Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain was facing a chorus of calls to cut off arms shipments to Israel because of its devastating war in Gaza. On Monday, Mr. Sunak saluted the British warplanes that had shot down several Iranian drones as part of a successful campaign to thwart Iran’s attack on Israel.

It was a telling example of how the clash between Israel and Iran has scrambled the equation in the Middle East. Faced with a barrage of Iranian missiles, Britain, the United States, France and others rushed to Israel’s aid. They set aside their anger over Gaza to defend it from a country they view as an archnemesis, even as they pleaded for restraint in Israel’s response to the Iranian assault.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose approval of a deadly airstrike on a meeting of Iranian generals in Damascus on April 1 provoked Iran’s retaliation, has managed to change the narrative, according to British and American diplomats and analysts. But it could prove to be a fleeting change, they said, if Mr. Netanyahu orders a counterstrike damaging enough to pitch the region into wider war.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Ukraine’s top military commander has issued a bleak assessment of the army’s positions on the eastern front, saying they have “worsened significantly in recent days.”

Russian forces were pushing hard to exploit their growing advantage in manpower and ammunition to break through Ukrainian lines, the commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement over the weekend.

“Despite significant losses, the enemy is increasing his efforts by using new units on armored vehicles, thanks to which he periodically achieves tactical gains,” the general said.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

In his office on one of the upper floors of the headquarters of the Paris Olympic organizing committee, Franz Regul has no doubt what is coming.

“We will be attacked,” said Mr. Regul, who leads the team responsible for warding off cyberthreats against this year’s Summer Games in Paris.

Companies and governments around the world now all have teams like Mr. Regul’s that operate in spartan rooms equipped with banks of computer servers and screens with indicator lights that warn of incoming hacking attacks. In the Paris operations center, there is even a red light to alert the staff to the most severe danger.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

The old stock exchange building in downtown Copenhagen — one of the city’s oldest structures, known for its elaborate spire of intertwined dragon tails — partly collapsed in a large fire early Tuesday.

No one was injured, according to a statement from King Frederik X. Images and video from social media showed flames on the structure’s roof and dark clouds of smoke lingering over the city.

It was not immediately clear what caused the fire in the structure, which appeared to be undergoing renovations. As of early Tuesday afternoon, the blaze was still burning with “pockets of fire” in the building, an official with the Copenhagen fire department said.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

The views are spectacular in this corner of eastern Nepal, between the world’s highest mountains and the tea estates of India’s Darjeeling district, where rare orchids grow and red pandas play on the lush hillsides.

But life can be tough. Wild animals destroyed the corn and potato crops of Pasang Sherpa, a farmer born near Mount Everest. He gave up on those plants a dozen years ago and resorted to raising one that seemed to have little value: argeli, an evergreen, yellow-flowering shrub found wild in the Himalayas. Farmers grew it for fencing or firewood.

Mr. Sherpa had no idea that bark stripped from his argeli would one day turn into pure money — the outgrowth of an unusual trade in which one of the poorest pockets of Asia supplies a primary ingredient for the economy in one of the richest.

Japan’s currency is printed on special paper that can no longer be sourced at home. The Japanese love their old-fashioned yen notes, and this year they need mountains of fresh ones, so Mr. Sherpa and his neighbors have a lucrative reason to hang on to their hillsides.

“I hadn’t thought these raw materials would be exported to Japan or that I would make money from this plant,” Mr. Sherpa said. “I’m now quite happy. This success came from nowhere, it grew up from my courtyard.”

Headquartered 2,860 miles away in Osaka, Kanpou Incorporated produces paper used by the Japanese government for official purposes. One of Kanpou’s charitable programs had been scouting the foothills of the Himalayas since the 1990s. It went there to help local farmers dig wells. Its agents eventually stumbled onto a solution for a Japanese problem.

Japan’s supply of mitsumata, the traditional paper used to print its bank notes, was running low. The paper starts with woody pulp from plants of the Thymelaeaceae family, which grow at high altitude with moderate sunshine and good drainage — tea-growing terrain. Shrinking rural populations and climate change were driving Japan’s farmers to abandon their labor-intensive plots.

Kanpou’s president at the time knew that mitsumata had its origins in the Himalayas. So, he wondered: Why not transplant it? After years of trial and error, the company discovered that argeli, a hardier relative, was already growing wild in Nepal. Its farmers just needed tutoring to meet Japan’s exacting standards.

A quiet revolution got underway after earthquakes devastated much of Nepal in 2015. The Japanese sent specialists to the capital, Kathmandu, to help Nepali farmers get serious about making the stuff of cold, hard yen.

Before long, the instructors went up to Ilam district. In the local Limbu tongue, “Il-am” means “twisted path,” and the way there does not disappoint. The road from the nearest airport gets so rough that the first jeep needs changing out halfway — for an even more rugged four-wheel-drive.

By then, Mr. Sherpa had already gotten into the business and was producing 1.2 tons of usable bark a year, cutting his own argeli and boiling it in wooden boxes.

The Japanese taught him to steam off its bark instead, using plastic bundles and metal pipes. Next comes an arduous process of stripping, beating, stretching and drying. The Japanese also taught their Nepali suppliers to harvest each crop just three years after planting, before the bark reddens.

This year, Mr. Sherpa has hired 60 local Nepalis to help him process his harvest and expects to earn eight million Nepali rupees, or $60,000, in profit. (The average annual income in Nepal is about $1,340, according to the World Bank.) Mr. Sherpa hopes to produce 20 of the 140 tons that Nepal will be shipping to Japan.

That’s a majority of the mitsumata needed to print yen, enough to fill about seven cargo containers, winding downhill to the Indian port of Kolkata, to sail 40 days to Osaka. Hari Gopal Shreshta, the general manager of Kanpou’s Nepal arm, oversees this trade, inspecting and buying neatly tied bales in Kathmandu.

“As a Nepali,” said Mr. Shreshta, who is fluent in Japanese, “I feel proud of managing raw materials to print the currency of rich countries like Japan. That’s a great moment for me.”

It is an important moment for the yen, too. Every 20 years, the world’s third-most-traded currency goes in for a redesign. The current notes were first printed in 2004 — their replacements will hit cashiers in July.

The Japanese love their beautiful bills, with their elegant, understated designs in moiré printed on tough, off-white plant fiber instead of cotton or polymer.

The country’s attachment to hard currency makes it an outlier in East Asia. Less than 40 percent of payments in Japan are processed by cards, codes or phones. In South Korea, the figure is about 94 percent. But even for Japan, life is increasingly cashless; the value of its currency in circulation most likely peaked in 2022.

Japan’s central bank reassures everyone with a yen for yen that there are still enough physical notes to go around. The bank notes, if they were all stacked in one place, would stand 1,150 miles high, or 491 times as tall as Mount Fuji.

Before they found the yen trade, Nepali farmers like Mr. Sherpa had been looking for ways to migrate. Crop-hungry boars were just one problem. The lack of decent jobs was the killer. Mr. Sherpa said he had been ready to sell his land in Ilam and move, maybe to work in the Persian Gulf.

Years ago, Faud Bahadur Khadka, now a contented 55-year-old argeli farmer, had a bitter experience as a laborer in the Gulf. He went to Bahrain in 2014, promised a job at a supply company, but ended up working as a cleaner. Nonetheless, two of his sons went to work in Qatar.

Mr. Khadka says he is glad that “this new farming has somehow helped people to get both money and employment.” And he is hopeful: “If other countries also use Nepali crops to print their currencies,” he said, “that will stop the flow of Nepali migrating to Gulf nations and India.”

The warm feeling is mutual. Tadashi Matsubara, the current president of Kanpou, said, “I would love for people to know how important Nepalis and their mitsumata is to the Japanese economy. Honestly, the new bank notes would not have been possible without them.”

Kiuko Notoya contributed reporting from Tokyo.

A government-appointed commission in Germany recommended on Monday that lawmakers legalize abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy, a move that could push the country into a long-avoided debate on an issue that for decades remained in a legal gray zone.

Outside of exceptions for medical reasons or because of rape, abortions in Germany are technically illegal. But, in practice, they are broadly permitted in the first 12 weeks if a woman has received mandatory counseling and then waits at least three days to terminate the pregnancy.

Abortion rights activists say Germany has grown increasingly out of sync with the rest of Europe, where several countries have recently moved to loosen restrictions on abortion or to bolster laws protecting access to the procedure — especially after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Last month, legislators in France voted to explicitly enshrine access to abortion in the Constitution, making their country the first in the world to do so.

In Poland, where a previous conservative government enacted a near-total ban on abortion, politicians are moving forward with draft legislation to loosen some of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws.

Last year, Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz followed through on one of the agenda items set out by his governing coalition by setting up a commission of ethicists, doctors, psychiatrists and other experts to issue recommendations on abortion, egg donations and surrogacy.

But a year on, his three-way coalition — Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the Free Democrats — is under growing strain because of internal disputes on issues ranging from nuclear power to climate policy.

While there are some anti-abortion activists in Germany who want to ban the procedure entirely, most conservatives and the Roman Catholic Church are in favor of the status quo — keeping abortion technically illegal, but tolerated, even though they oppose it.

“We consider it wrong to relativize the fundamental dignity of every human being, including the unborn child, and to relativize, restrict or downgrade the associated fundamental right to life,” Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, who is also the chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, told journalists over the weekend.

The government appears reluctant to open a new societal debate by immediately proposing a law following the commission’s recommendations.

“What we can’t have are debates that set society on fire or even divide it,” Marco Buschmann, Germany’s justice minister, said at a news conference announcing the commission’s findings. He pointed to the intensity of debate in Poland and the United States as a reason for proceeding with caution.

Germany’s largest opposition party, the conservative Christian Democrats, have warned they would challenge any attempts at changing the status quo.

Only six countries in Europe retain restrictive abortion laws, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, an international group that advocates for abortion access. Adriana Lamačkova, the group’s associate director for Europe, said that Germany remains an outlier in a broader trend toward expanding access to abortion.

“The legislative trend in Europe is crystal clear,” she said. “What Germany does, and seems to be the only country in Europe to do, is regulate abortion in the penal code in a way that considers all abortions unlawful.”

For decades, Germany tried to evade contentious debate through a societal understanding in which abortion was tolerated but not decriminalized.

Although East Germany’s communist regime passed one of the most progressive abortion laws in Europe in 1972, legalizing it until the 12th week, an attempt to enact a similar law in West Germany two years later was overturned as unconstitutional by the country’s supreme court, on the grounds that it deprived the unborn of the right to life, and violated the protection of human life guaranteed in the constitution.

But in the years that followed, West Germany broadly adopted a practice in which abortions were technically illegal but could be given, unpunished, with a doctor’s approval.

After German reunification, an attempt to legalize abortion was again overturned by the supreme court in 1993. But it was allowed with counseling and a three-day wait period. The court said the mandatory counseling was a state obligation to try to “encourage” a woman to continue the pregnancy.

It was only in 2022 that Germany overturned a Nazi-era law that banned doctors from disseminating information about abortion services.

On Monday, the panel of experts commissioned by the government urged the country to enshrine abortion access into law.

“Legislators should take action here and make abortion legal and unpunishable,” Liane Wörner, a spokeswoman for the commission, said at a news conference.

The commission said that legislators could also decriminalize second-trimester abortions, but it did not issue any specific recommendation. Abortions from the 22nd week onward should remain “fundamentally illegal,” but “do not necessarily have to be punishable,” the commission said.

But the panel argued that the current system in which early abortions were allowed but technically illegal was “untenable,” according to Ms. Wörner, the commission spokeswoman, who is a law professor at the University of Konstanz.

“The right to life does not have the same weight before birth as it does afterward,” she said at the news conference. “If the right to life were equal, conflicts between life and life could not be resolved. And abortion would be illegal even in situations in which the continuation of the pregnancy endangers the life of the pregnant woman.”

But it remains unlikely that Mr. Scholz’s government will propose a new law to legalize abortions, out of fear that it could stoke fresh tensions with conservative lawmakers.

The 30-year compromise in the country “is not satisfactory for many, but it has created social peace on this issue,” said Alexander Dobrindt, the parliamentary leader for the Christian Social Union.

At the news conference on Monday presenting the panel’s findings, Karl Lauterbach, Germany’s health minister, suggested that the issue should be discussed first in Parliament before the government formulates any draft proposal.

To enter a secret session of Germany’s Parliament, lawmakers must lock their phones and leave them outside. Inside, they are not even allowed to take notes. Yet to many politicians, these precautions against espionage now feel like something of a farce.

Because seated alongside them in those classified meetings are members of the Alternative for Germany, the far-right party known by its German abbreviation, AfD.

In the past few months alone, a leading AfD politician was accused of taking money from pro-Kremlin strategists. One of the party’s parliamentary aides was exposed as having links to a Russian intelligence operative. And some of its state lawmakers flew to Moscow to observe Russia’s stage-managed elections.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

The forces of two rival generals have laid waste to Sudan for a year now, unleashing a wave of violence that has driven 8.6 million people from their homes — now one of the largest waves of displaced people in the world.

The war has reordered Africa’s third-largest nation with breathtaking speed. It has gutted the capital, Khartoum, once a major center of commerce and culture on the Nile. Deserted neighborhoods are now filled with bullet-scarred buildings and bodies buried in shallow graves, according to residents and aid workers.

More than a third of Sudan’s 48 million people are facing catastrophic levels of hunger, according to the United Nations, since harvests and aid deliveries have been disrupted. Nearly 230,000 severely malnourished children and new mothers are facing death in the coming months if they don’t get food and health care, the U.N. Population Fund has warned. Dozens of hospitals and clinics have been shuttered, aid workers say. The closure of schools and universities in a country that once drew many foreign students has precipitated what the U.N. says is “the worst education crisis in the world.”

Mary Aravanopoulos stood clutching her daughter, huddling for safety with about 15 other women in the dress shop filled with ethereal organza gowns. They had watched a man saunter past in the mall corridor, swinging a large knife in his hand back and forth.

Soon, they heard about one woman getting stabbed, then another.

Amid the confusion in those panicked moments, Ms. Aravanopoulos said she immediately thought to herself: “Oh, my God, it’s all about women.”

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Iran’s much-anticipated retaliation for Israel’s killing of senior military leaders produced a fiery aerial display in the skies over Israel and the West Bank.

But in important ways, military analysts say, it was just that: a highly choreographed spectacle.

The more than 300 drones and missiles that hurtled through Iraqi and Jordanian airspace Saturday night before they were brought down seemed designed to create maximum drama while inflicting minimal damage, defense officials and military experts say. Just as they did back in 2020 when retaliating for the U.S. killing of Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iranian leaders this weekend gave plenty of warning that they were launching strikes.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

The enormous salvo of Iranian weapons fired at Israel this weekend turned the countries’ long-running shadow war into a direct confrontation, raising fears that the countries’ old paradigm of trading carefully measured blows had been replaced by something more overt, violent and risky.

But by Monday, Israel had yet to respond to the Iranian assault. Rather than preparing the public for a showdown with its archrival, the government signaled a return to relative normalcy, lifting restrictions on large gatherings and allowing schools to reopen.

Some right-wing Israeli politicians, dismayed by the lack of an immediate response, have argued that Israel needs to strike back forcefully — and soon — or risk losing its deterrence. Other more centrist officials have argued that Israel should instead bide its time before responding and capitalize on the support it has received from allies and regional actors, who are otherwise angry about Israel’s war in Gaza.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Arab countries, from the United Arab Emirates and Oman to Jordan and Egypt, have tried for months to tamp down the conflict between Israel and Hamas, especially after it widened to include armed groups backed by Iran and embedded deep within the Arab world. Some of them, like the Houthis, threaten Arab governments as well.

But the Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel over the weekend, which put the entire region on alert, made the new reality unavoidable: Unlike past Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, and even those involving Israel and Lebanon or Syria, this one keeps expanding.

“Part of why these wars were contained was that they were not a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran,” said Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. “But now we are entering this era where a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran — that could drag the region into the conflict and that could drag the U.S. in — now that prospect of a regional war is going to be on the table all the time.”

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

When Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine more than two years ago, Artem Vradii was sure his business was bound to suffer.

“Who would think about coffee in this situation?” thought Mr. Vradii, the co-founder of a Kyiv coffee roastery named Mad Heads. “Nobody would care.”

But over the next few days after the invasion began, he started receiving messages from Ukrainian soldiers. One asked for bags of ground coffee because he could not stand the energy drinks supplied by the army. Another simply requested beans: He had taken his own grinder to the front.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

With no windows, the gloomy, gray building looming four stories above the rice fields in a remote village in Indonesian Borneo resembles nothing more than a prison.

Hundreds of similar concrete structures, riddled with small holes for ventilation, tower over village shops and homes all along Borneo’s northwestern coast.

But these buildings are not for people. They are for the birds. Specifically, the swiftlet, which builds its nests inside.

Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, once the fulcrum of Gaza’s health system and now an emblem of its destruction, stood in ruins on Sunday, as if a tsunami had surged through it followed by a tornado.

The emergency department was a tidy, off-white building until Israeli troops returned there in March. Two weeks later, it was missing most of its facade, scorched with soot, and punctured with hundreds of bullets and shells.

The eastern floors of the surgery department were left open to the breeze, the walls blown off and the equipment buried under mounds of debris. The bridge connecting the two buildings was no longer there, and the plaza between them — formerly a circular driveway wrapping around a gazebo — had been churned by Israeli armored vehicles into a wasteland of uprooted trees, upturned cars and a half-crushed ambulance.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Thirteen years ago, a poor fisherman in a small Turkish village was retrieving his net from a lake when he heard a noise behind him and turned to find a majestic being standing on the bow of his rowboat.

Gleaming white feathers covered its head, neck and chest, yielding to black plumes on its wings. It stood atop skinny orange legs that nearly matched the color of its long, pointy beak.

The fisherman, Adem Yilmaz, recognized it as one of the white storks that had long summered in the village, he recalled, but he had never seen one so close, much less hosted one on his boat.

Wondering if it was hungry, he tossed it a fish, which the bird devoured. He tossed another. And another.

So began an unlikely tale of man and bird that has captivated Turkey as the passing years — and a deft social media campaign by a local nature photographer — have spread the pair’s story as a modern-day fable of cross-species friendship.

The stork, nicknamed Yaren, or “companion,” in Turkish, not only returned to Mr. Yilmaz’s boat repeatedly that first year, the fisherman said, but after migrating south for the winter, returned the next spring to the same village, the same nest — and the same boat.

Last month, after Yaren appeared in the village for the 13th year in a row, the local news media gleefully covered his arrival like the springtime sighting of a Turkish Punxsutawney Phil.

The pair’s story has brought unexpected fame, although no serious fortune, to Mr. Yilmaz, 70, and Yaren, estimated to be 17. They have co-starred in a children’s book and an award-winning documentary. A children’s adventure movie featuring a cameo by Mr. Yilmaz (and a digital rendering of the stork) is expected to debut in cinemas across Turkey this year.

Stork lovers everywhere can watch Yaren and his partner, Nazli, or “coquette” in Turkish, as they preen, contort their necks, clack their beaks, renovate their nest and occasionally mate, thanks to a 24-hour webcam set up by the local government.

“This is not a tale. This is a true story,” Ali Ozkan, the mayor of Karacabey, whose district includes the village, said in an interview. “It is a true story with the flavor of a tale.”

The bird’s celebrity has bolstered municipal efforts to increase local tourism with walking paths and coffee shops near the district’s lakes and wetlands, he said. The area has developed a stork “master plan” to care for the birds.

He initially faced some criticism from constituents who wondered why a mayor was getting involved with storks, he said. But now, residents call in when they notice damaged nests, and a friend from another city recently phoned him to complain that he could not see Yaren on the webcam.

The story has put Mr. Yilmaz’s village of Eskikaraagac — population 235 — on the map, drawing groups of students and tourists who stroll its narrow streets to see the storks and take boat rides on neighboring Lake Uluabat. Many visitors seek out Yaren’s nest, which sits on a platform atop an electric pole near Mr. Yilmaz’s house, and act star-struck when they encounter the fisherman himself, peppering him with questions and posing for photographs.

One recent morning, Mr. Yilmaz stood in the yard of his small, two-story house holding a tub of fish he had caught. In their nest overhead, Yaren and Nazli dozed, groomed themselves and filled the air with the percussive clacking of their beaks.

“Yaren!” Mr. Yilmaz called.

Both birds glided down to the yard, and Mr. Yilmaz lofted fish into their beaks.

“They are full,” Mr. Yilmaz announced after the birds had downed about two dozen fish. “After 13 years, I can tell.”

Storks have long nested in the village, arriving in the spring and mating before migrating in the late summer toward Africa.

Village elders recall when there seemed to be a stork nest on every roof and residents struggled to prevent the birds from swiping laundry from outdoor lines. But most people liked the birds, whose arrival right after pink flowers bloomed on the almond trees was a harbinger of spring.

Ridvan Cetin, the village’s elected authority, said a count in the 1980s found 41 active nests, meaning 82 storks, not including chicks.

This year, the village has only four active nests, including Yaren’s.

“Now they are very few,” Mr. Cetin said sadly.

No one in the village could recall a bond similar to that between Mr. Yilmaz and Yaren.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mr. Cetin said.

For Mr. Yilmaz, a quiet man with leathery hands and a kind, rutted face, Yaren was a serendipitous addition to what he had hoped would be a late, restful chapter in an otherwise difficult life.

He grew up poor. His father pulled him out of school to work in the fields and fish, no matter how cold the weather.

“My life was between the field and the lake,” he said.

His mother died when he was 13. His father remarried when he was 17 to a woman Mr. Yilmaz did not like. So, with only an elementary school education, he fled to Bursa, the nearest big city, and worked in a factory that made yogurt and other milk products.

At 19, he married another villager he had known since childhood. They lost their first child, a daughter, weeks after her birth. He worked in different milk factories as he and his wife raised three other children, two boys and a girl.

In 2011, with his children grown and living elsewhere with his five grandchildren, he stopped working, returned to the village and moved back into his childhood home, next to the lake where he had fished as a child.

“It was my dream from the day I started working to go to my village and fish,” he said.

Soon after, the stork landed on his boat.

Each time Yaren left, Mr. Yilmaz wondered whether he would return. But after a few years, he stopped worrying.

“I was sure that as long as I was alive, this bird was going to return,” he said.

Early on, no one much cared that Mr. Yilmaz had made friends with a stork. Other villagers teased him or said he was wasting his time — and his fish.

That changed in year five, when Alper Tuydes, a hunter turned wildlife photographer who works for the local government, began sharing photographs of the pair on social media. The story spread, getting a lift each spring with Yaren’s arrival.

The relationship of man and bird corresponds with known stork behaviors, said Omer Donduren, a Turkish ornithologist.

Although storks avoid direct contact with people, they often roost near them, on roofs, in chimneys or atop electricity poles.

The birds tend toward monogamy and display loyalty to their nests, parting ways with their partners to migrate, but rendezvousing in the same nest in the spring to reproduce.

That could explain why Yaren has roosted near Mr. Yilmaz’s house year after year, Mr. Donduren said.

Storks, which can live for more than 20 years in the wild and more than 30 in captivity, also have strong memories, enabling them to remember migration routes from as far north as Poland and Germany to destinations many thousands of miles south, as far as South Africa. It is unclear where Yaren spends his time after he leaves the village, but a tracker affixed to one of his offspring followed the bird over Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic before it stopped working.

Over time, Yaren’s experiences with Mr. Yilmaz have probably become part of his memory, he said.

“Nature doesn’t have much space for emotions,” Mr. Donduren said. “For the stork, it is a matter of easy food. It thinks, There is an easy source of food here. This man seems safe. He doesn’t hurt me.”

Mr. Yilmaz’s explanation is much simpler.

“It is just to love an animal,” he said. “They are God’s creatures.”

One recent morning, Mr. Yilmaz rowed into the lake and pulled up his net, dropping small fish into the boat.

“Yaren!” he called.

The stork took flight, did a loop to surveil the boat and perched on a lamppost near the bank.

“Yaren!” Mr. Yilmaz called again.

The bird took flight again, finally alighting on the boat, where Mr. Yilmaz tossed him fish after fish.

After a while, the stork lifted off, glided around the village and returned to his nest.

“That’s it,” Mr. Yilmaz said with a satisfied smile. “He is full.”

Yukihiro Shimura always arrives first. He quietly puts on his baseball uniform. He rakes the dirt field meditatively. He picks up the coconut husks and dog poop. And, finally, when he finishes, he bows to Rio de Janeiro’s only baseball field.

Then his misfit team — including a geologist, graphic designer, English teacher, film student, voice actor and motorcycle delivery man — starts to form. Most are in their 20s and 30s, and some are still learning the basics of throwing, catching and swinging a bat.

It was not what Mr. Shimura envisioned when he signed up for this gig. “In my mind, the age range would be 15 to 18,” he said. “I should have asked.”

The mayor grew up in a building so decrepit — filthy hallways, no private toilets, no showers — that his friends in nearby concrete towers pitied him.

Five decades later, that building — in St.-Ouen, a Paris suburb — is a distant memory, and in its place rises France’s Olympic pride: the athletes’ village, with its architectural-showcase buildings that are outfitted with solar panels, deep-sinking pipes for cooling and heating, and graceful balconies from which to look down on the forest planted below. One-quarter will become public housing after the Games.

“All of a sudden, we have the same feeling of pride as people living in the hypercenter,” said the mayor of St.-Ouen, Karim Bouamrane, 51, using his personal shorthand for the glamorous downtown playgrounds of the elites. “There was Los Angeles, Barcelona, Beijing, London, Sydney and, now, there is St.-Ouen.”

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

The defining experience of Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s childhood left her with badly scraped knees and her classmates with broken bones.

During sixth grade in Osaka, Japan, Ms. Yamazaki — now a 34-year-old documentary filmmaker — practiced for weeks with classmates to form a human pyramid seven levels high for an annual school sports day. Despite the blood and tears the children shed as they struggled to make the pyramid work, the accomplishment she felt when the group kept it from toppling became “a beacon of why I feel like I am resilient and hard-working.”

Now, Ms. Yamazaki, who is half-British, half-Japanese, is using her documentary eye to chronicle such moments that she believes form the essence of Japanese character, for better or worse.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Notre-Dame Cathedral sat in the pre-dawn chill like a spaceship docked in the heart of Paris, its exoskeleton of scaffolding lit by bright lights. Pink clouds appeared to the east as machinery hummed to life and workers started clambering around.

One of them, Hank Silver, wearing a yellow hard hat, stood on a platform above the Seine River and attached cables to oak trusses shaped like massive wooden triangles. A crane hoisted them onto the nave of the cathedral, which was devastated by fire in 2019.

Mr. Silver — a 41-year-old American-Canadian carpenter — is something of an unlikely candidate to work on the restoration of an 860-year-old Gothic monument and Catholic landmark in France. Born in New York City into an observant Jewish family, he owns a small timber framing business in rural New England and admits that until recently he didn’t even know what a nave was.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

When she took the stage to perform at Carnegie Hall in front of 107 Korean War veterans, the singer Kim Insoon was thinking of her father, an American soldier stationed in South Korea during the postwar decades whom she had never met or even seen.

“You are my fathers,” she told the soldiers in the audience before singing “Father,” one of her Korean-language hits.

“To me, the United States has always been my father’s country,” Ms. Kim said in a recent interview, recalling that 2010 performance. “It was also the first place where I wanted to show how successful I had become — without him and in spite of him.”

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

On a visit to the former battlefield of Khe Sanh, scene of one of the bloodiest standoffs of the Vietnam War, the only people Chuck Searcy encountered on the broad, barren field were two young boys who led him to an unexploded rocket lying by a ditch.

One of the youngsters reached out to give the bomb a kick until Mr. Searcy cried out, “No, Stop!”

“It was my first encounter with unexploded ordnance,” Mr. Searcy said of that moment in 1992. “I had no idea that I would be dedicating my life to removing them.”

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

The sports apparel giant Adidas abruptly stopped the sale of German soccer jerseys created with the player number “44” this week because the figure, when depicted in the official lettering of the uniform’s design, too closely resembled a well-known Nazi symbol.

The stylized square font used by Adidas for the jerseys, which will be worn by Germany’s team when it hosts this summer’s European soccer championships, makes the “44” resemble the “SS” emblem used by the Schutzstaffel, the feared Nazi paramilitary group that was instrumental in the murder of six million Jews. The emblem is one of dozens of Nazi symbols, phrases and gestures that are banned in Germany.

The country’s soccer federation, which is responsible for the design, said Monday any similarity to the logo created by the design’s numbering was unintentional.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

In the United States, many Major League Baseball games feature long periods of calm, punctuated by cheering when there’s action on the field or the stadium organ plays a catchy tune.

But in South Korea, a baseball game is a sustained sensory overload. Each player has a fight song, and cheering squads — including drummers and dancers who stand on platforms near the dugouts facing the spectators — ensure that there is near-constant chanting. Imagine being at a ballpark where every player, even a rookie, gets the star treatment.

Nearly a month after international figure skating’s governing body revised the results of a marquee competition at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, stripping Russia of the gold medal and giving the United States team a long-delayed victory, a new fight about the outcome erupted on Monday.

Eight members of the Canadian squad that competed in the team competition in Beijing have filed a case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport demanding that they be awarded bronze medals in the team event. The court announced the filing but revealed no details.

The Canadians, whose case was joined by their country’s skating federation and national Olympic committee, are expected to argue that figure skating’s global governing body erred when it revised the results of the competition in January after a Russian skater who had taken part, the teenage prodigy Kamila Valieva, was given a four-year ban for doping.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

In many parts of Latin America, baseball is a popular and well-established sport with men’s professional leagues in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, among others. But women wanting to play baseball’s cousin — softball — professionally had only one option: to leave. They had to go to the United States or Japan.

Until now.

In what is believed to be a first in Latin America — a region where men often have more opportunities than women, particularly in sports — a professional women’s softball league has started in Mexico. On Jan. 25, when the inaugural season began, 120 women on six teams got to call themselves professional softball players, many for the first time.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Geoff Thompson knows there are plenty of people who want to buy what he has to sell. The phone calls and emails over the last few weeks have left no doubt. And really, that is no surprise. Few industries are quite as appealing or as prestigious as English soccer, and Mr. Thompson has a piece of it.

It is, admittedly, a comparatively small piece: South Shields F.C., the team he has owned for almost a decade, operates in English soccer’s sixth tier, several levels below, and a number of worlds away, from the dazzling light and international allure of the Premier League. But while his team might be small, Mr. Thompson is of the view that it is, at least, as perfectly poised for profitability as any minor-league English soccer club could hope to be.

South Shields has earned four promotions to higher leagues in his nine years as chairman. The team owns its stadium. Mr. Thompson has spent considerable sums of money modernizing the bathrooms, the club shop and the private boxes. There is a thriving youth academy and an active charitable foundation. “We have done most of the hard yards,” Mr. Thompson said.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Mary Aravanopoulos estaba abrazada a su hija, acurrucada para ponerse a salvo con otras 15 mujeres en la tienda de vestidos de organza etéreos. Habían visto pasar a un hombre por el pasillo del centro comercial, sin prisa, balanceando en la mano un gran cuchillo.

Pronto oyeron que apuñalaban a una mujer y luego a otra.

En medio de la confusión de aquellos momentos de pánico, Aravanopoulos dijo que pensó inmediatamente: “Dios mío, es contra las mujeres”.

El lunes, muchos otros australianos habían llegado a la misma conclusión sobre el espeluznante ataque con arma blanca del fin de semana en un centro comercial de Sídney, en el que murieron seis personas, cinco de ellas mujeres. De la decena de personas que resultaron heridas por lo que al parecer fue un acto aleatorio de violencia masiva —uno de los más mortíferos ocurridos en el país en las últimas décadas—, todas menos dos eran mujeres, entre ellas una bebé de apenas 9 meses.

Es posible que nunca se aclaren los motivos del agresor, del que se sabía que padecía una enfermedad mental y que fue abatido a tiros por una inspectora de policía, Amy Scott.

Pero para muchas personas, fue un recordatorio más de la misoginia y las amenazas de violencia que pueden sufrir las mujeres en la sociedad australiana. Menos de 24 horas antes de los apuñalamientos, cientos de personas habían salido a la calle para protestar por la reciente cadena de asesinatos de tres mujeres. Y el lunes, la sentencia de un caso civil parecía dar validez a una denuncia de violación que se remontaba a años atrás y que obligaba a replantearse cómo la clase dirigente australiana, dominada por hombres, había victimizado a las mujeres durante décadas.

“La ideología del agresor estaba muy clara: odio a las mujeres”, escribió el lunes Josh Burns, miembro del Parlamento, en la red social X. “Debemos denunciarlo por lo que es”.

Para Maria Lewis, escritora y guionista, las acciones del agresor, por inexplicables que fueran, tenían ecos de una idea australiana de lo que significa ser hombre.

“La cultura de ‘hermanos que apoyan a hermanos’ está tan profunda e intrínsecamente ligada a la idea australiana de masculinidad”, afirma. “Esa idea cargada de testosterona de lo que representa la masculinidad se refuerza constantemente en la cultura pop”.

El lunes fue un día de luto nacional en Australia, con las banderas ondeando a media asta en todo el país. El atacante fue identificado por las autoridades como Joel Cauchi, de 40 años, un hombre conocido por las autoridades que nunca había sido detenido.

“El desglose por sexos es, por supuesto, preocupante”, dijo el primer ministro Anthony Albanese en una entrevista radiofónica el lunes por la mañana, afirmando que la policía estaba investigando si el atacante había atacado deliberadamente a mujeres.

Cauchi se había mudado recientemente miles de kilómetros desde Queensland, en el noreste del país, a la zona de Sídney.

En Toowoomba, Queensland, los periodistas congregados frente a su casa le preguntaron al padre de Cauchi, Andrew Cauchi, por qué su hijo, que no había estado en contacto regular con su familia, podía haber atacado a mujeres.

Cauchi padre dijo que podía deberse a la frustración que le producía su incapacidad para salir con mujeres.

“Quería una novia, no tenía habilidades sociales y se sentía frustrado hasta el tuétano”, declaró Cauchi a los medios de comunicación locales.

Tessa Boyd-Caine, directora ejecutiva de la Organización Nacional de Investigación para la Seguridad de las Mujeres de Australia, dijo que era comprensible que la gente buscara una explicación basada en el género inmediatamente después del ataque. Al mismo tiempo, advirtió que la inmensa mayoría de los casos de violencia contra las mujeres se producen en el hogar y a manos de personas conocidas, y no de forma indiscriminada, como en el ataque del sábado.

“¿Cómo entender un acto aleatorio de violencia tan brutal y mortal, perpetrado por un hombre que la policía considera que podría haber atacado a mujeres?”, dijo. “Es una fase tan temprana de la investigación, pero la gente va a querer respuestas a preguntas difíciles”.

El lunes ya habían sido identificadas las seis víctimas mortales de los apuñalamientos del sábado. Las mujeres eran Ashlee Good, de 38 años y madre primeriza; Jade Young, de 47 años y madre de dos hijas; Dawn Singleton, de 25 años y empleada del sector de la moda; Pikria Darchia, de 55 años, artista y diseñadora; y Yixuan Cheng, de nacionalidad china y estudiante en Sídney. El único hombre era Faraz Tahir, de 30 años, guardia de seguridad y recién llegado de Pakistán.

Las autoridades policiales declararon el lunes que habían concluido la investigación de la extensa escena del crimen y devuelto el control del complejo comercial a sus operadores.

Frente al lugar, que permanecía cerrado, un flujo constante de dolientes seguía dejando flores el lunes, que se sumaban a una gran pila que había crecido hasta extenderse por varios escaparates. Muchos de los visitantes eran grupos de mujeres: madres e hijas cogidas de la mano, amigas que se secaban las lágrimas unas a otras, mujeres que parecían aferrarse un poco más a sus hijas.

Aravanopoulos y su hija, Alexia Costa, estaban entre los que dejaban flores. Habían vuelto para recuperar su automóvil, que desde el sábado había quedado inaccesible en el centro comercial acordonado.

Aravanopoulos, de 55 años, dijo que se sentía especialmente culpable por el roce con el peligro del sábado, porque había insistido en ir de compras esa tarde a fin de elegir un vestido para el próximo cumpleaños, 21 años, de su hija. Como mujer que trabaja en el sector de la construcción, dominado por los hombres, ha educado a sus hijas para que nunca se echen atrás y siempre se defiendan.

“Creen que las mujeres no nos vamos a defender”, dijo.

Al creer que el atacante estaba escogiendo a mujeres, dijo que le estremecía pensar qué habría pasado si las jóvenes encargadas de la tienda no hubieran actuado con rapidez y bajado la puerta enrrollable.

“Era una tienda llena de mujeres, y las encargadas fueron las heroínas para nosotras”, relató.

Simone Scoppa, de 42 años, que también estuvo en el lugar de homenaje el lunes, dijo que la oleada de apuñalamientos era solo el más reciente incidente dirigido contra mujeres que le hace mirar por encima del hombro mientras pasea a su perro por la noche, incluso en su barrio de las afueras, y llevar las llaves en la mano como arma defensiva, por si acaso.

El hecho de que el lugar del atentado sea un centro comercial también hace que las mujeres se sientan vulnerables.

“¿Dónde van a estar muchas mujeres un sábado por la tarde?”, dijo Scoppa. “Ves a los padres y a los maridos en los asientos cuidando las bolsas, y a las madres amamantando”.

Yan Zhuang colaboró con reportería.

Victoria Kim es corresponsal en Seúl, y se centra en la cobertura de noticias en directo. Más de Victoria Kim

Los ataques sin precedentes de Irán contra Israel del fin de semana pasado han sacudido las suposiciones de Israel sobre su enemigo, afectando sus estimaciones de que la mejor forma de disuadir a Irán era con una mayor agresión israelí.

Durante años, los funcionarios israelíes han alegado, tanto en público como en privado, que cuanto más fuerte sea el golpe contra Irán, más cauteloso será su gobierno a la hora de contratacar. El bombardeo iraní realizado con más de 300 aviones no tripulados y misiles el sábado —el primer ataque directo de Irán contra Israel— ha revocado esa lógica.

La ofensiva fue una respuesta al ataque de Israel realizado este mes en Siria que mató a siete oficiales militares iraníes. Los analistas afirmaron que la respuesta demostraba que los líderes de Teherán ya no se conforman con luchar contra Israel a través de sus diversas fuerzas aliadas, como Hizbulá en el Líbano o los hutíes en Yemen, sino que están preparados para enfrentarse a Israel de forma directa.

“Creo que calculamos mal”, dijo Sima Shine, exjefa de investigación del Mosad, la agencia de inteligencia exterior de Israel.

“La experiencia acumulada de Israel es que Irán no tiene buenos medios para tomar represalias”, añadió Shine. “Había una fuerte percepción de que no querían involucrarse en la guerra”.

En cambio, Irán ha creado “un paradigma completamente nuevo”, afirmó Shine.

Al final, la respuesta de Irán causó pocos daños en Israel, en gran parte porque Irán había telegrafiado sus intenciones con mucha antelación, dando a Israel y a sus aliados varios días para preparar una defensa fuerte. Irán también emitió una declaración, incluso antes de que terminara la ofensiva, de que no tenía más planes de atacar a Israel.

Sin embargo, los ataques de Irán han convertido una guerra que durante años se había librado en la sombra entre Israel e Irán en una confrontación directa, aunque aún podría contenerse, dependiendo de cómo responda Israel. Irán ha demostrado que tiene una capacidad armamentística considerable que solo puede contrarrestarse con un apoyo intensivo de los aliados de Israel, incluido Estados Unidos, lo que subraya cuánto daño podría infligir sin esa protección.

Irán e Israel solían tener una relación más ambigua, e Israel incluso le vendió armas a Irán durante la guerra entre Irán e Irak en la década de 1980. Pero sus vínculos se desgastaron después de que terminó la guerra. Los líderes iraníes se volvieron cada vez más críticos del enfoque de Israel hacia los palestinos e Israel se volvió cauteloso ante los esfuerzos de Irán por construir un programa nuclear y su mayor apoyo a Hizbulá.

Durante más de una década, ambos países han atacado de manera silenciosa los intereses del otro en toda la región, pero rara vez anunciaron alguna acción individual.

Irán ha apoyado a Hamás, además de financiar y armar a otras milicias regionales hostiles a Israel, varias de las cuales han estado involucradas en un conflicto de bajo nivel con Israel desde los ataques mortales que Hamás ejecutó el 7 de octubre. De manera similar, Israel ha atacado regularmente a esas fuerzas aliadas, así como a funcionarios iraníes a los cuales ha neutralizado, incluso en suelo iraní, asesinatos por los que ha evitado asumir responsabilidad formal.

Ambos países han atacado buques mercantes vinculados a sus oponentes y también han llevado a cabo ataques cibernéticos entre sí. Además, Israel ha saboteado repetidas veces el programa nuclear de Irán.

Ahora, esa guerra se está librando abiertamente. Y, en gran parte, se debe a lo que algunos analistas ven como un error de cálculo israelí del 1 de abril, cuando los ataques israelíes destruyeron parte del complejo de la embajada iraní en Damasco, Siria, uno de los aliados y representantes más cercanos de Irán, y mataron a los siete oficiales militares iraníes, incluidos tres altos comandantes.

El ataque se realizó tras repetidas insinuaciones de los líderes israelíes de que una mayor presión sobre Irán forzaría a Teherán a reducir sus ambiciones en todo Medio Oriente. “Un aumento de la presión ejercida sobre Irán es fundamental”, dijo en enero Yoav Galant, ministro de Defensa de Israel, “y podría evitar una escalada regional en ámbitos adicionales”.

En cambio, el ataque a Damasco desencadenó el primer ataque iraní contra territorio soberano israelí. Es posible que Israel haya malinterpretado la posición de Irán debido a la falta de respuesta iraní a anteriores asesinatos de altos funcionarios iraníes perpetrados por Israel, según dijeron los analistas.

Aunque durante mucho tiempo los líderes israelíes han temido que algún día Irán construya y dispare misiles nucleares contra Israel, se habían acostumbrado a atacar a funcionarios iraníes sin obtener represalias directas de Teherán.

En uno de los ataques más descarados, Israel asesinó al principal científico nuclear de Irán, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, en 2020, en suelo iraní. Incluso hace poco, en diciembre, Israel fue acusado de asesinar a un alto general iraní, Sayyed Razi Mousavi, en un ataque en Siria, donde funcionarios militares iraníes asesoran y apoyan al gobierno sirio. Esos y varios otros asesinatos no provocaron ataques iraníes de represalia contra Israel.

La decisión de Irán de responder esta vez fue motivada en parte por la indignación en algunos círculos de la sociedad iraní por la pasividad previa de Irán, según Ali Vaez, un analista sobre Irán.

“Nunca antes había visto el grado de presión que recibió el régimen desde la base en los últimos 10 días”, dijo Vaez, analista del International Crisis Group, un grupo de investigación con sede en Bruselas.

Irán también necesitaba demostrarles a sus fuerzas aliadas como Hizbulá que podía defenderse por sí mismo, añadió Vaez. “Demostrar que Irán tiene demasiado miedo para tomar represalias contra un ataque tan descarado a sus propias instalaciones diplomáticas en Damasco habría sido muy perjudicial para las relaciones de Irán y la credibilidad de los iraníes ante los ojos de sus socios regionales”, explicó.

Para algunos analistas, el ataque de Israel contra Damasco todavía podría resultar ser un error de cálculo menor de lo que parecía en un principio. El ataque aéreo de Irán ha distraído la atención de la tambaleante guerra de Israel contra Hamás y ha reafirmado los vínculos de Israel con los aliados occidentales y árabes que se habían vuelto cada vez más críticos de la conducta de Israel en la Franja de Gaza.

El hecho de que Irán le haya dado a Israel tanto tiempo para prepararse para el ataque podría indicar que Teherán sigue relativamente disuadido y que solo buscaba proyectar la imagen de una respuesta importante y, al mismo tiempo, evitar una escalada significativa, afirmó Michael Koplow, analista de Israel en Israel Policy Forum, un grupo de investigación con sede en Nueva York.

“Creo que todavía no hay certeza”, dijo Koplow.

Gabby Sobelman colaboró con este reportaje.

Patrick Kingsley es el jefe de la corresponsalía en Jerusalén, y lidera la cobertura de Israel, Gaza y Cisjordania. Más de Patrick Kingsley

El paisaje es espectacular en este rincón del este de Nepal, entre las montañas más altas del mundo y las plantaciones de té del distrito indio de Darjeeling, donde crecen raras orquídeas y los pandas rojos juegan en las exuberantes laderas.

Pero la vida puede ser dura. Los animales salvajes destruyeron los cultivos de maíz y papas de Pasang Sherpa, un agricultor nacido cerca del Everest. Sherpa abandonó esas plantas hace más de una decena de años y recurrió a la cría de una que parecía tener poco valor: el argeli (Edgeworthia gardneri), un arbusto de hoja perenne y flores amarillas que se encuentra silvestre en el Himalaya. Los granjeros lo cultivaban para hacer vallas u obtener leña.

Sherpa no tenía ni idea de que la corteza arrancada del argeli se convertiría un día en dinero puro: el resultado de un comercio inusual en el que uno de los lugares más pobres de Asia suministra un insumo primario para la economía de uno de los más ricos.

La moneda japonesa se imprime en un papel especial que ya no se puede conseguir en el país. Los japoneses adoran sus anticuados billetes de yen, y este año necesitan montañas de billetes nuevos, así que Sherpa y sus vecinos tienen una lucrativa razón para aferrarse a sus laderas.

“No había pensado que estas materias primas se exportarían a Japón ni que yo ganaría dinero con esta planta”, dice Sherpa. “Ahora estoy muy contento. Este éxito surgió de la nada, creció en mi patio”.

Con sede a unos 4602 kilómetros de distancia, en Osaka, Kanpou Incorporated, produce el papel que el gobierno japonés utiliza para fines oficiales. Uno de los programas benéficos de Kanpou llevaba explorando las estribaciones del Himalaya desde los años noventa. Fue allí para ayudar a los agricultores locales a cavar pozos. Sus agentes acabaron dando con una solución para un problema japonés.

El suministro de mitsumata, el papel tradicional utilizado para imprimir los billetes de banco, se estaba agotando. El papel se fabrica con pulpa leñosa de plantas de la familia de las timeleáceas, que crecen a gran altitud con sol moderado y buen drenaje, un terreno propicio para el cultivo del té. La disminución de la población rural y el cambio climático estaban empujando a los agricultores japoneses a abandonar sus parcelas, que requerían mucha mano de obra.

El entonces presidente de Kanpou sabía que la mitsumata tenía su origen en el Himalaya. Así que se preguntó: ¿Por qué no trasplantarla? Tras años de ensayo y error, la empresa descubrió que el argeli, un pariente más resistente, ya crecía silvestre en Nepal. Sus agricultores solo necesitaban ayuda para cumplir las exigentes normas japonesas.

Una revolución silenciosa se puso en marcha después de que los terremotos devastaran gran parte de Nepal en 2015. Los japoneses enviaron especialistas a la capital, Katmandú, para ayudar a los agricultores nepalíes a tomarse en serio la fabricación de la materia prima del frío y duro yen.

Al poco tiempo, los instructores subieron al distrito de Ilam. En la lengua local limbu, “Il-am” significa “camino torcido”, y el camino hasta allí no defrauda. La carretera desde el aeropuerto más cercano es tan accidentada que el primer jeep debe cambiarse a mitad de camino por un todoterreno aún más accidentado.

Para entonces, Sherpa ya se había metido en el negocio y producía 1,2 toneladas de corteza aprovechable al año, cortando su propio argeli y cociéndolo en cajas de madera.

Los japoneses le enseñaron a cocer la corteza al vapor, utilizando fardos de plástico y tubos metálicos. A continuación viene un arduo proceso de descortezado, golpeado, estirado y secado. Los japoneses también enseñaron a sus proveedores nepalíes a recoger cada cosecha justo tres años después de plantarla, antes de que la corteza enrojezca.

Este año, Sherpa ha contratado a 60 nepalíes para que le ayuden a procesar su cosecha y espera obtener ocho millones de rupias nepalíes, o 60.000 dólares, de ganancia. (El ingreso medio anual en Nepal es de unos 1340 dólares, según el Banco Mundial). Sherpa espera producir 20 de las 140 toneladas que Nepal enviará a Japón.

Eso es la mayor parte de la mitsumata necesaria para imprimir yenes, suficiente para llenar unos siete contenedores de carga, que serpentean cuesta abajo hasta el puerto indio de Calcuta, para navegar 40 días hasta Osaka. Hari Gopal Shreshta, director general de la rama nepalí de Kanpou, supervisa este comercio, inspeccionando y comprando en Katmandú los fardos cuidadosamente atados.

“Como nepalí”, dice Shreshta, que habla japonés con fluidez, “me siento orgulloso de gestionar materias primas para imprimir la moneda de países ricos como Japón. Es un gran momento para mí”.

También es un momento importante para el yen. Cada 20 años, la tercera moneda más negociada del mundo se somete a un rediseño. Los billetes actuales se imprimieron por primera vez en 2004; sus sustitutos llegarán a los cajeros en julio.

Los japoneses adoran sus bellos billetes, con sus elegantes y sobrios diseños en muaré impresos en resistente fibra vegetal blanquecina en lugar de algodón o polímero.

El apego del país a la moneda fuerte lo convierte en un caso atípico en Asia oriental. Menos del 40 por ciento de los pagos en Japón se procesan con tarjetas, códigos o teléfonos. En Corea del Sur, la cifra ronda el 94 por ciento. Pero incluso para Japón, la vida funciona cada vez más sin efectivo; el valor de su moneda en circulación probablemente alcanzó su máximo en 2022.

El banco central de Japón asegura a todos los que tienen un yen que aún hay suficientes billetes físicos para todos. Si todos los billetes estuvieran apilados en un mismo lugar, alcanzarían una altura de unos 1850 kilómetros, es decir, poco más de dos veces la altura del monte Fuji.

Antes de encontrar el comercio del yen, los granjeros nepalíes como Sherpa habían estado buscando formas de emigrar. Los jabalíes hambrientos de cosechas eran solo un problema. La falta de trabajos decentes era el verdadero asesino. Sherpa dijo que había estado dispuesto a vender su tierra en Ilam y trasladarse, tal vez para trabajar en el golfo Pérsico.

Hace años, Faud Bahadur Khadka, ahora un satisfecho agricultor argelino de 55 años, tuvo una amarga experiencia como trabajador en el Golfo. Fue a Bahréin en 2014, con la promesa de un empleo en una empresa de suministros, pero acabó trabajando de limpiador. Sin embargo, dos de sus hijos se fueron a trabajar a Qatar.

Khadka dice que se alegra de que “esta nueva agricultura haya ayudado de alguna manera a la gente a conseguir tanto dinero como empleo.” Y se muestra esperanzado: “Si otros países también utilizan los cultivos nepaleses para imprimir sus monedas”, dice, “eso detendrá el flujo de nepaleses que emigran a las naciones del Golfo y a la India.“

El cálido sentimiento es mutuo. Tadashi Matsubara, actual presidente de Kanpou, afirma: “Me encantaría que la gente supiera lo importantes que son los nepalíes y su mitsumata para la economía japonesa. Sinceramente, los nuevos billetes no habrían sido posibles sin ellos”.

Kiuko Notoya colaboró reportando desde Tokio.

Alex Travelli es corresponsal del Times en Nueva Delhi, donde se ocupa de asuntos económicos y empresariales en India y el resto del sur de Asia. Anteriormente trabajó como redactor y corresponsal para The Economist. Más de Alex Travelli

Las autoridades encontraron al exvicepresidente ecuatoriano Jorge Glas en un “coma profundo autoinducido” el lunes en la cárcel, unos días después de que fuera detenido por la policía en una captura dramática dentro de la embajada de México en Quito.

Glas ingirió antidepresivos y sedantes, según un informe policial, y estaba siendo trasladado a un hospital militar para su observación.

El exvicepresidente, que enfrenta una acusación de malversación de fondos en Ecuador, había buscado refugio en la embajada mexicana en un intento de evitar su detención. La semana pasada protagonizó un episodio de tensión diplomática cuando la policía entró en la embajada en Quito, lo detuvo y lo trasladó a un centro de detención.

Un tratado diplomático de 1961 determina que el gobierno del país anfitrión no puede ingresar a las embajadas extranjeras sin el permiso del jefe de la misión, una limitación que solo se ha transgredido en contadas ocasiones.

El nuevo presidente de Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, ha querido dar una imagen de firmeza frente a la delincuencia en medio de una creciente crisis de seguridad en la región, y ha defendido la decisión de detener a Glas, a quien califica de delincuente y no de preso político.

El lunes, cuando se conoció la noticia de la sobredosis de Glas, Noboa reiteró esta postura al afirmar que tenía la “obligación” de detener a personas como Glas o el país se enfrentaría al “riesgo inminente de su fuga”.

“Ecuador es un país de paz y de justicia”, continuó, “que respeta a todas las naciones y el derecho internacional”.

Los abogados de Glas, aliado del expresidente Rafael Correa, afirman que es objeto de una persecución política. Glas fue vicepresidente de Correa entre 2013 y 2017.

Thalíe Ponce colaboró con reportería desde Guayaquil, Ecuador, y Genevieve Glatsky desde Bogotá, Colombia.

Julie Turkewitz es jefa del buró de los Andes, ubicado en Bogotá, Colombia. Cubre Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador y Perú. Más de Julie Turkewitz