Britain has sent a parade of senior officials to China this year, part of a calculated charm offensive to thaw out relations with a country that looms large in a world order upended by the United States under President Trump.

But an emergency move by the British Parliament last weekend to take control of a Chinese-owned British steel mill has struck a discordant note amid all the diplomacy. And it could raise deeper questions about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s efforts to cultivate warmer ties with China, at a time when Mr. Trump’s tariffs are sowing fears about protectionism and fraying trade agreements worldwide.

Britain acted to prevent the Chinese company that owns the plant, in the town of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, from shutting down two blast furnaces, which could have shuttered the plant, cost 2,700 jobs and left Britain reliant on other countries for what it considers a strategically important commodity.

The government’s fruitless negotiations with the company, which refused subsidies to stay open, has prompted accusations of bad faith and even rumors of sabotage by the Chinese owner, which British officials rejected. But they are questioning whether other Chinese companies should be allowed to invest in sensitive industries.

“We have got to be clear about what is the sort of sector where actually we can promote and cooperate and ones, frankly, where we can’t,” Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, told Sky News on Sunday. “I wouldn’t personally bring a Chinese company into our steel sector.”

Mr. Reynolds said the Chinese company, Jingye, had refused to order vital raw materials, knowing that this would lead to the closure of the mill, Britain’s last big producer of crude steel, used in construction projects.

On Monday, the government said it was confident it had secured the raw material needed to keep the furnaces burning, through two ships carrying iron ore and coking coal. But it has been left with a business that is reportedly losing 700,000 pounds, or $922,000, a day.

China on Monday warned Britain not to politicize the dispute. A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, Lin Jian, said the government should “refrain from turning economic and trade cooperation into political and security issues, lest it should undermine the confidence of Chinese companies.”

The dispute comes at an awkward moment for Mr. Starmer’s government. It had set out to improve a relationship that had frayed in recent years because of China’s crackdown in Hong Kong and allegations of Chinese cyberattacks that compromised the voting records of tens of millions of people.

Whatever the government’s misgivings about China’s human rights record or the security threat it may pose, it views better trade relations with China as an important ingredient in Britain’s economic growth and a hedge against the protectionist policies of the Trump administration.

“The question is whether ministers want to see it for what it is or prefer to downplay it in order not to increase tension between the U.K. and China in a turbulent time,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London. “I think the balance is that ministers will choose the latter course.”

The chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, traveled to Beijing in January to drum up Chinese investment. She endured japes after returning with only 600 million pounds, about $791 million, in commitments, but it was a conspicuous sign of the government’s new approach.

Last week, the chief of the defense staff, Admiral Tony Radakin, the top official in the British armed forces, traveled to Beijing for meetings with Chinese officials to strengthen military-to-military communication. He also delivered an address at the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University in Beijing.

Such visits almost recall the days of David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister who declared a “golden era” of economic ties between Britain and China. In 2015, he took China’s president, Xi Jinping, out for a pint at a 16th-century pub. By 2020, relations had soured, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson kept Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant, out of Britain’s 5G network.

Even amid the recent exchanges, there have been bumps. Last week, officials in Hong Kong denied entry to a Liberal Democratic member of Parliament, Wera Hobhouse. She is a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has criticized the threat to free speech in Hong Kong. China’s move came as a trade minister, Douglas Alexander, was on a visit to the city.

“I think the government will look upon it as an inconvenience,” Luke de Pulford, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance, said of the dispute over the steel mill. “For a long time, there has been a dogma in the Treasury that China is going to rescue the British economy.”

But the government faces another delicate decision: whether to approve plans for China to construct a sprawling new embassy next to London’s financial district. Residents and other critics have opposed it, saying that its proximity to major banks and brokerage firms could facilitate spying.

“I know it’s a diplomatic priority for the Chinese,” Mr. de Pulford said, noting that Mr. Xi had raised it with Mr. Starmer.

Nathali Sánchez last heard from her husband on March 14, when he called from a Texas detention center to say he was being deported back to Venezuela. Later that night, he texted her through a government messaging app for detainees.

“I love you,” he wrote, “soon we will be together forever.”

Her husband, Arturo Suárez Trejo, 33, a musician, had been in American custody for a month, calling every few days to assure his family that he was OK, his relatives said. Now, the couple believed they would reunite and he would finally meet his daughter, Nahiara, who had been born during his brief stint as a migrant in the United States.

But less than a day later, Mr. Suárez was shackled, loaded onto a plane and sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, according to an internal government list of detainees obtained by The New York Times. Around the time Mr. Suárez was texting his wife, the Trump administration was quietly invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a sweeping wartime power that allows the government to swiftly deport citizens of an invading nation.

Mr. Suárez and 237 others, the Trump administration argued after the order became public, were all members of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua, which was “aligned with” the Venezuelan government and was “perpetrating” an invasion of the United States.

It was an extraordinary move: The act has only been invoked three times in American history, experts say — most recently in World War II, when it was used to detain German, Italian and Japanese people.

And in this case, the Venezuelan men were declared “alien enemies” and shipped to a prison with little or no opportunity to contest the allegations against them, according to migrants, their lawyers, court testimony, judges and interviews with dozens of prisoners’ families conducted by The New York Times.

The government’s public declaration of the act was made on March 15 at 3:53 p.m., according to court records. The migrants were all on flights to El Salvador by 7:36 p.m.

Yet most of the men do not have criminal records in the United States or elsewhere in the region, beyond immigration offenses, a New York Times investigation has found. And very few of them appear to have any clear, documented links to the Venezuelan gang.

As they were being expelled, the detainees repeatedly begged officials to explain why they were being deported, and where they were being taken, one of their lawyers told the courts. At no point, the lawyer said, did officers indicate that the men were being sent to El Salvador or that they were removed under the Alien Enemies Act.

The Alien Enemies Act gives the U.S. government broad powers to detain people during times of war, but Supreme Court rulings make clear that detainees have a right to challenge the government, and are entitled to a hearing, before their removal.

Last month, an appeals court judge criticized the lack of due process under the Trump administration. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act,” said Judge Patricia Millett.

Then, last week, all nine Supreme Court justices said that targeted individuals must be given time to contest their removal before they’re expelled — and demanded that the Trump administration provide that opportunity going forward.

In court, the administration has argued that the men can still challenge their incarceration — but that will be difficult, if not impossible, because they are already in El Salvador, out of reach of the American justice system, with little access to lawyers or even their family members.

“They should stay there for the rest of their lives,” Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said last week.

Then on Monday, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador forcefully backed the administration during a visit to the White House. He flatly rejected the idea of returning a Maryland man who had been wrongfully deported to El Salvador, despite the Supreme Court’s instructions that the United States take steps to bring back the migrant.

The Trump administration claims that all of the 238 Venezuelan men now imprisoned in El Salvador are members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang born in Venezuela. Their expulsion, the administration argues, is part of its plan to deport the worst migrant offenders.

Officials say they used criminal records, social media, surveillance data, interviews with migrants and other information, like tattoos, to make their accusations.

But a Times investigation found little evidence of any criminal background — or any association with the gang — for most of the men. In fact, the prosecutors, law enforcement officials, court documents and media reports that The Times uncovered or spoke to in multiple countries suggested that only a few of the detainees might have had any connection to Tren de Aragua.

Seeking to provide a fuller picture of who was imprisoned, a team of Times reporters and researchers ran the 238 names through three U.S. public records databases, checked backgrounds in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile, scoured court documents and news articles, spoke to dozens of family members and interviewed experts on Tren de Aragua.

The findings are not comprehensive — there is no global public database to search for every accusation, and the U.S. government did not share its evidence against the detainees. But The Times’s investigation provides a snapshot of who the United States sent to El Salvador.

Some of the prisoners do appear to have committed grave crimes. At least 32 of the men sent to El Salvador have faced serious criminal accusations or convictions in the United States or abroad, including a man accused of participating in an assault in Chicago, another convicted of trying to smuggle arms out of the United States and others accused of theft, strangulation, domestic battery or harboring undocumented immigrants.

One has a homicide conviction in Venezuela, according to court documents. Another man was accused in Chile of kidnapping, drugging and raping a woman during a four-day rage.

Chilean prosecutors also believe the man is a member of Tren de Aragua, according to court documents. Investigators say they found his name and messages in the phones of other gang members.

Beyond that, The Times found that another two dozen of the men locked up in El Salvador had been accused or found guilty of lower-level offenses in the United States or elsewhere, including trespassing, speeding in a school zone and driving an improperly registered vehicle.

But for the others, including Mr. Suárez, the musician, The Times found no evidence of a criminal background, beyond offenses related to being unauthorized migrants. Mr. Suárez’s family presented official certificates from Venezuela, Colombia and Chile — where he lived in the past — saying he had no convictions in those nations.

All 238 men will spend at least a year in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a sprawling complex of concrete and barbed wire built by President Nayib Bukele, who has called himself “a dictator” and promoted the prison as a holding pen for his country’s worst criminals.

The United States is paying the government of El Salvador to incarcerate the Venezuelan prisoners. On X, the Salvadoran leader called the yearlong sentence “renewable.”

The U.S. government’s use of the alien act is now the subject of an intense court battle between the administration and civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, whose lawyers say the government has not met the standard to invoke the measure: a war with or invasion by Venezuela.

The groups also argue the government has violated the migrants’ rights to contest the accusation that they are members of Tren de Aragua and therefore “alien enemies.”

In court, the government has said that it has broad powers to determine what constitutes a war or invasion, as well as to decide who is a member of the gang, which the administration recently designated a foreign terrorist organization.

This week, the Supreme Court said the Trump administration could continue deporting people using the Alien Enemies Act while the legal fight plays out in the courts — as long as detainees have a chance to challenge their expulsions.

In a related case, the Supreme Court this month also ordered the Trump administration to take steps to return the Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego García, whom the government conceded it had sent to El Salvador in error.

In that case, a judge found that the government had decided Mr. García was a member of another notorious gang, MS-13, on the basis of flimsy evidence.

As for the prisoners accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said that all the men sent to El Salvador are “actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”

“We are confident in our law enforcement’s intelligence,” she added. “We have a stringent law enforcement assessment in place that abides by due process.”

The raids targeting Venezuelan migrants began just after Mr. Trump took office.

Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized Neri Alvarado, 25, a former psychology student, in a parking lot as he headed to work at a Dallas bakery, said his sister and his boss. Authorities picked up Francisco García Casique, 24, a barber, at his home in Austin, Texas, his family said. They grabbed Gustavo Aguilera Agüero, 27, an Uber driver, while he was working on his car in a driveway outside Dallas, according to his mother.

Mr. Suárez, the musician, came from a once middle-class family in Venezuela, the second oldest of seven siblings. His mother was an educator, his father a bricklayer. In 2014, he joined mass protests against the country’s authoritarian government, said his older brother, Nelson Suárez, 35, who now lives in the United States.

But when the country’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, tightened his grip and the Venezuelan economy spiraled into crisis, leaving millions hungry, the younger Mr. Suárez left for Colombia, then Chile.

“Many times we had to run for our lives,” said the older Mr. Suárez, “until we decided to leave.”

In Chile, the younger Mr. Suárez installed refrigerators and began building a following as a singer, mixing rap, hip-hop and reggaeton.

“There’s no sin here; there’s no sentence,” he sang in one song, about a woman who works the streets to escape poverty.

He met his wife, Ms. Sánchez, at a music event.

In the United States, Mr. Suárez believed he could advance his music career, said his brother, and make money to send back to his growing family.

He entered the United States on Sept. 3 using a Biden-era application that allowed people to present themselves at the border and ask for entry, according to documents reviewed by The Times. Officials allowed him in with an order to appear in court on March 6, where he would have the opportunity to fight removal.

In North Carolina, he worked in landscaping, said his brother Nelson.

On Dec. 2, his daughter was born in Chile.

On Jan. 20, Mr. Trump became president.

On Feb. 8, Mr. Suárez arrived at a house in Raleigh to record a music video. But U.S. immigration agents showed up and hauled him away, according to the brother.

Soon, Mr. Suárez was in detention in Georgia, where he told his brother that an official had done a background check and reviewed his YouTube channel. Mr. Suárez told his brother that officials didn’t seem to believe he was guilty of anything more than being a migrant.

“If this had been another moment, they would have let him go,” the brother said Mr. Suárez told him. “But since we are in this madness he was going to stay in the hands of ICE”

In dozens of interviews, family members said that once the men were detained, U.S. officials focused on their tattoos.

Mr. García, the barber, had the word “peace” written on his neck, accompanied by a crown, and had the names of his mother, grandmother and sisters on his body, said his family.

Mr. Aguilera, the Uber driver, had the name of his oldest son, Santiago, also accompanied by a crown, a star, a skull with flowers and the infinity symbol, according to his mother.

Mr. Alvarado, the former psychology student, had come to the United States to earn money to help his younger brother, who has autism, other disabilities and health problems, his family said.

Before leaving, Mr. Alvarado had inked on his leg a rainbow ribbon associated with autism awareness. His sister said it went with Mr. Alvarado’s other tattoos, which read: “brothers,” “family” and “self love.”

In an interview, Mr. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said tattoos were just one factor used to determine if an individual was a member of Tren de Aragua.

“I don’t say it’s a major factor,” he said, “it’s one of many.”

But an internal government document made public in court filings indicates how much weight is given to tattoos.

The document, called the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide,” instructs immigration officials to use a point system to identify members of Tren de Aragua. Eight points makes someone a “validated” member of the group. Having tattoos associated with the gang is worth four points.

Wearing clothing associated with the gang is worth another four.

A second government document indicates that the administration considers a crown tattoo — much like the one worn by soccer star Lionel Messi — and the “Jump Man” symbol, popularized by Michael Jordan, to be Tren de Aragua symbols.

Clothing associated with the gang includes “high-end urban street wear.”

In interviews, five Venezuelan experts on Tren de Aragua — two police officials, two scholars and a journalist — told The Times that while some transnational gangs use tattoos as indicators of membership, the Venezuelan group did not.

“In the case of the Tren de Aragua,” said Luis Izquiel, a professor of criminology at Venezuela’s Central University, “there is no common pattern of similar tattoos among its members.”

While many Tren de Aragua members have tattoos, experts said, so do many young Venezuelan men.

Of the 30 men whose family members or lawyers spoke to the Times, at least 27 have tattoos.

Mr. Suárez has 33, said his family, reflecting his urban music aesthetic. They include one of his signature phrases, they said: “The future is bright.”

The Trump administration began to move dozens of detained Venezuelan men to facilities in Texas roughly two weeks before invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

On March 14 and 15, the men called their families to say that Americans officials had told them they were being deported back to Venezuela, according to dozens of interviews.

In Aragua state, in Venezuela, Mirelis Casique, the mother of Mr. García, the barber, rushed to fix up his room, applying new paint and hanging new curtains.

But by March 16, the wife of Mr. Suárez, the musician, had still not heard from him.

Her anxiety rising, she turned to Google.

“Deportation to Venezuela,” she typed into the search box.

By now, three flights carrying the 238 men had arrived in El Salvador, despite a judge’s order that the Trump administration turn them around.

That morning, Mr. Bukele had posted a video showing the new prisoners shackled and gripped by guards in riot gear being led into the prison.

“We removed terrorists,” Mr. Homan, the U.S. border czar, said from Washington. “That should be a celebration in this country.”

Online, Mr. Suárez’s wife pulled up an image of a sea of shaved, cuffed men in Salvadoran prison. She recognized one: It was her husband.

Holding her newborn, she sat down and cried.

Later, she logged in to an online ICE search page that had allowed her to track her husband’s whereabouts in the United States.

Mr. Suárez had suddenly disappeared from the system.

Never before, legal analysts say, has the Alien Enemies Act been used with such little due process.

During World War II, the Department of Justice established civilian hearing boards in which “registered aliens” of German, Italian and Japanese descent arrested by the government could argue they were not a danger to the nation, legal scholars said.

Many scholars have criticized that process as deeply flawed; detainees were not afforded lawyers and could still be held based on hearsay and bias or racial discrimination.

But Eric L. Muller, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, said they nevertheless provided “a check” on the government, adding that the majority of people who obtained a hearing under the civilian boards were released.

In Venezuela, families have gathered for marches calling for the release of loved ones. Many have tried contacting American and Salvadoran officials, but say their messages have gone unanswered.

The governments of Mr. Trump and Mr. Bukele have refused to release a list of the men confined in the terrorism center or to confirm to families who is there.

For this article, The Times obtained an internal government list of names. CBS News previously reported the names.

The White House has said that 137 of the men were deported under the Alien Enemies Act, while 101 others were expelled under normal immigration proceedings. All are accused of being gang members, and all are in prison in El Salvador.

In recent weeks, Venezuela’s autocratic leader has accused the Trump administration of engaging in a violation with a long grim history in Latin America: a large-scale “forced disappearance.”

The United Nations defines the practice as the deprivation of liberty “followed by a refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned.”

In a rare moment of agreement, Human Rights Watch has come to the same conclusion as the Venezuelan leader.

Mr. Suárez’s brother says his biggest fear is that “tomorrow I get my brother back — in a wooden box.”

An uncle of Mr. Suárez’s, Edgar Trejo, said the family had been struggling not only to understand how the musician ended up in a faraway prison, but also the turn of events in “a country as organized and as just” as the United States.

Once upon a time, said Mr. Trejo, a pastor in Caracas, he believed that the United States was “God’s policeman on earth.”

In Caracas, the family had become accustomed to people being carted away with no trial.

Now, he said, “what we have seen here,” in Venezuela “we are also seeing there.”

Research was contributed by Alain Delaquérière, Susan C. Beachy, Kirsten Noyes and Sheelagh McNeill. Reporting was contributed by Pascale Bonnefoy, Sheyla Urdaneta, Mitra Taj, Alan Feuer, Steven Rich, José María León Cabrera, Annie Correal, Miriam Jordan,Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Ana Ley, Genevieve Glatsky and Simón Posada.

Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro.

A gigantic, roiling cloud of black smoke swirled up from a parking lot of burning cars, as residents milled about on a sidewalk in distress, and police and fire vehicles careened past. Then the scene became more chaotic.

“Shelter! shelter!” a policeman yelled. A thin, buzzing noise, like a chain saw running in the distance, wafted down from the sky. Another Russian exploding drone, like the one that had just hit the parking lot, was flying overhead. People ran for cover.

“It’s like this every day,” said the mayor, Artem Kobzar, who had been visiting the site in Sumy, Ukraine, and dashed into the open doorway of an apartment building. “Everybody in Ukraine wants peace,” he said. “But you see, in Sumy, we don’t have a day or night of calm.”

That bombardment came on Monday, a day after two ballistic missiles struck a central neighborhood of the city on Palm Sunday shortly after 10 a.m., killing 34 civilians, including two children, and wounding another 117, according to the Sumy City Council. Russia said it had struck a military target; a Ukrainian regional governor said a military awards ceremony had taken place in the city that day.

The Palm Sunday bombardment came more than two months after President Trump started cease-fire talks with a phone call to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. And in recent days it has become an argument in Ukraine and elsewhere that those talks are failing. In Sumy, the attack has set off preparation for a possible new Russian ground assault in this region.

The latest warning came 10 days before the deadliest air crash in South Korea.

A dozen officials gathered inside a room at Muan International Airport for a meeting of a bird strike prevention committee, where they discussed the number of aircraft being hit by birds, with data showing a jump in incidents over the past couple of years.

One official, from one of the country’s aviation training institutes, expressed concern that planes coming in to land often encountered flocks of birds by the coastline, according to a record of the meeting obtained by a lawmaker. To what extent is it possible to keep the birds away? the official asked.

The answer wasn’t reassuring. There weren’t enough people and cars deployed at the airport to keep birds away, and sounds from loudspeakers used to broadcast noises to scare birds off weren’t strong enough to reach far enough beyond the airport, said an official from the company that managed the airport’s facilities. He noted that they “were trying their best.”

Then, on Dec. 29, the pilot of Jeju Air Flight 2216 declared “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” and told air traffic controllers there had been a bird strike as the plane was making its descent. After making a sharp turn, the jet landed on its belly, slid down the runway and rammed into a concrete barrier, exploding into a fireball that killed 179 of the 181 people on board.

Investigators have not identified the reasons for the crash and what role, if any, a bird strike might have played. But the country’s transport ministry said bird feathers and blood were found in both of the jet’s engines. The remains were identified as being from the Baikal teal, a migratory duck common to South Korea in winter that often flies in flocks of up to tens or even hundreds of thousands.

The Dec. 19 meeting was not the first warning airport operators had received about birds. The dangers had been flagged for decades, dating back to even before the Muan airport opened in 2007, according to a New York Times examination of thousands of pages of government documents, interviews with dozens of people, and a visit to the wetlands surrounding the airport in the country’s southwest. Environmental assessments in 1998 and 2008 also noted there were many species of birds living close to the airport.

Most starkly, in 2020, when the airport began renovations that would include the extension of its runway, South Korea’s Environmental Impact Assessment service said there was “a high risk of bird strikes during takeoff and landing.” It advised that measures were needed to reduce the risk.

The Korea Airports Corporation said in response to questions from The Times that to prevent bird strikes it had used vehicles and noise makers to disperse flocks of birds and had conducted environmental surveys to monitor the airport’s surrounding habitats. The company said more loudspeakers were installed on airport premises after the meeting on Dec. 19.

But like most smaller airports in South Korea, Muan still lacked thermal imaging cameras and bird detection radar used to alert air traffic controllers and pilots to the presence of birds, according to the government.

Airports everywhere are advised to have such measures in place, according to guidelines from the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency that sets global standards for the aviation industry.

“The regulations are there, but people have been breaking them without any repercussions,” says Dr. Nial Moores, the national director of Birds Korea, a bird conservation group. “They were warned about the risk of a bird strike,” he added. “How come nothing has changed?”

In addition to failing to follow international guidelines, the airport’s operators also breached domestic safety regulations.

On the day of the crash in Muan, only one person was on duty to watch out for birds, instead of a minimum of two that government rules require, according to lawmakers at a parliamentary committee hearing into the disaster.

That bird patroller was at the end of a 15-hour night shift, the period when the vast majority of bird strikes take place, according to a presentation by Moon Geum-joo, a lawmaker, at the committee hearing. Joo Jong-wan, the head of the transport ministry’s aviation policy, conceded that the airport’s patrol was understaffed and said all airports would meet the minimum staffing in the future.

The Korea Airports Corporation said it had adhered to government standards and was hiring more staff to prevent bird collisions. The transport ministry declined to comment.

In addition, at least one person required to attend the meeting of the bird strike prevention committee had missed the one on Dec. 19, an official from the Korea Airports Corporation acknowledged at the parliamentary hearing. The state-owned company operates almost all of South Korea’s airports, including the one in Muan.

“It’s a shame that they have known about their shortcomings for years, but nothing has actually been done to improve,” said Kwon Hyang-Yup, an opposition lawmaker who obtained the bird safety committee report.

While airplane strikes with wildlife are not uncommon, most don’t cause planes to crash. Out of nearly 20,000 wildlife strikes in the United States in 2023, around 4 percent caused damage to the plane.

Since the crash, South Korea’s government has pledged 247 billion won (around $173 million) over three years to improve bird-strike prevention measures at all the country’s airports. Planned measures include installing bird detection devices and implementing a national radar model to alert people in control towers, patrollers on the ground and pilots to the presence of birds.

Some experts ask whether the Muan airport should have been built at all because of the abundance of birds in the wetlands surrounding it. The airport has at least twice reported the highest number of bird strikes out of the country’s 15 airports over the past five years, with six cases in 2024, up from two the previous year.

Its rate of bird strikes was 10 times that of Incheon International Airport, the nation’s largest, according to data released by Ms. Kwon, the lawmaker. Incheon, which also lies close to bird habitats, has identified almost 100 species of birds in its vicinity. It has four thermal imaging cameras, two devices that emit bird-repelling noises, and 48 workers assigned to bird control, according to an airport representative.

Ju Yung-Ki, a researcher and conservationist who has visited the Muan area repeatedly in recent years, was working in his office on Dec. 29 when he learned about the plane crash.

“I had always thought there was a risk of a bird strike there,” said Mr. Ju, the director of the Ecoculture Institute. Mr. Ju had flown in and out of the Muan airport several times, despite his concerns.

After hearing news of the crash, he traveled around 70 miles from his home in Jeonju, northeast of Muan, to a lake near the airport and arrived around 4:30 p.m. He could see the charred tail of the plane and the wreckage at the end of the runway. “It was horrific,” he said, adding that he shed tears thinking about the people who had died.

As that afternoon progressed, he also located flocks of up to 300,000 Baikal teals around 18 miles from the airport. They fly at least that distance to search for food, and he observed with binoculars and a telescope that the airport was in their daily flight path.

The Baikal teal isn’t particularly big, at around 16 inches long with an eight-inch wingspan. But the ducks move in large, agile flocks that can reach as many as a million in number, said Dr. Moores of Birds Korea. They breed in Siberia and arrive on the southwestern coast of South Korea in October and stay through early March.

Muan, almost 200 miles south of Seoul, lies among the marshy grasslands and reservoirs across the southwestern peninsula, where the duck and other species of birds roost in pockets of calm water. Local business owners said that flocks of birds were most often seen at a country club near the airport; around four miles away.

An enforcement regulation attached to South Korea’s Airport Facilities Act in 2017 stipulates that an airport cannot be built within eight kilometers, or about five miles, of a bird sanctuary or game reserve. But, according to the nation’s environment ministry, there is only one such sanctuary in Muan, and that lies about 12 miles from the airport.

Conservationists say the reality is different. They say the term sanctuary — classified as a collective habitat and breeding ground for endangered wildlife — ignores many of the region’s populous bird habitats. A map by the Korean Office of Civil Aviation identifies four areas surrounding the Muan airport where birds feed and roost.

Some of those spots are as close as a little over a mile from the airport. On one morning in February, hundreds of birds flew overhead at around this distance. Larger birds flew in a “V” formation, while smaller ones wove in and out in an aerial dance.

“It’s not a matter of whether the Muan International Airport is near a sanctuary or not,” Mr. Ju said. “The fact is that there are a lot of birds that live there.”

The decision on whether an area is a sanctuary lies with the mayor or governor, according to South Korea’s Wildlife Protection and Management Act. There are around 400 of these protected areas nationwide, according to the Ministry of Environment.

Experts say that no matter how many preventive efforts are undertaken, bird strikes cannot be totally eliminated. “The obvious thing is not to build an airport where there are a lot of birds,” said Keith Mackey, an American aviation expert and safety consultant based in Ocala, Fla.

Other methods that could be deployed to deter birds include using brightly colored paint on the runway and drones to disperse nearby flocks, Mr. Mackey said.

Muan’s airport has been closed since the Dec. 29 crash, though medical and training flights there have restarted. Originally scheduled to resume commercial flights on April 18, the airport recently announced it would stay shut until July.

South Korea has ambitious plans to build 10 airports over the next few decades in response to booming regional demand for increased overseas travel. Several will also be along the western coastline. One is of particular concern to conservationists: in Saemangeum, about 65 miles north of Muan.

The proposed airport, which is scheduled to open in 2029, lies within four miles of the Seocheon Tidal Flat, a UNESCO Heritage Site that is home to dozens of nationally protected wildlife species including birds, according to Kim Nahee, an activist who is protesting against the construction of the new airport.

Officials in North Jeolla Province, where Saemangeum is, said “there was no infrastructure that would disturb the flight path of birds,” citing a government environmental agency’s analysis.

“They shouldn’t have built the Muan International Airport where they did,” Ms. Kim said. “This can’t happen again.”

Auvers-sur-Oise, a village near Paris famed as an artist’s paradise, is also where Vincent Van Gogh spent his final days and it has long drawn tourists to walk in the tortured painter’s last footsteps. But ever since art experts identified his final work before he took his life, there has been strife in the town.

Van Gogh’s final painting was disputed for decades, because he didn’t date his works. But in 2020 experts concluded that gnarled tree roots protruding from a hillside in Auvers, as depicted in his “Tree Roots,” was made on the day he died. This finding may have settled one dispute, but it immediately stirred another, this one between the municipality and the owners of the property where the roots grow.

The main root depicted in the painting — from a black locust tree and dubbed the “elephant” by enthusiasts — abuts a public road. After the discovery of its historical value, the municipality claimed a section of privately owned land near the road as public domain, saying it was necessary for maintenance. Jean-François and Hélène Serlinger, the property owners, fought the village, and an appeals court recently concluded there was no basis for the municipality’s claim.

But the mayor of Auvers, Isabelle Mézières, has pledged to keep fighting, and she can still appeal to a higher court. After the decision, she insisted that the site should belong to the public, not private owners. “The Roots belong to the Auversois!” she wrote on social media, referring to the citizens of the region.

The continued fight over Van Gogh’s tree roots has cast a pall over what is usually a celebratory season in Auvers, population 7,000, where art tourism is a big business that heats up in the spring.

That the village has been depicted by other notable painters, including Pierre Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro has only added to its attraction. Its popularity is such that the French transit authorities run a seasonal line from Paris, dubbed the “Impressionists’ Train,” and people come from afar to see what the local tourist board calls “the open-air museum that Auvers has become over time.”

The property owners say the conflict is endangering the historic site, as the mayor has blocked them and experts from properly protecting the roots since their significance was established. In a phone interview, Mr. Serlinger accused the municipality of using the administrative case as a pretext for “an attempted takeover of a culturally significant site” and of simultaneously endangering the roots by “obstructing the installation of a permanent protective structure.”

The municipality and the mayor declined requests for comment. But it is perhaps fitting that these tree roots should be the subject of such a knotty dispute.

Van Gogh’s famous painting depicting the tangled tree shows “the struggle of life, and a struggle with death,” Wouter van der Veen, the researcher in France who identified the roots, said in 2020.

Still, the painting is bright and lively, made at the end of a productive period in Van Gogh’s troubled existence — after he famously cut off his ear and spent time in an asylum — and the village celebrates the Dutch painter whose work was rejected in life and embraced after his death. Van Gogh is a major attraction, including for the Serlingers.

The couple moved to Auvers in 1996 because Mrs. Serlinger, an artist, wanted to live where Van Gogh had worked. In 2013, they bought a small additional parcel of land near their house, connected to their yard, extending their territory. Only years later did it turn out that the roots on that new property were an important part of art history.

Now, the roots have their own website and nonprofit organization, run by the Serlingers, who say they want to protect the location for the public to enjoy. They’ve partnered with the Van Gogh Europe Foundation, which brings together key locations and museums linked to the painter under the direction of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Last year, the Serlingers began opening their yard to visitors for tours.

Mr. Serlinger insists the couple did not intend to make their yard into a destination and has not profited from the tours. He noted that the main root is mostly visible to the public from the road, though the municipality has placed a 10-foot sign there highlighting the find that partially obstructs the view and “disfigures the front of the site.”

It was the enthusiasm of art experts and academics visiting them over the years, that convinced the couple to open up their land to the public, he said. They now charge about $9 for a 30-minute “walk through the landscape of Van Gogh’s final painting,” he added, with funds going to preservation costs.

Saturday was the start of the new tourist season. But the dispute has unsettled the property owners and raised concerns about the preservation of the roots.

“It created a deep sense of insecurity around a site that calls for calm and serenity,” Mr. Serlinger said. “We have a feeling of insecurity with a mayor who is still in a war.”

An Israeli strike killed a security guard and wounded 10 patients at a field hospital in southern Gaza on Tuesday, according to the director of the medical facility.

The deadly attack at the Kuwait Specialty Field Hospital in Khan Younis came two days after an Israeli strike hit one of the enclave’s last functioning medical centers: the Ahli Arab Hospital compound in Gaza City. The strikes highlighted the precarious state of Gaza’s health care sector, which has been decimated by the war.

Israel’s military has said the strike on Ahli Arab hospital targeted a Hamas command center, without providing evidence. On Tuesday, it said it had carried out a strike targeting a Hamas commander “adjacent to and outside” the Kuwait Specialty Field Hospital.

Dr. Suhaib al-Hamss, the field hospital’s director, said that the security guard was killed protecting the entrance to the facility. Four of the wounded suffered serious injuries, he added, noting the attack hit the edge of the hospital grounds.

“It was a powerful strike,” Dr. al-Hamss, 37, said in a phone interview. “Everything fell over.”

Others at the hospital said the strike prompted patients to flee the hospital.

“It was a terrifying moment,” said Mohammed Abu Ghali, a field coordinator for HEAL Palestine, an American nongovernmental organization that funds the field hospital.

Israel’s military offensive has caused immense damage to hospitals and the health care system in the enclave. The World Health Organization reported last month that 33 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals had been damaged and that only 21 remained partly functional. On Saturday it warned that hospitals in Gaza face a looming medicine shortage because Israel has blocked aid deliveries for six weeks.

Israeli officials say that medical centers have been targeted because Hamas fighters embed themselves within and under the facilities, and that it is the only way to root out the armed group. Hamas and medical workers have denied this accusation.

Evidence examined by The New York Times suggests that Hamas has used Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City — which the Israeli military has raided — for cover and stored weapons inside it. The Israeli military has not presented similarly expansive evidence about most of the other health care centers it has attacked.

Dr. al-Hamss said that the Kuwait Specialty Field Hospital’s location was known to the Israeli authorities as it had been shared through intermediaries before the attack. He added that staff were vetted and that Hamas government offices were not hosted at the medical facility.

“We’re not doing anything other than medicine,” he said.

The Kuwait Specialty Field Hospital was treating a minimum of 3,500 patients every day, according to Dr. al-Hamss.

“The hospital,” he said, “is providing a solution to the people in light of the collapse of the heath sector in Gaza.”

Since the collapse last month of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s military has embarked on a major bombing campaign and seized territory in Gaza. Israeli officials have said the offensive is a bid to compel Hamas to release more hostages held in the enclave.

More than 1,600 people have been killed in Gaza since the cease-fire fell apart — among the more than 51,000 killed since the start of the war, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its casualty counts.

Doctors at hospitals in Gaza have said that many of those wounded and killed in recent weeks have been children. On April 3, more than a dozen wounded children were seen in the emergency room of the Ahli Arab Hospital after Israeli strikes on a nearby school turned shelter. The Israeli military — which has also accused Hamas of embedding in schools — later said those strikes were targeting well-known militants in a Hamas command center, without naming them.

Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.

The paramedics and rescue workers killed in an Israeli shooting in Gaza last month died mainly from gunshots to the head or chest, while others had shrapnel injuries or other wounds, according to autopsy reports obtained by The New York Times.

Israeli troops had fired on ambulances and a fire truck sent by the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Civil Defense, according to witness accounts, video and audio of the March 23 attack.

Israel acknowledged carrying out the attack, which killed 15 men: 14 rescue workers and a United Nations employee who drove by after the others were shot. Israeli soldiers buried most of the bodies in a mass grave, crushed the ambulances, fire truck and a U.N. vehicle, and buried those as well.

The Israeli military has offered shifting explanations for why its troops fired on the emergency vehicles and said, without providing evidence, that some of the dead men had been Hamas operatives. Israel’s military said it was investigating the killing.

The episode drew international condemnation, and experts described it as a war crime.

The autopsies were carried out between April 1 and April 5, according to the reports, after a team of aid workers recovered the men’s bodies from southern Gaza. The Times reviewed autopsy results for all the men except the U.N. employee. They were performed by Dr. Ahmad Dhair, the head of the Gazan health ministry’s forensic medicine unit.

Dr. Arne Stray-Pedersen, a forensic pathologist at Oslo University Hospital in Norway, who had been in Gaza earlier in March to train doctors in forensic medicine, reviewed photos of the autopsies and consulted with Dr. Dhair to write a summary report.

The 14 men were wearing either their Red Crescent or Civil Defense uniforms, in part or in whole, at the time of death, the autopsy reports said. Video of part of the attack shows that when Israeli troops began shooting at them, a few of the paramedics had exited their vehicles and were clearly visible in their uniforms, with reflective bands across the back, arms and legs that shone brightly in the lights of the ambulances.

The autopsy reports said 11 of the men had gunshot wounds, including at least six who were shot in their chests or backs and four who were shot in the head. Most had been shot multiple times.

One man had several shrapnel wounds in his chest and abdomen; two others had injuries that the autopsy reports said were “consistent” with shrapnel, possibly related to an explosion. While sustained gunfire can be heard on the video and in audio recordings of part of the attack, it is unclear whether there was an additional blast that might have caused such injuries.

Several of the bodies were missing limbs or other body parts, the reports said. One man’s body was severed from the pelvis down, his autopsy report said.

The bodies were all partly or severely decomposed, according to the autopsy reports and photos. That made it challenging to draw additional conclusions, including whether the men had been shot at close range or from farther away, Dr. Stray-Pedersen said in an interview.

After examining the first few bodies in late March, Dr. Dhair had told The Times and other news outlets that one victim had marks and bruises on his wrists suggesting that his hands had been tied. Dr. Dhair cautioned that further investigation was needed to determine whether that was the case.

The autopsy reports do not mention whether any of the men had been tied up.

A Red Crescent spokeswoman, Nebal Farsakh, had also said that one paramedic was found with his hands and feet tied. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Dr. Stray-Pedersen began consulting on the autopsies after the Gazan health ministry sought help from NORWAC, a Norwegian aid group, a draft of the summary report says. He said in an interview that he and Dr. Dhair will continue to analyze the results before issuing a final report.

“I am specifically looking at any possible patterns, if all of them were killed in the same manner or if some have any additional wounds,” Dr. Stray-Pedersen said.

In its initial statement after the attack, the Israeli military said that the men had been “advancing suspiciously” without their lights. It backtracked on that assertion after the release of the video, which showed the clearly marked vehicles flashing their lights and coming to a halt before the attack.

The Israeli military’s first account also said that nine of those killed had been operatives for Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group. It later revised that count, saying that six of them were Hamas operatives.

It has said it will not comment further until its investigation is complete.

Abubakr Abdelbagi and Naziha Baassiri contributed reporting.

The Jordanian security services said Tuesday that they had arrested 16 people they accused of plotting threats to national security involving weapons, explosives and plans to manufacture drones and train combatants, both domestically and abroad.

The statement from Jordan’s General Intelligence Department was a rare acknowledgment of threats to security in a country seen as one of the most stable in a region frequently beset by war and turmoil. Jordan has long been a key partner for Western allies in fighting Islamist militants and mediating in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Arab kingdom, with roughly half its population made up of Palestinians, has been struggling to maintain that stability amid simmering discontent within its population over the war in the Gaza Strip and broader regional fighting — particularly after Jordan supported Israel in shooting down missiles during an Iranian aerial attack last spring.

For years, the country has also been engaged in an extended battle to combat drug smugglers seeking to move their goods through the country toward wealthy customers in the Gulf region.

In its statement on Tuesday, Jordan’s intelligence service said it had been “closely monitoring” the people it detained since 2021, which may have been a reference to an attempted palace coup that year. In April 2021, Jordan’s king, Abdullah II, accused his younger brother, Hamzah, of involvement in a conspiracy aimed at destabilizing national security with foreign backing. Fourteen people were arrested in connection with the apparent plot.

Other than the 2021 reference, there was no immediate indication from the statement that those arrested this week had ties to that earlier plot, which led to Prince Hamza being placed under house arrest. The government later announced that the rift between the prince and King Abdullah II had been resolved through mediation.

The Jordanian authorities said the newer plot included plans to manufacture missiles locally as well as bring them in from abroad, and to obtain explosives and weapons. The plot also included “concealment of a ready-to-use missile, a project to manufacture drones, and the recruitment and training of individuals within the Kingdom and their subsequent training abroad,” the statement said.

A report by the Reuters news agency cited officials saying that the arrests on Tuesday were connected to the Palestinian militant group, Hamas. Since the war between Israel and Hamas began in Gaza, Jordan has countered Iranian efforts to smuggle weapons through the country to Palestinian militants across the border in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to regional and U.S. officials.

Tensions between France and Algeria, never far from the surface, flared as the two countries engaged in tit-for-tat expulsions of officials working at each of their embassies and consulates.

In response to Algeria’s decision of Monday to expel 12 officials working at the French embassy and consulates, the French presidency announced on Tuesday that it would “symmetrically” proceed with the expulsion of 12 consular and diplomatic “Algerian agents.”

“The Algerian authorities are responsible for this brutal deterioration of our bilateral relations,” it said.

France also said it was recalling its ambassador to Algeria.

Algeria’s decision came after the arrest in France on Friday of an Algerian official accused of involvement in the kidnapping last year of an Algerian influencer known as “Amir DZ.”

“This disgraceful act, by which the minister of the interior sought to humiliate Algeria, was perpetrated with no regard for the consular status of the agent,” Algeria’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Earlier, France had reacted with threats of its own. “We are ready to act,” said Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister. “The Algerian authorities only have a few hours left to reverse their decision.”

The Algerian official was indicted on suspicion of “arrest, abduction, unlawful confinement or arbitrary detention in connection with a terrorist undertaking,” French national antiterrorism prosecutors said in a statement.

He and two other people have been detained.

“Amir DZ” has been living in France since 2016 and was granted political asylum in 2023.

For years, Algeria has demanded his extradition, issuing nine international arrest warrants on accusations of fraud and terrorist offenses. French courts rejected the request.

“Neither societies have moved on from trauma, so there are always people in Algeria and in France who have an interest in torpedoing any climate of conciliation,” Khadija Mohsen-Finan, a political scientist with a focus on the Arab world and North Africa and an associate researcher at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

France ruled Algeria for more than a century, as a colony and then a part of its territory. Algeria won its independence in 1962, after a devastating war, but tensions between the two countries have remained almost constant.

Last week, Mr. Barrot visited Algiers in an attempt to revive relations and put to rest an almost yearlong diplomatic crisis.

The relationship had seemed to ease when President Emmanuel Macron called his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, in late March. But the conciliation proved illusory.

Relations have been particularly bad since last summer, when Mr. Macron announced French support of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, a territory whose control Algeria disputes.

The situation was aggravated by the arrest last November in Algiers of an Algerian French writer, Boualem Sansal, on accusations of undermining national unity and security.

Mr. Macron, alongside many intellectuals and officials, was outraged. He has called for the release of the author, believed to be 80, who was sentenced to five years in prison in late March.