European leaders raced on Sunday to salvage Ukraine’s ruptured relationship with the United States, with Britain and France assembling a “coalition of the willing” to develop a plan for ending Ukraine’s war with Russia. They hope this effort will win the backing of a skeptical President Trump.

Gathering in London at the invitation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, the leaders vowed to bolster support for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine after his bitter clash with Mr. Trump last week. But several also expressed hope that the two could repair their breach, underscoring Europe’s reluctance to cast off a trans-Atlantic alliance that has kept the peace for 80 years.

“We are at a crossroads in history,” Mr. Starmer said after the meeting. “Europe must do the heavy lifting,” he declared, but added, “To support peace, and to succeed, this effort must have strong U.S. backing.”

Mr. Starmer said he believed that despite Mr. Trump’s anger toward Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office on Friday, Mr. Trump was committed to a lasting peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. He said Britain and France, working with other European countries, would develop their own plan with Mr. Zelensky.

Details of the plan were sketchy, but Mr. Starmer suggested that the Europeans could use it as a basis to persuade Mr. Trump to commit to American security guarantees. Britain and France have already pledged to contribute troops to a peacekeeping force and are trying to enlist other countries across Europe.

“I wouldn’t be taking this step down this road if I didn’t think it would yield a positive outcome in terms of ensuring that we move together,” Mr. Starmer said, referring to Mr. Trump.

His comments captured the dilemma confronting Europe two weeks after Mr. Trump’s surprise overture to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Neither Europe nor Ukraine currently has seats at the table in a potential Trump-brokered peace deal. Nor has Mr. Trump agreed to give any security assurances to prevent Russia from launching another invasion of its neighbor.

Mr. Trump’s acrimonious exchange with Mr. Zelensky deepened the divide. “Nobody wanted to see what happened last Friday,” said Mr. Starmer, who had his own, much smoother meeting with Mr. Trump a day earlier.

The prime minister has tried to mediate between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump. Speaking to both men by phone after their clash, he floated the idea of Mr. Zelensky’s returning to the White House on Friday evening to mend fences with the president, according to a senior British official.

Both leaders demurred, saying it would be better to let tempers cool and the air to clear, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue.

Still, Mr. Zelensky has also expressed a belief that his rift with Mr. Trump is not irreparable. “I think our relationship will continue,” he told reporters after the gathering in London. He did, however, take issue with what happened at the White House.

“I do not think it’s right when such discussions are totally open,” Mr. Zelensky said adding that “the format of what happened, I don’t think it brought something positive or additional to us as partners.”

On Sunday in London, Europe wrapped Mr. Zelensky in a warm embrace. He won gestures of support from the 18 assembled leaders, including President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada.

Afterward, Mr. Zelensky flew to meet King Charles III at his country estate, Sandringham, northeast of London. That visit, at the request of Mr. Zelensky, had a symbolic resonance, since Mr. Starmer had hand-delivered a rare invitation to Mr. Trump from the king to make a second state visit to Britain.

Yet behind the choreographed show of solidarity, there was a recognition that keeping the United States on board remains critical.

“Starmer has two goals,” said Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst at the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. “Build an offer with the Ukrainians and Europeans that keeps the U.S. positively engaged in Ukraine’s security, while simultaneously preparing for a worst-case scenario where that may not prove possible.”

That will require European countries to shoulder a much heavier burden in the continent’s defense. Mr. Starmer pushed leaders to follow Britain in bolstering its military spending. Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, said several countries had pledged to do so, though he declined to name them.

On Saturday, after meeting Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Starmer gave Ukraine a loan of 2.26 billion pounds (about $2.8 billion) to buy military hardware. On Sunday, he announced plans to allow Ukraine to use 1.6 billion pounds ($2 billion) in British export financing to buy more than 5,000 advanced air defense missiles.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the European Union would fortify Ukraine with economic and military aid, aiming to turn it into “a steel porcupine that is indigestible for potential invaders.”

The Ukraine war has thrust Mr. Starmer into an unaccustomed place for a British prime minister: the heart of Europe, during a crisis. More than eight years after the country voted to leave the European Union, the rapidly changing security landscape is driving Britain closer to the continent.

Catherine Ashton, a Briton who served as the bloc’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said Mr. Starmer’s successful meeting with Mr. Trump had reinforced his credentials as a leader for Europe.

“It is unsurprising that allies in Europe are gathering in London this weekend and equally unsurprising that the U.K. is being taken much more seriously in Brussels and capitals,” Ms. Ashton said.

And yet there are limits to Mr. Starmer’s diplomacy. He was unable to extract security guarantees from Mr. Trump, despite an exaggerated show of deference to the president that included the invitation from the king.

In Washington, a Trump administration official said Mr. Trump would meet on Monday with his top national security aides, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to consider, and possibly take action on, a range of policy options for Ukraine.

These include suspending or canceling American military aid to Ukraine, including the final shipments of ammunition and equipment authorized and paid for during the Biden administration, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

For Mr. Starmer, the crisis is an opportunity to draw closer to Europe. He has long wanted to do that on the trade front but has approached it gingerly because of the political sensitivities at home. The Labour Party does not want to lose its core working-class voters, many of whom favored Brexit, to the anti-immigration party, Reform U.K., which is led by Nigel Farage.

But boosting military spending is popular with Reform voters. Standing behind Ukraine and against Russian aggression also puts Mr. Farage, with his history of sympathy for Mr. Putin, in a tricky position.

Whether that will allow Mr. Starmer to reintegrate Britain’s economy and trade with that of the European Union is another question. Some analysts noted that the E.U. was in no rush to overhaul its existing trade agreement with Britain, which it views as beneficial to the continent. Mr. Starmer’s political fortunes still depend on his government’s turning around Britain’s ailing economy.

“The country is in such a dire state that I don’t think Starmer will be rewarded for being an international statesman,” said Mr. Rahman, the analyst. “It’s an arguably dangerous thing for a prime minister to try to build political capital abroad when the domestic agenda isn’t moving in the direction he wants.”

Mr. Starmer’s use of the phrase “coalition of the willing” had a disquieting echo of President George W. Bush in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Britain, under a Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, joined the United States, but France and Germany did not.

The shock of Mr. Trump’s statements about Russia and Ukraine could reduce such divisions this time around, diplomats said.

“People realize they can no longer count on a nice Russia and a generous America, and that they have to get their act together on a number of issues, including defense and security,” said João Vale de Almeida, a former E.U. ambassador to the United States and Britain. The British, he said, are “more European than American in terms of what unites them to Europe and what unites them to America.”

Still, Mr. Starmer, who said he discussed his plans with Mr. Trump on Saturday night, rejected suggestions that the trans-Atlantic alliance was finished. “I do not accept that the U.S. is an unreliable ally,” he said.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

Its soldiers are underpaid and underarmed. Its ranks are riddled with factions pursuing their own interests. And successive presidents are said to have kept it weak for fear of a coup.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s army has appeared too weak and dysfunctional to stop a militia that has swept through the eastern part of the country in recent weeks. The militia, called M23, has seized two major cities, two strategic airports and large stretches of Congolese territory.

Félix Tshisekedi, the president, tried to prepare for this moment, strengthening his military to squash the thousands of fighters roaming in the east. But that response has crumbled in the face of the M23 advance, leaving Mr. Tshisekedi increasingly isolated, his domestic support evaporating, peace talks with regional powers stalled and strong international support lacking.

M23 is backed by Rwanda, Congo’s much smaller neighbor whose troops have trained, armed and embedded with the rebels, according to the United Nations. Rwanda has acknowledged that its troops are in Congo but denied controlling M23.

“This conflict has two sides,” said Fred Bauma, the executive director of Ebuteli, a Congolese research institute. “One is Rwandan support to the M23. And the other one is internal weaknesses of the Congolese government.”

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Congo’s president said the army’s problem was that it had been infiltrated by foreigners, and blamed his predecessor for failing to address the problem.

“My predecessor spent 18 years in power without rebuilding the army,” Mr. Tshisekedi said. “When we started to overhaul and rebuild it in 2022, we were immediately attacked by Rwanda, as if they wanted to prevent the reforms.”

Over the past month, those attacks have accelerated, and the Congolese army and its allies — which include European mercenaries and armed groups known as the Wazalendo, or Patriots — have lost battle after battle.

M23 is pushing into new territory, surrounding the city of Uvira, and marching both north and south. In Bukavu, Congolese soldiers retreated in long columns before M23 had even attacked the city.

After a battle for the city of Goma, M23 fighters loaded hundreds of captured troops into trucks and drove them out of the city for retraining. Police officers have also surrendered en masse and joined M23, according to a rebel spokesman. Congolese soldiers and their Wazalendo allies have frequently turned on each other, fighting over supplies and access to locations where they are accused of extracting bribes.

A Feeble Giant

On paper, Congo appears well placed to deal with threats coming from its much smaller neighbor. Experts estimate it has between 100,000 and 200,000 troops, far more than Rwanda or M23.

But the Congolese military has long been known for weakness and corruption.

Unmotivated soldiers boost their paltry incomes by extorting civilians, often at Congo’s hundreds of roadblocks, the most lucrative of which can pull in $900 a day, many times a soldier’s monthly salary.

Commanders collect payments from their subordinates — or extra salaries, for ghost workers who exist only on paper — in a long-entrenched system of graft and abuse. Troops lack trucks for transport, and instead often commandeer motorcycle taxis to get from deployment to deployment.

“The army really operates like an armed group,” said Peer Schouten, a researcher on peace and violence at the Danish Institute for International Studies, with a focus on Central Africa.

Knowing this, Mr. Tshisekedi tried to strengthen the army. In 2023, he more than doubled the military budget from $371 million to $761 million — dwarfing Rwanda’s $171 million, though both countries’ equated to just over 1 percent of their gross domestic product.

Some of the money was spent on better arms. Congo recently bought attack drones from China, as well as surveillance and attack aircraft from a South African defense company. It also spent $200 million on a regional force that pulled in southern African troops.

But “increasing capability is not something that can happen overnight,” said Nan Tian, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

On the other side of the conflict is M23, a militia with decades of experience in eastern Congo and backed by as many as 4,000 well-armed, well-trained Rwandan troops operating on Congolese territory.

Rwanda is tightly controlled by its president, Paul Kagame, who took over after the 1994 genocide. He has consolidated his power and brooks no dissent; his government says he won 98 and 99 percent of the vote in the last two presidential elections.

The Roots of Congo’s Fragility

Congo is the largest nation in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of it is remote and disconnected, and the state is either absent or predatory. Over 100 armed groups are active, and perpetrators carry out abuse with almost total impunity.

The roots of Congo’s fragility run deep. It was left with weak institutions and very little development after decades of Belgian colonialism. Then, after independence, the United States and Belgium backed the overthrow of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, and the United States later helped install Mobutu Sese Seko, a kleptocrat who ruled for nearly three decades. A civil war toppled Mobutu in 1997; his successor, Laurent Kabila, was assassinated four years later.

Mr. Tshisekedi has never enjoyed much popularity among his people. He took over the leadership of his party after the death of his father, one of Congo’s foremost opposition politicians, and took power in 2018, declared the winner of an election that polling data suggests he almost certainly lost.

And though he retained power in the 2023 election, voter turnout was the lowest the country had seen since independence. The Catholic Church, which has a long history of monitoring Congo’s elections, accused the national electoral commission of presiding over an “electoral catastrophe.”

Since then, Mr. Tshisekedi has signaled that he wants to change the Constitution, a tactic several African leaders have used to reset term limits and stay in power.

But these plans have been met with considerable opposition. Experts say his position is precarious, and the military failures in the east are weakening him still further. In Kinshasa, the capital, people are worried about his ability to control his security forces and fear a possible coup.

Mr. Tshisekedi has said he will reach out to the opposition and form a unity government.

Stalled Peace Talks

Several diplomatic attempts to resolve the crisis in eastern Congo have reached a deadlock, with Mr. Tshisekedi twice refusing to attend peace talks.

Congolese church leaders are trying to organize the latest round of negotiations, and have met with Mr. Kagame and several Congolese opposition figures. They want Mr. Tshisekedi to speak with M23, something Mr. Kagame insists on.

So far, Mr. Tshisekedi has refused to negotiate directly with M23. But as he stalls, his position appears to be getting weaker.

The conflict has caused the deaths of more than 7,000 Congolese citizens since January, according to the United Nations. Roughly 2,500 have been buried without being identified, Congo’s prime minister told the United Nations this past week.

Malawi, which took part in a Southern African force fighting against M23, has ordered troops to withdraw after three of them were killed in January.

Other regional players are taking advantage of Congo’s vulnerability and the lack of action from foreign powers to advance their own interests. Uganda recently threatened to attack the Congolese city of Bunia if “all forces” there did not surrender their weapons. Uganda has also supported M23, according to U.N. experts.

Without a strong army, Mr. Tshisekedi has continued to appeal to world powers, hoping they will pressure Rwanda to back down. When M23 attacked in 2012, international condemnation led Rwanda to withdraw support for the armed group, and it was eventually defeated. This time, there has been widespread criticism, but no sign that Rwanda intends to back down.

Ruth Maclean reported from Dakar, Senegal, and Guerchom Ndebo from Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.

One cartel leader says he’s trying to figure out how to protect his family in case the American military strikes inside Mexico. Another says he’s already gone into hiding, rarely leaving his home. Two young men who produce fentanyl for the cartel say they have shut down all their drug labs.

A barrage of arrests, drug seizures and lab busts by the Mexican authorities in recent months has struck the behemoth Sinaloa Cartel, according to Mexican officials and interviews with six cartel operatives, forcing at least some of its leaders to scale back on fentanyl production in Sinaloa state, their stronghold.

The cartels have sown terror across Mexico and caused untold damage in the United States. But here in Culiacán, the state capital, the dynamic seems to be shifting, at least for now. Cartel operatives say they’ve had to move labs to other areas of the country or temporarily shut down production.

“You can’t be calm, you can’t even sleep, because you don’t know when they’ll catch you,” said one high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel who, like other cartel operatives, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of capture.

“The most important thing now is to survive,” he added, his hands trembling.

The government crackdown on organized crime intensified after the Trump administration threatened retribution unless Mexico halted the supply of fentanyl into the United States, vowing high tariffs if the flow of migrants and drugs continued.

President Trump began floating the possibility of tariffs soon after his election in November, and soon after taking office announced 25 percent levies on Mexican goods if the country didn’t act on border security and drug trafficking. The president gave Mexico a month to deliver results, threatening to enact the tariffs on March 4 if he wasn’t satisfied.

Facing economic chaos, the Mexican government went on the offensive. President Claudia Sheinbaum dispatched 10,000 national guard troops to the border and hundreds more soldiers to Sinaloa state, a major hub of fentanyl trafficking where a cartel war has caused turmoil for months.

“Every day there have been arrests and seizures,” Omar Harfuch, the Mexican security minister, said at a recent news conference after returning from several days in Sinaloa. The detentions have led to “a constant weakening” of the cartel, he said.

The country’s law enforcement seized nearly as much fentanyl in the last five months as it did in the previous year. Ms. Sheinbaum’s administration says it has made nearly 900 arrests in Sinaloa alone since October.

Then, last week, the Mexican government said it had begun sending to the United States more than two dozen cartel operatives wanted by the American authorities. It was a clear signal to the Trump administration that Mexico was eager to fight the cartels, though Mr. Trump said on the same day that he was still not satisfied with the government’s efforts and that tariffs would go into effect on Tuesday.

“Criminal groups have not felt this level of pressure in such a long time,” said Jaime López, a security analyst based in Mexico City.

In interviews, cartel operatives agreed. Some said they were selling off property and firing unessential personnel to make up for lost income from the dent in the fentanyl trade. Others said they were investing money in advanced equipment to detect American government drones, which the United States flew into Mexico during the Biden and Obama administrations as well.

Criminal organizations in Mexico have a long history of surviving efforts to dismantle them, or simply splintering off into new groups. But several operatives said that for the first time in years, they genuinely feared arrest or death at the hands of the authorities.

Experts noted that a decline in production in Culiacán wouldn’t necessarily affect the flow of fentanyl north, since the drug is easy to make and the cartel can move its labs elsewhere. And it isn’t clear how long any disruption in Culiacán would last. Cooks and experts said they expected the cartel would restart labs in the city if the pressure subsided or the group needed an influx of cash.

But the crackdown has had an immediate impact, they said, and some cited the newfound pressure by Mr. Trump.

“Trump established a deadline, and we are seeing the results of everything we could have seen in years being done in a month,” Mr. López said. “The government is sending a message that when it really wants to, it can exert that kind of pressure.”

But even before tariff threats intensified, Ms. Sheinbaum had showed her willingness to take on the cartels as soon as she took office on Oct. 1.

Her predecessor and political ally, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had pursued a strategy he called “hugs not bullets,” focusing on the root causes of crime and generally avoiding violent confrontations with criminals.

While she pledged allegiance to her mentor’s vision, Ms. Sheinbaum made headlines with a rash of battles between soldiers and cartel gunmen that left dozens dead earlier in her presidency.

Cartel members said they were making their own preparations for the heightened pressure under Mr. Trump. American officials say the United States has recently begun expanding drone flights into Mexico to detect drug labs, and last week the administration designated several cartels as terrorist organizations.

In interviews, cartel operatives said they were importing scanners to detect drones and hiring more people with experience operating and tracking such aircraft. They also said they had increased arms shipments from the United States, the source of most of the illegal weapons used by criminals in Mexico.

Inside the Trump administration, there is still some division over whether the United States should take unilateral military action in Mexico against the cartels, or whether it should work more closely with the Mexican government in combating the drug trade.

Mexico’s cartels are known for amassing military-grade weapons, including I.E.D.s and land mines, yet the operatives acknowledged in interviews that they could scarcely compete with the American military’s arsenal. Even so, one high-level operative said the cartel would be prepared to respond if raids or strikes were carried out.

“If a helicopter comes here and soldiers drop out, 20 or 30 of them,” the operative said, “there’s no way we’d just sit here with our arms crossed.”

One cartel fentanyl cook, speaking from jail, said he was actually in favor of stepped up enforcement by the Mexican government, because he believed that curbing cartel violence could prevent the “deaths of innocents.”

Last week, Mexican forces arrested two big players within the Sinaloa Cartel who were close associates of Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, the most powerful son of the drug lord known as El Chapo. After news of the captures spread, the Mexican military deployed a surge of soldiers throughout the city, setting up checkpoints and blocking off entire blocks.

Despite the arrests, the violence in Culiacán keeps claiming lives. On a recent Wednesday morning, the body of a man appeared face down in the middle of a street at a busy intersection, his hands tied and blood pouring from his head.

The next day, a different man’s body was found in a residential neighborhood nearby, with his feet bound and a plastic bag over his head. Officials at the scene said it appeared the victim had been shot dead on the spot.

Ms. Sheinbaum has defended her record on fighting the cartels and hit back hard against the Trump White House’s accusation that the Mexican government has “an intolerable alliance” with drug traffickers.

“We are combating organized crime groups, there can be no doubt about this,” she said at a news conference last month, adding, “We are going after organized crime.”

But few dispute that corruption is rampant in Mexico. The last major crackdown on organized crime was led by a security chief who was later convicted in U.S. federal court of taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel.

Cartel members said the only reason the government hadn’t really fought them until recently was because they’d bought off enough officials. One cartel cell leader said he doubted that this new effort would seriously damage the cartel because the group could ensure its survival by bribing key officials.

“There are always weak points,” he said, “there are always loose ends we can get to.”

When asked how it feels to be labeled terrorists, the cartel operatives’ responses ranged from apathetic to indignant.

The fentanyl cook in jail argued that the real terrorists were the users in the United States whose insatiable appetite for the drug fuels the trade. The two other young cooks agreed that the worst actors were north of the border: the arms dealers who turn a huge profit smuggling weapons into Mexico that kill so many people.

The high-level operative said he considered himself a businessman, not a terrorist.

“We talk about supply and demand,” he said, “not AK-47s, much less bombing Times Square.”

Even if the government bombs every drug lab in Mexico, he said, it won’t make Americans less dependent on the drug, which is one of the most addictive synthetic opioids available. He said that, with the right ingredients, fentanyl can be synthesized almost anywhere — in tiny kitchens or rudimentary mountain labs — and that as long as Americans want fentanyl, it will get made.

“Demand will never end, the product is still being consumed,” the operative said. “Addiction means demand never ends.”

Israel announced on Sunday that it was immediately halting the entry of all goods and humanitarian assistance into Gaza, trying to force Hamas into accepting a temporary extension of the cease-fire in the war.

The move disrupts the existing, agreed-upon framework for negotiating a permanent end to the war and puts the fate of the hostages into uncharted territory. The draconian halt on goods and aid, including fuel, is also likely to worsen conditions for the roughly two million inhabitants of Gaza after the 15-month war left much of the coastal enclave in ruins.

The initial six-week phase of the original deal between Israel and Hamas expired on Saturday. Though it was punctured by setbacks and mutual accusations of violations, it ultimately saw a temporary cessation in the fighting and the exchange of 25 living Israeli hostages and the remains of eight dead ones for about 1,500 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. That deal also allowed for a significant increase of aid into Gaza.

The next phase of the agreement called for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a commitment to a permanent cease-fire in return for the release of all the remaining living hostages in Gaza, who are being held in inhumane conditions, according to reports from hostages who have been freed.

Instead, hours before it announced the aid stoppage, Israel proposed a seven-week extension of the temporary cease-fire, during which Hamas would have to release half the remaining living hostages as well as the remains of half the deceased ones. Upon conclusion of that extension, if agreement on a permanent cease-fire occurred, all the remaining hostages would have to be released, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

“Israel will not allow a cease-fire without the release of our hostages,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Sunday. “If Hamas continues its refusal, there will be further consequences,” it added.

Hamas immediately rejected the Israeli conditions, issuing a statement on Sunday describing the halt in aid as “cheap blackmail” and “a blatant upending of the agreement.”

Israel attributed the new proposal to the work of the U.S. envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff. The existing deal was negotiated between Israel and Hamas through third-country mediators including the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

Last year, the United Nations and aid organizations repeatedly warned about a looming famine in Gaza amid widespread hunger during the war, which was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel. While goods are more available now, many Gazans say they cannot afford them, and many depend on humanitarian assistance.

Palestinians in Gaza were already struggling to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan, which began this weekend, and is normally a joyous time in the Muslim calendar.

Abdulrahman Mohammed, 35, a father of four from Gaza City, said the halting of aid has already meant that essential goods like milk, fruit and vegetables were less available. Prices have skyrocketed, he said, adding that some traders were hoarding supplies to sell them later at more inflated prices.

Two Israeli officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the government believed that the aid and goods that entered the enclave in recent months and during the temporary cease-fire meant there were enough supplies in Gaza for several more months. They did not offer further details.

The officials added that the new restrictions would not apply to the entry of water.

Under the existing cease-fire deal, Israel was by now to have begun removing its troops from the Philadelphi Corridor, a strategic strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt. By Sunday, no such movement had occurred.

Mr. Netanyahu said the proposed temporary cease-fire should extend over the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and through the Jewish holiday of Passover, which ends on April 20.

In broadcast remarks at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said, “Steve Witkoff proposed the framework for extending the cease-fire after gaining the impression that there is no possibility, at present, of bridging between the two positions, Israel’s and Hamas’s, regarding the second stage” of the existing deal.

Mr. Netanyahu added that according to Mr. Witkoff, more time for talks was needed to achieve an agreement. “He even defined his proposal as a corridor for negotiations on the second stage,” Mr. Netanyahu added. “Israel is ready for this.”

But the Israeli government has been categorical that the war in Gaza cannot end unless Hamas is disarmed and removed from power there, terms that Hamas has largely rejected.

Israelis have been shocked by the testimonies of recently released hostages who said they were kept for months in dark tunnels, in constant fear for their lives, with very little food and, in some cases, in shackles. The families of hostages remaining in Gaza have been pleading for the government to end the war and bring them home all at once.

“President Trump, bring us a better deal, a safer deal,” Ilay David, the brother of Evyatar David, a hostage in Gaza, implored on Sunday. “No stages, no phases. One deal to bring everyone home,” he said in a recorded statement distributed by the Hostages Families Forum, a group advocating the release of all the captives.

Up to 24 hostages are believed to still be alive in Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu said on Sunday. Hamas also holds the remains of at least 35 who are believed to be dead, he added in recorded remarks at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. “We are not giving up on anyone,” he said.

“There will be no free lunches,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding, “If Hamas thinks that it will be possible to continue the cease-fire or benefit from the terms of the first stage, without us receiving hostages, it is sorely mistaken.”

On Sunday, Hamas reiterated its willingness to begin negotiations toward the deal’s second stage and accused Israel of “a blatant attempt to renege on the agreement.”

Hamas is unlikely to accept Israel’s new offer without further negotiations, said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The proposal, he said, “allows Israelis to get hostages back without making reciprocal commitments.”

On Sunday, Israel also raised the specter of resuming fighting in Gaza, noting in the statement that according to the original agreement, Israel could return to fighting at this point “if it gains the impression that the negotiations have been ineffective.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement on Saturday that he had signed a declaration to use emergency authorities to expedite the delivery of approximately $4 billion in military assistance to Israel.

Eve Sampson contributed reporting from New York, Ameera Harouda from Doha, Qatar, and Myra Noveck from Jerusalem.

A respiratory crisis suffered by Pope Francis on Friday during his two-week hospitalization for pneumonia has added urgency to a delicate, and uncomfortable, question worrying many in the church: What would happen if the pope remains in critical condition for an extended period, with his health worsening, his faculties fading, his quality of life deteriorating?

And what would his approach be to extended medical interventions, as well as, ultimately, his end-of-life plans?

Francis, 88, has talked about a resignation letter he put on file with the Vatican soon after his election in the event that he became incapacitated, but its contents are unknown. It is also unknown if he has a living will, or whom, if anyone, he has entrusted to make decisions about his health if he no longer can do so himself.

Asked about the pope’s desires, the Vatican responded that “it’s too early” to talk about end-of-life details. And while his prognosis remains guarded, Saturday evening’s health bulletin had encouraging news about the pope’s health.

“The clinical condition of the Holy Father remains stable,” said the Vatican statement, which added that the pope had no fever or signs of new infection. It said that he spent extended time off the noninvasive mechanical ventilation he initially needed during Friday’s respiratory crisis, was vigilant and prayed for about 20 minutes in a private chapel connected to his hospital room. On Sunday morning, they added that he had slept peacefully through the night and continued to rest.

Some supporters of the pope say questions about his end-of-life preferences are premature, even intrusive. But church experts say the lack of a public protocol on how to make end-of-life decisions for the leader of the Roman Catholic Church is troubling. And with setbacks like Friday’s respiratory crisis, the question is no longer theoretical.

“It’s a problem we have to face when we come to it,” said Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister, who stressed that he had no knowledge about the pope’s health, other than the public statements by the Vatican.

Catholic doctrine teaches that life begins at conception and ends at natural death, and should be defended from start to finish. But there is ambiguity and debate within the church on the bioethics of when the surrendering of life is legitimate.

Church teaching allows for the cessation of “extraordinary means” to keep a person alive, but there is vast interpretation and debate about the definition of extraordinary means.

Critics of the ambiguity say the church is woefully behind the times given the breakthroughs in modern medicine and its ability to keep people alive through life-sustaining treatments such as artificial nutrition and hydration, resuscitation, antibiotics, respirators and dialysis.

“I’m being told that there was some document prepared by Benedict on this issue,” Archbishop Gallagher said, referring to Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. He added that he had no personal information about its contents or whether Francis had “indicated that he’s in agreement with the document.”

Asked about the existence of such a letter, the Vatican press office said it had no awareness of it.

But the notion that there are secret letters spelling out the end-of-life wishes of popes did not comfort those who advocate transparency.

“Secret documents are really dumb,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a longtime Vatican analyst, who has urged the Vatican to provide clear protocols for the pope.

He said the concealment of the documents made them vulnerable to conspiracy theorists in a gossipy city-state where people still have their doubts about the death of John Paul I, who served as pope in 1978 for only 33 days.

“In a family, if there’s no document,” Father Reese said, relatives often wrestle with excruciating decisions about when to let go. “Imagine if this is the Vatican and the church is debating on whether or not we unplug the pope. It will be chaos.”

He envisioned fights over critical health decisions between cardinals who want the pope to remain alive and those who want someone else, perhaps themselves, in his place. “These are the kinds of things that cause schisms,” he said, referring to the formal, and epochal, splits in the church.

Francis has weighed in publicly on the ethics of end-of-life issues before, just not for himself. His remarks, people who know him say, reflect his acceptance of humanity-defining limits as key to his theology and worldview.

“Surgery and other medical interventions have become ever more effective, but they are not always beneficial,” Francis wrote to a European meeting of medical professionals to discuss end-of-life issues in 2017. He added that it was morally legitimate to forgo or discontinue some interventions if they only delayed an inevitable end. “Such a decision,” he said, “responsibly acknowledges the limitations of our mortality once it becomes clear that opposition to it is futile.”

Popes going back to at least the 1950s have weighed in on the ethical considerations surrounding the end of life. Pius XII told a meeting of anesthesiologists that in some cases it was appropriate to refrain from therapies.

In 2020, the Vatican’s office on church doctrine issued a document that promoted the use of hospice centers and palliative care, and argued that “extraordinary” care can be suspended to avoid prolonged suffering at the end of life because it “expresses acceptance of the human condition in the face of death.”

It was important, the document said, that such cessation not be conflated with euthanasia or assisted suicide, which it considered “intrinsically evil,” because the goal was death.

Sedating patients to the point where they lose consciousness is morally legitimate, the Vatican wrote, “to ensure that the end of life arrives with the greatest possible peace.” The Vatican declared that it was also acceptable to cease ineffective care to people in a vegetative state if it saddled patients with “an excessive burden with negative results that exceed any benefits.”

In 2024, the church’s Pontifical Academy for Life issued a booklet on end-of-life terminology. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and a close aide of the pope, wrote in the introduction that the booklet was intended to foster “heartfelt and in-depth dialogue” about painful decisions, and not “prepackaged and partisan ideologies.”

The booklet included a template of a living will to be prepared with the help of a priest and explained that at the end of life, mitigating pain could allow patients the space to concentrate on their human relationships.

“The communication between a doctor and patient — and with family members,” the booklet said, “is an element of decisive importance in the development of ethical choices concerning the changes in treatment.”

Archbishop Gallagher said that while he hoped Francis would be back at work soon, it was entirely possible the pope was having those conversations now.

“Francis,” he said, “may be saying things to his doctors in these days, you know, about how he feels about these things and what he wants.”

Eight road construction workers died after becoming trapped under an avalanche in northern India, the Indian Army said on Sunday. Rescuers operating in several feet of snow evacuated 46 other workers.

The workers were buried by the snow early on Friday in the village of Mana, in the state of Uttarakhand, as the avalanche hit their camp site.

Disaster response teams coordinated the rescue efforts under extreme weather conditions, and the work was halted several times because of incessant snowfall and rain. GPS, sniffer dogs and thermal imaging cameras were used to find the workers.

India’s Meteorological Department warned of the possibility of further avalanches in the area, which is known as a gateway for Himalayan mountain trekking.

The rescued workers, many in critical condition, were taken by helicopters to hospitals in neighboring Joshimath. The workers belong to the Border Roads Organization, a division of the Indian armed forces that develops and maintains road networks in India’s border areas.

Mana sits at an altitude of 3,200 meters, or more than 10,000 feet, and is about 15 miles from the Tibetan border. During the winter months, the village’s entire population migrates to lower elevations to escape the snowfall.

Uttarakhand is prone to avalanches and floods. One of the country’s worst natural disasters took place there in 2013, when flooding killed more than 1,000 people. In 2021, 11 people died when an avalanche hit a Border Roads Organization camp in the district that includes Mana.

As the Uttarakhand rescue efforts were completed, an operation to reach eight workers trapped in a tunnel in southern India were still underway, more than a week after the tunnel’s ceiling collapsed. Officials have said that the workers’ chances of survival are very remote.

Mexico braced for the worst when President Trump threatened steep tariffs on its exports. But as a deadline looms, Mexico’s leaders hope they have found a formula for staving off tariffs by moving decisively on several fronts to appease Mr. Trump.

Focusing on Mr. Trump’s complaints over migration and illicit drugs, President Claudia Sheinbaum is deploying 10,000 troops to deter migrants from reaching the United States, building on efforts to break up migrant caravans and busing migrants to places far from the border.

Ms. Sheinbaum is also handing over to the United States dozens of top cartel operatives and accepting intelligence from C.I.A. drone flights to capture others. Breaking with her predecessor, who falsely claimed that Mexico did not manufacture fentanyl, she is unleashing a crackdown resulting in record seizures of the drug.

At the same time, Mexico’s leaders are imposing their own tariffs and restrictions on a wide range of Chinese imports, seeking to persuade Mr. Trump that Mexico, and its low-cost industrial base, can be a strategic partner to blunt China’s economic sway.

Mr. Trump is still vowing to impose 25 percent tariffs on Tuesday. But Mexico’s financial markets remain calm, reflecting expectations in the country’s business establishment that Ms. Sheinbaum can find a way to strike a deal.

“The way she’s been able to manage this crisis has been far superior than any other leader,” said Diego Marroquín Bitar, a scholar who specializes in North American trade at the Wilson Center, a Washington research group.

Mr. Trump praised Ms. Sheinbaum as a “marvelous woman” after speaking with her in February.

Ms. Sheinbaum has mixed her conciliatory public moves to appease Mr. Trump, such as deploying troops, with greater security cooperation behind the scenes and a modest dose of pushback against Mr. Trump on subjects like renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s not an easy balancing act for Ms. Sheinbaum, even as her approval rating has soared to 80 percent. Skepticism of Mr. Trump’s xenophobic politics runs deep both in Mexican society and within Morena, Ms. Sheinbaum’s political party, which blends nationalist and leftist ideals.

After decades of integration, Mexico relies on trade with the United States more than any other major economy. Tariffs, even if imposed briefly, could deal a blow, economists warn.

Mr. Trump is also threatening separate 25 percent tariffs on global steel and aluminum imports, which would also affect Mexico. And the Trump administration is formulating additional “reciprocal” tariffs aimed at offsetting trade restrictions and matching the import duties charged by other countries.

The uncertainty over tariffs is already weighing on Mexico’s economy as companies put plans on hold. The central bank slashed its growth projection to 0.6 percent for this year from 1.2 percent.

Still, Mr. Trump’s repeated threats and subsequent pullback on those threats have nurtured hopes that tensions could ease. He initially vowed to impose the tariffs on his first day in office, but then backtracked twice.

Mexican negotiators are in Washington to meet with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, in a bid to reach a last-minute deal.

Here are three areas where Mexico is mobilizing to align with the Trump administration’s priorities.

Curbing Migration

Mexico’s pledge to send 10,000 additional National Guard members to the U.S. border was cited as a win by Mr. Trump in early February, when he paused imposing tariffs for 30 days.

For months, Mexico had already been dismantling migrant caravans well before they reached border cities and expanding a shadowy program that transported thousands of migrants to places deep in Mexico’s interior.

Mexico detained about 475,000 migrants in the last quarter of 2024, according to government figures, more than double the amount detained in the first nine months of the year.

The border was already exceptionally quiet before Mr. Trump took office in January, reflecting Mexico’s enforcement measures and the Biden administration’s asylum restrictions.

The Trump administration’s new efforts to choke off migration flows, along with Mexico’s troop deployment, are making it even harder for migrants to enter the United States.

Migrant crossings have dropped to once unthinkable levels. At one point in February, U.S. personnel on the Mexican border encountered only 200 migrants in a single day, the lowest such figure in recent history.

If the trend holds on an annualized basis, Border Patrol apprehensions could decline to levels last seen nearly 60 years ago around the end of the Johnson administration, according to Adam Isacson, a migration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America.

Targeting Cartels

Mexico has sought to crack down on cartels producing illicit narcotics, especially fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that Mr. Trump has cited as the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States.

Marking a break from past policies, when cartels managed to produce fentanyl with negligible interference from the authorities, Mexican officials have been announcing new seizures of fentanyl pills on a regular basis in recent weeks.

These moves include the capture last week of six kilos of fentanyl at Mexico City’s new international airport, in a package being sent to New Jersey. That followed the discovery of 18 kilograms of fentanyl hidden in a passenger bus in the northwestern border state of Sonora.

In December, shortly after Mr. Trump began threatening Mexico with tariffs, the authorities made a colossal seizure of 800 kilograms of fentanyl in Sinaloa state, Mexico’s largest capture of synthetic opioids.

In February, Mexican authorities in Puerto Vallarta also arrested two American citizens who faced arrest warrants in the United States for trafficking fentanyl. Both were extradited to Oklahoma.

Mexico followed up on Thursday by sending to the United States nearly 30 top cartel operatives wanted by American authorities, one of the largest such handovers in the history of the drug war.

The moves are aimed both at avoiding tariffs and military intervention by the United States, which Mr. Trump has threatened to take against drug cartels operating in Mexico.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Ms. Sheinbaum’s mentor and predecessor as president, had limited anti-narcotics cooperation with the United States. Ms. Sheinbaum appears to be taking a different approach.

Mexican officials, for instance, have been welcoming intelligence from the C.I.A., which has stepped up secret drone flights over Mexico to hunt for fentanyl labs. Mexico’s defense minister said in late February that U.S. drones had been used to track down top Sinaloa Cartel figures.

Greater enforcement could potentially contribute to reducing overdose deaths in the United States, which have already been on the decline.

In what could be a promising sign for Mexican negotiators seeking a deal on tariffs, overdose deaths fell about 24 percent in the 12-month period ending September 2024, compared with the same period the previous year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Countering China

Trade between China and Mexico had been surging, fueling concerns that China could use its foothold in Mexico to gain greater access to U.S. markets. A year ago, shipping from China to Mexico was one of the world’s fastest growing trade routes.

But now Mexico is overhauling its ties with China, its second-largest trading partner. Just days after Mr. Trump first vowed to impose tariffs, the authorities raided a vast complex of stores in downtown Mexico City selling counterfeit Chinese goods.

Then Mexico imposed a 35 percent tariff on Chinese apparel imports, while also targeting Chinese online retailers like Shein and Temu by implementing a 19 percent tariff on goods imported through courier companies originating from China.

Still, with various tariff threats on the horizon, Mexico could do more to placate the Trump administration by moving to curb the import of products like semiconductors or automobiles, which are quickly making inroads in an important market for U.S. car manufacturers.

The Finnish authorities said on Sunday that they had released an oil tanker seized in December over suspicions that it had deliberately cut vital undersea cables but that a criminal investigation into the episode would continue.

The authorities said last year that the ship, the Eagle S, appeared to belong to Russia’s shadow fleet — older tankers that covertly transport Russian crude oil around the world — escalating concerns about a covert campaign to sabotage European infrastructure.

On Sunday, the Finnish police said that since the criminal inquiry “has progressed,” the aging tanker was free to leave and that border officials had escorted the ship out of the country’s territorial waters.

Petteri Orpo, Finland’s prime minister, said in an interview with Yle, the country’s public broadcaster, that “the criminal process and investigation will continue.”

Investigators were still examining materials gathered after an onboard “forensic investigation” and would continue to interview the crew, according to the police.

Eight crew members are suspected of criminal offenses, including aggravated criminal mischief and aggravated interference with communications, the police said in a statement. Five were allowed to leave Finland last week, while the other three were still barred from leaving, according to the statement.

The police said the authorities hoped to conclude the investigation by the end of April.

The cutting of the cables under the Baltic Sea in late December came on the heels of a series of similar incidents and prompted NATO to bolster security in the region. In January, the Swedish authorities also seized a ship and said they suspected “gross sabotage” after a different undersea cable was damaged. Last month, the European Union vowed to increase security after another cable break.

The Eagle S, registered in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, had been sailing from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Port Said, Egypt, when it was seized.

Western officials have long feared that Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet could be used to circumvent sanctions imposed over the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The episodes of severed cables raised worries that the shadow fleet might also be used for sabotage.

The Kremlin has denied involvement in sabotage, and Russian officials have condemned the seizure of the Eagle S.