They call themselves emissaries of the world’s first “sovereign nation” for Hindus, with its own passports and “cosmic constitution.” They claim to have created an official currency in sacred gold, managed by a “reserve bank.”

Representatives of this nonexistent country have given statements at U.N. events and posed for photos with global statesmen, American congressmen and the mayor of Newark. Their leader, a fugitive holy man, professes to be able to guide the process of reincarnation, guaranteeing that billionaires who use his services won’t be paupers in the next life.

But the self-proclaimed United States of Kailasa has now collided with reality.

Last week, officials in Bolivia said they had arrested 20 people associated with Kailasa, accusing them of “land trafficking” after they negotiated 1,000-year leases with Indigenous groups for swathes of the Amazon.

The agreements were declared void, and the Kailasans were deported — not to Kailasa, but to their actual home countries, among them India, the United States, Sweden and China.

“Bolivia does not maintain diplomatic relations with the alleged nation ‘United States of Kailasa,’” Bolivia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Kailasa’s “press office of the Holy See of Hinduism” did not respond to requests for comment.

The bizarre story of Kailasa stretches back at least to 2019, when the guru known as Swami Nithyananda — a.k.a. His Divine Holiness, the Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism — fled India after being accused of rape, torture and child abuse.

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For nearly two hours on a windy Sunday in February, Henry Hurren took a beating in the waters off a largely uninhabited island in Hong Kong, trying to surf a short wave for a few moments at a time.

The half-hour ferry ride there from the Chinese territory’s main island was bustling with day trippers. Mr. Hurren, 32, passed outdoor restaurants and families who had camped overnight as he hiked to the spot he paddled out from in a wetsuit.

But in the water, he was alone, trying to prove there are new places to surf in a city without a lot them.

The wave off Tung Lung Chau is known as a slab, a quick one that breaks on a rock. It is not the kind you picture a surfer riding smoothly toward shore in a world-class surf spot like Bali. Over and over, Mr. Hurren caught it for a few seconds before tumbling back into the chilly water.

Many surfers never surf slabs, said Mr. Hurren, a nature guide who teaches surfing and shares some of the waves he finds on his Instagram page. “It’s like a really concentrated version of surfing,” he said.

The surf scene in Hong Kong — a territory that includes more than 250 islands in the South China Sea — is concentrated at a few beaches that lack consistent year-round swell. But those beaches are relatively accessible to a city of about 7.5 million people.

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Myanmar’s military on Wednesday declared a 21-day cease-fire to support relief and reconstruction efforts in the wake of a devastating earthquake in the country, a day after it fired on a Chinese Red Cross convoy trying to deliver food and medicine to desperate survivors.

The attack on the Chinese convoy, which was widely condemned by rights activists, highlighted the dangers aid groups face from the country’s ongoing civil war.

It remains unclear whether the cease-fire would be honored — armed rebel groups said the military had launched scores of airstrikes since Friday’s 7.7-magnitude temblor, which killed at least 2,700.

In the wake of the earthquake, the shadow government in exile, known as the National Unity Government, and an alliance of three rebel groups announced cease-fires. But the military, which seized power in a coup four years ago, had indicated that it would not stop hostilities. The fierce civil war had already caused widespread suffering before the earthquake, which left millions of people with little food and water.

On Wednesday, the office of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the chief of Myanmar’s junta, said the temporary cease-fire would run from April 2 to April 22. It was declared “to express sympathy for affected citizens, facilitate humanitarian aid and ensure stability during the recovery period.”

But a day before, he had said that military operations would continue as “necessary protective measures” despite the earthquake.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Thursday began a visit to Hungary, confident that Europe’s self-declared bastion of “illiberal democracy” would ignore an arrest warrant issued against him in November by the International Criminal Court.

The visit is Mr. Netanyahu’s first to a country that has recognized the jurisdiction of the court, raising the possibility, at least in theory, that he could be arrested. He visited Washington to discuss the future of Gaza with President Trump in February but the United States, like Israel, has never recognized the international court.

In Hungary, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has made clear that it will ignore its obligations as a party to a 1998 treaty that established the court.

Mr. Orban invited Mr. Netanyahu to visit shortly after the court issued its arrest warrant, assuring him that “the judgment of the I.C.C. will have no effect in Hungary and that we will not follow its terms.”

Hungary’s expansive propaganda machine has tilted toward antisemitic tropes in its nonstop vilification of George Soros, a Hungarian-born American financier and philanthropist who is Jewish. It has cast him as the sinister puppeteer in a vast global conspiracy backed by high finance and hidden, cosmopolitan forces.

But Mr. Orban, a strong supporter of Israel, has embraced the country’s right-wing prime minister as a kindred spirit in tune with his own ethnonationalist views and reverence for national sovereignty free of foreign interference.

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There were times, before Israeli airstrikes on Gaza shattered the two-month-old cease-fire on March 18, when Huda Abu Teir and her family could almost believe things might go back to normal.

After fleeing from their home to a shelter for displaced people, and then to a tent, another shelter and on to another encampment during 15 months of war — six or seven displacements in all — they had returned to their house in Abasan al-Kabira, in southeastern Gaza, where they lived with Huda’s grandparents and uncles.

Back at home a few weeks ago, Huda, 19, threw a pizza party for her cousins, said one cousin, Fatma al-Shawwaf, 20. The other girls teased Huda: Shouldn’t you be studying? Huda, who was set on becoming a nurse, always seemed to be studying. But Huda laughingly retorted that she liked having fun, too.

The day before Israeli airstrikes resumed, Huda asked her Uncle Nour, who taught technology, if he could help her go over the material for her high school exams. He promised her a study session the next evening, he said.

But around midnight, Huda’s brother Abdullah, 15, heard an explosion. “What was that?” he screamed to his father, who had no time to answer before the next blast, this time over their heads and under their feet all at once.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel has captured a new strip of territory in the Gaza Strip, part of a new strategy to seize land in the enclave after the cease-fire with Hamas collapsed last month.

Israel has conducted a new round of airstrikes to force Hamas to release more Israeli hostages. Hamas argues that Israel is violating the agreement it signed in January, which created a path toward ending the war. Both sides have been speaking to mediators about a potential deal to restore the truce — so far without success.

Meanwhile, some anti-Hamas protests have also broken out in parts of Gaza. And the United Nations accused Israel of killing more than a dozen rescue workers.

What is happening in Gaza?

On March 18, Israel launched what it called “extensive strikes” on Hamas targets in Gaza, shattering the fragile truce in the enclave.

In the weeks since, Israeli ground troops have seized the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza, from which they withdrew during the cease-fire with Hamas, and they have expanded ground raids in northern and southern Gaza. The Israeli military has issued sweeping evacuation orders, displacing more than 140,000 people in Gaza since the cease-fire broke down, according to the United Nations.

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