms. Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s approach on immigration is listed as a primary way to “contrast on the issues that matter most to western voters.”

“President Biden negotiated the toughest and fairest reforms to secure the border in decades — only for Donald Trump to tell his MAGA Republican allies to block these efforts to help Trump politically,” Ms. Chávez Rodríguez says in the memo.

But in a sign of how complex the politics of immigration can be, Mr. Biden will also need to strike a balance between talking about border security measures and emphasizing his efforts to pass a pathway to citizenship, said John Tuman, a professor of political science at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who focuses on the Latino electorate.

While Mr. Biden has shifted right on immigration recently, many voters in Nevada are also interested in hearing about reforming the overall immigration system, Mr. Tuman said.

“It pays dividends politically to push immigration from the margins to the center,” Mr. Tuman said. He said Mr. Biden could speak about the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers and the program to protect them “while also acknowledging there needs to be some compromise on border security.”

And like the overall electorate in Nevada, Mr. Tuman said, Latino voters want to see progress on the economy, including job growth and lower housing costs.

During his speech on housing in Las Vegas, Mr. Biden will once again call on Congress to pass a mortgage relief credit that would provide first-time homeowners a $10,000 tax credit. But Mr. Biden can do little to change mortgage rates — they are heavily influenced by the Federal Reserve. The average 30-year mortgage rate jumped to nearly 8 percent last fall from below 3 percent in 2021. It has declined slightly this year but recently ticked up again and now sits just under 7 percent.

One of my ironclad rules of journalism is this: When you see an elephant flying, don’t laugh, don’t doubt, don’t sneer — take notes. Something very new and important is happening and we need to understand it.

Last week, I saw an elephant fly: The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer — an authentic, lifelong supporter of Israel — gave a speech calling on Israelis to hold an election as soon as possible in order to dump Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet.

That was one big flying elephant. And it produced predictable responses from the Jewish right (Schumer is a traitor), from Netanyahu (Israel is “not a banana republic”) and from cynics (Schumer’s just cozying up to the Democratic left). All predictable responses, and all wrong responses.

The right response is a question: What has gone so haywire in the U.S.-Netanyahu relationship that it would drive someone as sincerely devoted to Israel’s well-being as Chuck Schumer to call on Israelis to replace Netanyahu — and have his speech, which was smart and sensitive, praised by President Biden himself as a “good speech” outlining concerns shared by “many Americans”?

Israelis and friends of Israel ignore that basic question at their peril.

The answer has to do with a profound shift in U.S. politics and geopolitics when it comes to the Middle East — a shift that the Gaza war exposed, and a shift that has made Netanyahu’s refusal to articulate any vision for Israeli-Palestinian relations based on two states for two people a threat to both Biden’s foreign policy goals and re-election chances.

Before I explain why, I want to be very clear about one thing that Schumer and Biden have also made clear: The war in Gaza was forced on Israel by a vicious attack by Hamas on Israeli border communities, populated by the most dovish Israelis in the country’s political spectrum. If you are calling for a “cease-fire now” in Gaza and not a “cease-fire and hostage release now,” it’s making the problem worse. Because it just feeds Israelis’ fears that the world is against them, no matter what they do.

People protesting Israel’s war in Gaza and the many civilian casualties there also have a responsibility to call out Hamas — as Schumer did. It is a murderous organization that has brought death and destruction, and despair for the people of Gaza, and has done as much since the 1980s to destroy the possibility of a two-state solution as any actor in the region.

Back to the argument: Why has Netanyahu become such a problem for the U.S. and Biden geopolitically and politically?

The short answer is that America’s entire Middle East strategy right now — and, I would argue, Israel’s long-term interests — depends on Israel partnering with the non-Hamas Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah, in the West Bank, on the long-term development needs of Palestinians and, ultimately, on a two-state solution. And Netanyahu has expressly ruled that out, along with any other fully formed plan for the morning after in Gaza.

Why do Israel and the U.S. need a Palestinian partner and a vision for a two-state solution? I see six reasons — that’s a lot, but they all bear on Biden’s challenge and political fate:

1) No army has ever had to fight an enemy in such a dense urban environment that includes an estimated 350 to 450 miles of underground tunnels stretching from one end of the war zone to the other. As a result, such urban warfare was always going to cause many casualties among innocent civilians, even with the most careful of armies, let alone one enraged by the killing and kidnapping of so many children, parents and grandparents. For those Gaza civilians who survive, I’m sure that nothing could compensate for the loss of their children, parents and grandparents. But an expressed willingness by Israel to forge a new relationship between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with non-Hamas-led Palestinians would at least give some hope to all sides that there would never be a round of bloodletting like this again.

2) This is the first big Israeli-Palestinian war fought in the age of TikTok. TikTok was designed for a war like this — 15-second videos of the worst human suffering, beamed out constantly. In the face of that media tsunami, Israel needed a clear message of commitment to a postwar peace process, heading toward two states. Israel had none. As a result, Israel is not only alienating many Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, Biden administration officials say, but it is also in danger of losing support among an entire generation of global youth (including part of the base of the Democratic Party).

3) This is not a war of “retaliation,” like all the previous Hamas-Israel wars — in which Israel punished Hamas for rocketing the country but then left it in power when the fighting was over. This war, by contrast, is aimed at destroying Hamas once and for all. Therefore, from the start, Israel needed to have an alternative conception of how Gaza could and should be legitimately governed by non-Hamas Palestinians — and no Palestinians are ever going to step up for that job without at least a legitimate two-state process.

4) Hamas’s attack was designed to halt Israel from becoming more embedded than ever in the Arab world thanks to the Abraham Accords and the budding normalization process with Saudi Arabia. Consequently, Israel’s response had to be designed to preserve those vital new relationships. That could be possible only if Israel was fighting Hamas in Gaza with one hand and actively pursuing two states with the other.

5) This war had a major regional component. Israel very quickly found itself fighting Hamas in Gaza and Iran’s proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The only way Israel could build a regional alliance — and enable President Biden to help line up regional allies — was if Israel was simultaneously pursuing a peace process with non-Hamas Palestinians. That is the necessary cement for a regional alliance against Iran. Without that cement, Biden’s grand strategy of building an alliance against Iran and Russia (and China) stretching from India through the Arabian Peninsula across North Africa and up to the European Union/NATO is stymied. No one wants to sign up to protect an Israel whose government is dominated by extremists who want to permanently occupy both the West Bank and Gaza.

Which is why Schumer said: “Nobody expects Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the things that must be done to break the cycle of violence, preserve Israel’s credibility on the world stage, and work toward a two-state solution,” while Schumer also called for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to step aside and make room for a new, better governing generation there as well.

6) The political scientist Gautam Mukunda, author of the book “Picking Presidents,” made this final, good point to me: “The rise of the progressive left and Netanyahu’s tacit alliance with Trump have weakened support for Israel among Democrats. If Israel fights a war in Gaza with many civilian casualties — but offers no political hope for a better future for both Israelis and Palestinians — over time it obscures people’s memories of the horrors of Oct. 7 and their support for Israel in its wake. That makes it increasingly difficult for even the most pro-Israel American figures — like Schumer — to continue to back the war in the face of the enormous international and domestic costs.”

For all of these reasons, and I cannot say this loudly enough, Israel has an overriding interest in pursuing a two-state horizon. And I cannot say this often enough. I don’t know if the Palestinian Authority can get its act together to be the government that Palestinians and Israelis need it to be; I just know everyone now has a huge interest in trying to make it so.

As such, I believe the Biden strategy will most likely unfold this way: Press as hard as possible on all the parties to get a cease-fire and another hostage release. That cessation of hostilities would then freeze any Israeli military plans for a full-scale invasion of Rafah to capture or kill Hamas leaders believed to be holed up there — an invasion that would very likely cause many more civilian casualties. (I assume the U.S. will urge Israel to use more targeted means.)

Then, use the cease-fire to come in with a big, fresh American-Arab-E.U. peace initiative that offers Israelis a breadth and depth of normalization with Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, and security guarantees, more than ever before, as the accompaniment to a two-state solution.

With that in hand, Biden could frame the choice for Israel’s next election: “Biden’s plan versus Bibi’s no-plan” — instead of Biden personally versus Netanyahu personally. Let Netanyahu choose between being remembered as the prime minister who presided over Oct. 7 or the prime minister who opened the road to Saudi Arabia.

The hour is growing late. There are a million moving parts, any one of which could fail. But this is my gut feeling for how the next phase of the Gaza conflict could play out and why Schumer’s speech was not just some personal rumination but a deep reflection of America’s best interests at this time — and, I believe, Israelis’ and Palestinians’ best interests as well.

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Only 10 countries and territories out of 134 achieved the World Health Organization’s standards for a pervasive form of air pollution last year, according to air quality data compiled by IQAir, a Swiss company.

The pollution studied is called fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, because it refers to solid particles less than 2.5 micrometers in size: small enough to enter the bloodstream. PM2.5 is the deadliest form of air pollution, leading to millions of premature deaths each year.

“Air pollution and climate change both have the same culprit, which is fossil fuels,” said Glory Dolphin Hammes, the CEO of IQAir’s North American division.

The World Health Organization sets a guideline that people shouldn’t breathe more than 5 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic meter of air, on average, throughout a year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed tightening its standard from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter.

The few oases of clean air that meet World Health Organization guidelines are mostly islands, as well as Australia and the northern European countries of Finland and Estonia. Of the non-achievers, where the vast majority of the human population lives, the countries with the worst air quality were mostly in Asia and Africa.

Where some of the dirtiest air is found

The four most polluted countries in IQAir’s ranking for 2023 — Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Tajikistan — are in South and Central Asia.

Air quality sensors in almost a third of the region’s cities reported concentrations of fine particulate matter that were more than 10 times the WHO guideline. This was a proportion “vastly exceeding any other region,” the report’s authors wrote.

The researchers pointed to vehicle traffic, coal and industrial emissions, particularly from brick kilns, as major sources of the region’s pollution. Farmers seasonally burning their crop waste contribute to the problem, as do households burning wood and dung for heat and cooking.

China reversed recent gains

One notable change in 2023 was a 6.3 percent increase in China’s air pollution compared with 2022, after at least five years of improvement. Beijing experienced a 14 percent increase in PM2.5 pollution last year.

The national government announced a “war against pollution” in 2014 and had been making progress ever since. But the sharpest decline in China’s PM2.5 pollution happened in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic forced much of the country’s economic activity to slow or shut down. Ms. Dolphin Hammes attributed last year’s uptick to a reopening economy.

And challenges remain: Eleven cities in China reported air pollution levels last year that exceeded the WHO guidelines by 10 times or more. The worst was Hotan, Xinjiang.

Significant gaps in the data

IQAir researchers analyze data from more than 30,000 air quality monitoring stations and sensors across 134 countries, territories and disputed regions. Some of these monitoring stations are run by government agencies, while others are overseen by nonprofit organizations, schools, private companies and citizen scientists.

There are large gaps in ground-level air quality monitoring in Africa and the Middle East, including in regions where satellite data show some of the highest levels of air pollution on Earth.

As IQAir works to add data from more cities and countries in future years, “the worst might be yet to come in terms of what we’re measuring,” Ms. Dolphin Hammes said.

Wildfire smoke: a growing problem

Although North America is one of the cleaner regions in the world, in 2023 wildfires burned 4 percent of Canada’s forests, an area about half the size of Germany, and significantly impaired air quality.

Usually, North America’s list of most polluted cities is dominated by the United States. But last year, the top 13 spots all went to Canadian cities, many of them in Alberta.

In the United States, cities in the Upper Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic states also got significant amounts of PM2.5 pollution from wildfire smoke that drifted across the border.

Risks of short-term exposure

It’s not just chronic exposure to air pollution that harms people’s health.

For vulnerable people like the very young and old, or those with underlying illnesses, breathing in large amounts of fine particulate pollution for just a few hours or days can sometimes be deadly. About 1 million premature deaths per year can be attributed to short-term PM2.5 exposure, according to a recent global study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

The problem is worst in East and South Asia, as well as in West Africa.

Without accounting for short-term exposures, “we might be underestimating the mortality burden from air pollution,” said Yuming Guo, a professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and one of the study’s authors.

U.S. disparities widen

Within individual countries, air pollution and its health effects aren’t evenly distributed.

Air quality in the United States has generally been improving since the Clean Air Act of the 1970s. Last decade, premature deaths from PM2.5 exposure declined to about 49,400 in 2019, down from about 69,000 in 2010.

But progress has happened faster in some communities than in others. Racial and ethnic disparities in air pollution deaths have grown in recent years, according to a national study published this month.

The census tracts in the United States with the fewest white residents have about 32 percent higher rates of PM2.5-related deaths, compared with those with the most white residents. This disparity in deaths per capita has increased by 16 percent between 2010 and 2019.

The study examined race and ethnicity separately, and found the disparity between the census tracts with the most and least Hispanic residents grew even more, by 40 percent.

In IQAir’s rankings, the United States is doing much better than most other countries. But studies that dig deeper show air quality is still an issue, said Gaige Kerr, a research scientist at George Washington University and the lead author of the disparities paper published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. “There’s still a lot of work to do,” he said.

Dr. Kerr’s research showed that mortality rates were highest on the Gulf Coast and in the Ohio River Valley, in areas dominated by petrochemical and manufacturing industries. He also noted that researchers have seen a slight uptick in rates of PM2.5-related deaths starting around 2016, particularly in the Western states, likely because of increasing wildfires.

Japan’s central bank raised interest rates for the first time since 2007 on Tuesday, pushing them above zero to close a chapter in its aggressive effort to stimulate an economy that has long struggled to grow.

In 2016, the Bank of Japan took the unorthodox step of bringing borrowing costs below zero, a bid to kick-start borrowing and lending and spur the country’s stagnating economy. Negative interest rates — which central banks in some European economies have also applied — mean depositors pay to leave their money with a bank, an incentive for them to spend it instead.

But Japan’s economy has recently begun to show signs of stronger growth: Inflation, after being low for years, has sped up, cemented by larger-than-usual increases in wages. Both are clues that the economy may be on a course for more sustained growth, allowing the central bank to tighten its interest rate policy years after other major central banks raised rates rapidly in response to a jump in inflation.

Even after Tuesday’s move, interest rates in Japan are far from those in the world’s other major developed economies. The Bank of Japan’s target policy rate was raised to 0.1 percent from minus 0.1 percent.

The central bank also scrapped a policy in which it bought Japanese government bonds to keep a lid on how high market rates can go, encouraging businesses and households to borrow cheaply. The bank had been slowly relaxing the policy over the past year, resulting in higher yields on debt as the country’s growth prospects improved.

In many countries, a surge in inflation has tormented consumers and policymakers, but in Japan, which more often grappled with growth-sapping deflation, the recent rise in prices has been welcomed by most economists. The Japanese stock market, bolstered by bullishness in the economy and corporate reforms that favor shareholders, has attracted vast sums of money from investors around the world, recently helping the Nikkei 225 index break a record high that had stood since 1989.

The move away from negative interest rates, which should help strengthen the country’s weak currency, is viewed by investors as another important step in Japan’s turnaround.

“It’s another milestone in the normalization of monetary policy in Japan,” said Arnout van Rijn, a portfolio manager at Robeco, who set up and ran the Dutch fund manager’s Asia office for more than a decade. “As a long-term Japan follower, this is very significant.”

Bets on a rise in interest rates were boosted this month after the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, the country’s largest association of labor unions, said its seven million members would receive wage increases that averaged over 5 percent this year, the largest annual negotiated increase since 1991. That added to an average wage increase of around 3.6 percent in 2023.

Before the results of the wage negotiations were announced, investors had expected the Bank of Japan to wait longer to raise interest rates.

Accelerating wage growth is a crucial sign for policymakers that the economy is strong enough to generate some inflation and is able to withstand higher interest rates. Like other major central banks, the Bank of Japan aims for annual inflation of 2 percent; the rate has been at or above that for nearly two years.

The rise in wages signals that companies and workers expect higher prices to stick around, Mr. van Rijn said. “People no longer believe prices will fall so that percolates into wage demands.”

Shizuka Nakamura, 32, a resident of Yokohama, a port city south of Tokyo, said she had noticed prices going up. “I do feel the rising cost of living,” said Ms. Nakamura, who works in an administrative job at a construction company. She recently had a child.

“My friends who are around the same age as me and who have also had children all say that things like diapers and baby formula are getting more expensive,” she said.

The Bank of Japan’s rate move was also significant because it was the last major central bank to exit its negative-rate policy. It and central banks in Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and the eurozone broke monetary policy taboos by pushing rates below zero — which essentially means depositors pay banks to hold their money and creditors get less back than they lend out — in an effort to ignite economic growth after the 2008 financial crisis. (Sweden ended negative rates in 2019, and the other European central banks followed in 2022.)

Negative central bank policy rates upended global bond markets, with more than $18 trillion of debt trading at a negative yield at the peak in 2020. As inflation and economic growth has returned, and central banks have raised their policy rates — most far more aggressively than Japan’s — hardly any debt now has a negative yield.

Rising rates in Japan make investing in the country relatively more rewarding for investors, but the Federal Reserve’s target rate is still about five percentage points higher and the European Central Bank’s is four points higher. While foreign investors have begun to funnel cash into the country, for Japanese investors the returns abroad are still attractive, even as the Fed and E.C.B. are expected to begin cutting rates, stymieing a rapid repatriation of cash to Japan.

Central bankers in Japan have also suggested a slow shift in policy, wary that raising rates too quickly could stamp out growth before it has taken hold.

Kiuko Notoya contributed reporting.

An engine fire sparked by plastic packaging wrap, a tire lost shortly after takeoff and a plane veering off the runway: These are among the eight incidents that have occurred over the past two weeks on flights operated by United Airlines. While no injuries — or worse — have been reported, the mishaps have generated headlines and stoked rising anxiety about aviation safety among federal officials and passengers alike.

All of the incidents happened on flights that took off from or were headed to airports in the United States, and five involved airplanes made by Boeing, a manufacturer already under intense scrutiny. In January, a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner in mid-flight, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.

United, one of the world’s largest airlines, flies aircraft manufactured mainly by Boeing and Airbus. In an email United began sending to customers on Monday, the company’s chief executive, Scott Kirby, wrote that while the recent incidents were unrelated, they were “reminders of the importance of safety.”

“I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus,” he continued, adding that every case was being reviewed by the airline and would influence its safety training and procedures.

Here’s what travelers should know about the latest in airplane woes.

What exactly happened on or to the planes?

Most of the incidents reported in the last two weeks required emergency landings or diversions.

Are the recent issues typical, or cause for concern?

The mishaps were not the result of “systemic problems,” said Robert Sumwalt, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board who now heads a new aviation safety center at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

“Some of these issues are things that happen occasionally, but often don’t get reported in media,” Mr. Sumwalt said, though he emphasized that none were acceptable.

Kyra Dempsey, who writes about aviation accidents in a blog called Admiral Cloudberg, said that United’s recent issues were being “falsely conflated with Boeing’s troubles.”

“While it’s bad luck that United had so many incidents in such a short period, in general such incidents happen frequently around the world and they aren’t on the rise overall,” Ms. Dempsey said.

How has United responded?

Mr. Kirby’s 270-word message to United customers, including to members of the airline’s frequent flier program, started to be sent on Monday morning, said Josh Freed, a spokesman for United.

Starting in May, United pilots will have an extra day of in-person training, a change that was already planned before the incidents, Mr. Kirby wrote. The airline will also use a “centralized training curriculum for our new hire maintenance technicians” and will dedicate additional resources to the carrier’s supply chain.

What government agencies oversee these issues, and how are they responding?

The Federal Aviation Administration regulates the country’s aviation system and investigates safety incidents on U.S. airlines, while the N.T.S.B. investigates the causes of accidents, collisions and crashes involving planes flown by U.S. carriers, in addition to other accidents involving commercial and mass transit operators. Both agencies have discretion on what they investigate, Mr. Sumwalt said.

Currently, the N.T.S.B. is investigating the incident that occurred on March 8 in Houston, when the plane veered off the runway, an agency spokesperson said. The N.T.S.B. is also looking into a Feb. 10 Los Angeles-to-Newark flight, operated by United, that experienced severe turbulence, leading to injuries among more than a dozen passengers. (The Boeing 777 landed normally, but the flight was met by medical personnel.)

Safety experts said some issues don’t necessarily rise to the level of an investigation by either agency.

For example, partial loss of some of an airplane’s multiple hydraulics systems is common, said Michael McCormick, an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a former F.A.A. control tower operator. The F.A.A. may or may not get involved for this kind of issue, unless there’s a pattern, Mr. Sumwalt said.

The January episode involving the blown door plug aboard the Alaska Airlines jet is under investigation by the N.T.S.B. and the Justice Department.

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