The first of several Americans recently charged with possession of ammunition in Turks and Caicos was heading home Friday after getting a suspended 52-week sentence and a $6,700 fine, his representatives said.

But four other Americans still await their fate. In recent months, all were arrested and accused of bringing in various amounts of ammunition to the 40-island chain southeast of the Bahamas. In the Turks and Caicos, possession of firearms or ammunition carries a minimum 12-year sentence, though the law allows reduced sentences under “exceptional circumstances,” the local governor said.

Bryan Hagerich of Pennsylvania had pleaded guilty to the charge, the Turks and Caicos government said.

Hagerich was allowed to leave the British Overseas Territory and return to the United States once he paid the fine, Smith said. He would have to serve the full 12-month sentence if the fine was not paid.

Hagerich flew back to the US Friday afternoon, according to Johnathan Franks, a spokesperson for the Bring Our Families Home Campaign. The organization helps wrongfully detained Americans secure release.

“Very grateful to the Court for giving two very special kids their dad back. Even more grateful to the numerous (Turks and Caicos Islands) nationals who helped along the way,” Franks posted to X along with a picture of Hagerich boarding a plane.

Smith said his client was “pleased, he’s relieved” by the outcome.

“The sentence, in all its circumstances, is reasonable and fair,” Smith said.

After Hagerich’s sentencing, Turks and Caicos Premier Washington Misick said justice “has been served as the law intended.”

“As we have said, The Firearms Act includes consideration for exceptional circumstances,” Misick said, “and today’s decision reflects our commitment to judicial independence along with upholding the law. Residents and visitors can be confident that the Turks and Caicos Islands are dedicated to safety and compassion as we protect the safety and rights of all.”

The four other Americans charged have been released on bail while they await their court dates, Misick’s office said in a statement. One was allowed to return to the US for medical reasons, and the rest are staying in Turks and Caicos.

US lawmakers tried to get Americans freed

A US congressional delegation traveled to the islands this week and asked for charges to be dropped for the five Americans whom they said “inadvertently” had ammunition in their luggage.

Hagerich’s sentencing came after the US officials expressed disappointment over their attempted intervention.

“Unfortunately, despite our willingness to work with Turks and Caicos officials to get our constituents home, we were not able to find a path forward,” Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma said in a statement this week.

In addition to Hagerich, two other Americans – Michael Lee Evans and Tyler Wenrich – have pleaded guilty to possession of ammunition while traveling in Turks and Caicos, according to the territory’s government.

Evans was allowed to return to the US over a “severe” medical situation, but will be required to return to Turks and Caicos for his next hearing, Smith said.

A fourth American, Ryan Tyler Watson, will have a hearing Tuesday to determine if he will enter a plea or go to trial, Smith said.

A fifth American, Sharitta Shinese Grier, was arrested last week and is awaiting trial after making bail, according to Kimo Tynes​​​​, director of communications in the Office of the Premier and Public Policy.

Turks and Caicos: No special treatment should be given to any group

Turks and Caicos Gov. Dileeni Daniel-Selvaratnam said the mandatory minimum 12-year sentence for possession of firearms or ammunition is in place to protect those on the islands, and judges may use their discretion to impose reduced sentences in “exceptional circumstances.”

But no special treatment should be given to any group, the Turks and Caicos premier said.

“The law must be applied even-handedly,” Misick said.

And US citizens are not being targeted, Turks and Caicos officials said. Of the 195 people sentenced for firearm-related offenses over the past six years, only seven were US citizens, Misick said Thursday. No US citizen has received the 12-year sentence to date.

Even though the territory doesn’t manufacture firearms or ammunition, the number of firearms finding their way to the islands has increased, Misick said. By contrast, the United States has more guns than people.

Now, bringing firearms or ammunition into Turks and Caicos without prior permission from police is “strictly forbidden.”

While the US and Turks and Caicos collaborate in battling narcotics, terrorism and money laundering, “our laws and processes are not congruent,” Misick said.

“We are a separate sovereignty. We respect the United States’ laws and we will never think to interfere in its operation.”

But at least one appointed member of the opposition, Alvin Garland, expressed concern about the American citizens’ arrests.

Garland said the islands’ governor is correct in not interfering with the ongoing court cases in order to adhere to the government’s separation of powers, but added he believes most, if not all, of the cases involving American tourists will fall into the “exceptional circumstances category” and sentences could be shorter than the mandatory 12-year minimum.

This story has been updated with additional information.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled the last name of Turks and Caicos Governor Dileeni Daniel-Selvaratnam.

Perhaps “birdbrained” isn’t such an insult after all –– crows, the ubiquitous urban bird, can vocally count up to four, the latest research has found.

Not only can the inquisitive creatures count, but they can match the number of calls they make when shown a numeral, according to a new study, led by a team of researchers with the University of Tübingen’s animal physiology lab in Germany.

The way the birds recognize and react to numbers is similar to a process we humans use, both to learn to count as toddlers and quickly recognize how many objects we’re looking at. The findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, deepen our growing understanding of crow intelligence.

“Humans do not have a monopoly on skills such as numerical thinking, abstraction, tool manufacture, and planning ahead,” said animal cognition expert Heather Williams via email. “No one should be surprised that crows are ‘smart.’” Williams, a professor of biology at Williams College in Massachusetts, was not involved in the study.

In the animal kingdom, counting isn’t limited to crows. Chimpanzees have been taught to count in numerical order and understand the value of numerals, much like young children. In attempting to woo mates, some male frogs count the number of calls from competing males to match or even one-up that number when it’s their turn to croak at a female. Scientists have even theorized that ants retrace their paths back to their colonies by counting their steps, though the method isn’t always accurate.

What this latest study showed is that crows, like young humans, can learn to associate numerals with values –– and count out loud accordingly.

Can crows count much like toddlers do?

The research was inspired by toddlers learning to count, said lead study author Diana Liao, a neurobiologist and senior researcher at the Tübingen lab. Toddlers use the words of numbers to tally the number of objects in front of them: If they see three toys in front of them, their counting could sound like “one, two, three” or “one, one, one.”

Maybe crows could do the same, Liao thought. She was inspired, too, by a June 2005 study on chickadees tailoring their alarm calls to a predator’s size. The larger a predator’s wingspan or body length, the fewer “dee” sounds the chickadees used in their alarm call, the study found. The opposite was true for smaller predators –– the songbirds would use more “dee” sounds if they encountered a smaller bird, which could be greater threats to chickadees since they are more agile, Liao said.

The authors of the chickadee study couldn’t confirm whether the small songbirds had control over the number of sounds they made or if the number of sounds were an involuntary response. But the possibility piqued Liao’s curiosity –– could crows, whose intelligence has been well-documented over decades of research, show control over their ability to produce a certain number of sounds, effectively “counting” like toddlers do?

The crows planned their number of caws

Liao and her colleagues trained three carrion crows, a European species closely related to the American crow, over more than 160 sessions. During the trainings, the birds had to learn associations between a series of visual and auditory cues from 1 to 4 and produce the corresponding number of caws. In the example researchers provided, a visual cue might look like a bright blue numeral, and its corresponding audio could be the half-second song of a drumroll.

The crows were expected to perform the same number of caws as the number represented by the cue –– three caws for the cue with the numeral 3 –– within 10 seconds of seeing and hearing the cue. When the birds had stopped counting and cawing, they would peck at an “enter” key on the touchscreen that presented their cues to confirm that they were done. If the birds had counted correctly, they’d receive a treat.

It appeared that as the cues continued, the crows took longer to react to each cue. Their reaction times grew as “more vocalizations were impending,” Liao wrote, suggesting that the crows planned the number of caws they were going to make before they opened their beaks.

The researchers could even tell how many calls the birds planned to make by the way their first call sounded –– subtle acoustic differences that showed that the crows knew how many numbers they were looking at and had synthesized the information.

“They understand abstract numbers … and then plan ahead as they match their behavior to match that number,” Williams said.

Even the mistakes the crows made were somewhat advanced: If the crows had cawed one too many times, stuttered over the same number or submitted their responses with their beak prematurely, Liao and her researchers could detect from the sound of the first call where they went wrong. These are the “same kinds of errors humans make,” Williams said.

We’re still learning how smart crows are

Birds and many other animals were previously thought to make only on-the-spot decisions based on stimuli in their immediate environments, a theory popularized by the 20th century animal behaviorist B.F. Skinner. But the latest research by Liao and her colleagues provides more evidence about crows’ ability to synthesize numbers to produce a sound and suggests that the skill is within their control.

The study team’s findings are highly specific but still significant –– they challenge the once common belief that all animals are merely stimulus-response machines, said Kevin McGowan, a researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, who has spent more than two decades studying wild crows in their habitats. McGowan wasn’t involved in the study.

Crow intelligence has been studied for decades. Scientists have investigated New Caledonian crows creating their own compound tools to access food. The birds appear to establish rules, according to a November 2013 study coauthored by the University of Tübingen lab’s lead researcher, Andreas Nieder. Crow language has confounded scientists for decades, too, with its widely varying tones and expressions, McGowan said.

The study by Liao and her colleagues isn’t even the first to consider whether crows can count. That research began with Nicholas Thompson in 1968, animal cognition expert Irene Pepperberg noted. A research professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University, Pepperberg is best known for her work with an African grey parrot named Alex.

Thompson hypothesized that crows could count based on their caws, the duration and number of which the birds appeared to control in a given burst of sound. The crows’ counting abilities “seem to exceed the demands which survival makes for such abilities,” he wrote.

Another University of Tübingen study on crows’ counting abilities from September 2015 trained the birds to recognize groupings of dots and recorded the activity of neurons in the part of the crows’ brains that receives and makes sense of visual stimuli. The researchers found that the crows’ neurons “ignore the dots’ size, shape and arrangement and only extract their number,” the university said in a statement at the time.

“So, crows’ brains can represent different quantities, and crows can quickly learn to match Arabic numerals to those quantities –– something humans usually explicitly teach their children,” Williams said.

Genetically engineered mosquitoes have been released in the tiny East African country of Djibouti to combat a surge in malaria infections caused by an invasive vector.

This initiative started on Thursday, comes as Djibouti, one of Africa’s smallest nations with just over a million residents, grapples with a dramatic increase in malaria cases, skyrocketing from just 27 in 2012 to more than 70,000 in recent years, according to the WHO. The health body attributes the spike to the arrival of Anopheles stephensi, an invasive Asian mosquito species that transmit the deadly disease.

The mosquito species has also been detected in Ethiopia and Somalia, Djibouti’s neighbors in the Horn of Africa, posing a significant regional threat.

Unlike most malaria-transmitting mosquitoes in Africa that breed in rural areas, Anopheles Stephensi thrives in urban environments, intensifying the public health challenge for predominantly urban Djibouti.

“This mosquito poses a huge threat to our fight against malaria,” said Grey Frandsen, CEO of US-owned biotechnology firm Oxitec, which developed the gene-modified mosquitoes released in Djibouti.

“Anopheles stephensi evade conventional tools, are resistant to insecticides and daytime-biters, reducing the efficacy of bed nets,” he said.

“We are in the pilot phase, but we believe in the technology. We are sure it will be the game changer,” Abdilleh said.

‘Using mosquitoes to fight mosquitoes’

Dubbed a method that “uses mosquitoes to fight mosquitoes”, Oxitec’s genetic technology targets female mosquitoes, which are predominantly responsible for malaria transmission.

The technique involves releasing genetically engineered male mosquitoes into the wild, which then mate with females. The introduced gene prevents female offspring from surviving to adulthood, effectively reducing the population of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. Male mosquitoes do not bite and therefore cannot transmit malaria.

Frandsen said Oxitec’s genetic technology, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been effective in reducing other mosquito-borne viral diseases such as dengue fever in other parts of the world.

“We are still at the early stages of this program, but we’re hopeful of the impact this can have in driving down malaria-spreading mosquitoes,” he added.

Although the rollout of genetically modified mosquitoes in Djibouti is only the second in Africa, the idea is drawing more interest on the continent.

In 2019, a team of scientists released Africa’s pioneer batch of gene-modified mosquitoes to gather data on the potency of the technique in Burkina Faso where malaria is a leading cause of death.

According to vector control research alliance, Target Malaria, the mosquitoes released in the west African country were “genetically modified to be sterile, so it can mate but cannot produce offspring.”

It added that an estimated 14,850 gene-modified male mosquitoes were released and 527 were recaptured.

“After recapturing them, the researchers found that the genetically modified mosquitoes were less mobile than their non-transgenic siblings and had lower survival rates,” the alliance said of its findings, adding that a second trial phase was being planned in the country.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni announced in early January that his country is partnering with Oxitec to combat malaria.

Africa bears the brunt of the global malaria burden, accounting for 96% of malaria deaths worldwide in 2021, according to the World Health Organization.

The United Nations’ top court has ordered Israel to immediately halt its controversial military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, further increasing international pressure on Israel over its war against Hamas.

“Israel must immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in Rafah which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” Judge Nawaf Salam, president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), said on Friday.

The court considers the humanitarian situation in Rafah to be classified as “disastrous,” he said, adding that UN officials have indicated that the situation was set to “intensify even further” if the Israeli operation in Rafah continues.

Israel began a limited ground offensive in Rafah on May 7, defying calls from the international community, including the United States, not to proceed.

More than a million Palestinians were taking shelter in Rafah before Israel started its operation, but the court noted that around 800,000 have since been displaced.

Upon entering Rafah, the military seized the city’s border crossing with Egypt, which has remained shut since. The crossing was a vital entry point for humanitarian aid.

The court ordered Israel to open the Rafah crossing for humanitarian assistance and said it had found that the evacuation and living conditions provided by Israel are not “sufficient to alleviate the immense risk, which the Palestinian population is exposed” to.

Rulings by the court are final and binding, but the ICJ doesn’t have a mechanism to enforce them, and they have been ignored in the past.

Israeli officials have condemned the ICJ’s ruling. Yair Lapid, leader of Israel’s opposition party Yesh Atid, said that “the fact that the ICJ did not even directly connect the end of the military operation in Rafah to the release of the hostages and to Israel’s right to defend itself against terror is an abject moral failure.”

Naftali Bennett, who was the 13th Prime Minister of Israel, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “The International Court of Justice just provided every terror organization on earth with THE PERFECT METHOD TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER.”

Hamas welcomed the order in a statement, but said it had expected it would be for the entire Gaza Strip, emphasizing that the situations in Jabalya and other cities are equally dire and warrant similar attention.

South Africa filed an urgent request on May 10 for additional measures against Israel, accusing it of using forced evacuation orders in the southern Gaza city of Rafah to “endanger rather than protect civilian life.” The request was part of a larger case brought by Pretoria against Israel in which South Africa accuses Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians during the seven-month-long conflict.

Israel’s Deputy Attorney General for International Law Gilad Noam denied the allegations in his opening remarks at the ICJ last week and asked the court to “respect the predicament” Israel is in.

Two interpretations

Following the ruling, a joint statement by the Israel’s National Security Council and Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Friday that Israel “has not carried out and will not carry out military activity in the Rafah area that creates living conditions that could lead to the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population.”

In response to other orders by the ICJ, including keeping the Rafah crossing open, the statement said that Israel will “continue its efforts to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip” and “reduce as much as possible the harm to the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.”

“The order can be understood in two ways: either that Israel has to halt the offensive in Rafah; or specifically components that may lead to conditions of life that could bring physical destruction,” he said.

What is clear, however, is that in the eyes of the court, “the operation cannot continue in the same way, because it found that as it is now the situation is a risk to the rights protected by the (genocide) Convention,” Lieblich said, adding that it is hard to tell whether Israel will comply with the ruling.

“I hope that it doesn’t argue that the order means that nothing has to change, because that clearly isn’t the case,” he added.

The development comes as Israel faces mounting international and domestic pressure to end the war in Gaza.

This week, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), a separate court in The Hague, sought arrest warrants for Hamas leaders as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the October 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.

Families of Israeli hostages held in the territory also stepped up pressure on Netanyahu to bring the captives home, releasing graphic footage of female members of the Israel Defense Forces before they were abducted.

Unclear how US will respond

It is unclear how the US, Israel’s closest ally, will respond to the ICJ’s order. The Biden administration has spoken out strongly against the genocide case against Israel, but it has repeatedly warned Israel that Washington will not support a major ground offensive in Rafah unless it sees a credible plan to ensure the safety of civilians.

The move by the ICJ is likely to add to mounting pressure on Israel to scale down its war in Gaza, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that his country will defend itself even if “forced to stand alone.”

Israel says that Rafah is the last bastion of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that led an attack on Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 35,000 people, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.

‘Unprecedented’ pressure

While there has always been criticism of some of Israel’s actions, such as the expansion of settlements, “this is on a different scale, a different universe altogether,” he said. “The current Israeli government does its best to make Israel a pariah state.”

The ruling could also undermine Israel’s own judiciary, according to Neve Gordon, professor of human rights law at Queen Mary University of London.

In response to the ICC’s decision to seek arrest warrants against top Israeli officials, Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Attorney Amit Aisman were cited by the Times of Israel as backing the Israeli military and said the judicial system is capable of handling such cases.

“(The) ruling would serve yet another blow to Israel’s judicial system, and particularly the attorney general and the Supreme Court, since the subtext would be that it is not doing its job in ensuring that Israel abide by international law,” said Gordon.

An experienced Kenyan mountaineer died Wednesday and rescuers are still searching for the Nepali sherpa who was with him, after the team attempted to summit Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, according to the Nepali government and his employer.

Kirui’s body was discovered on Wednesday night local time in Nepal, at about 28,970 feet (8,830 meters) above sea level.

His employer KCB Bank called him “a passionate athlete and mountaineer,” saying he was “the second Kenyan to ever summit Mt Everest” in an post on X.

Kirui documented his brave attempt to climb to the peak of Everest without supplemental oxygen in his last post on Instagram. “A no-oxygen attempt comes with its special preparations and risks, physically my body is ready,” he wrote, also laying out the precautions he was taking.

He listed drugs he was bringing along for any potential illnesses or frostbite and said his guide would also carry an emergency bottle of oxygen.

“And so after heavy investment physically, mentally, timewise (this expedition is taking more than a month from a regular 8 to 5 banker), financially (the amount of zeros needed to make this happen means I declare bankruptcy immediately I land back in Kenya)… it’s now the moment of truth,” he wrote.

Congratulatory comments and good luck wishes on the Instagram post were soon replaced by condolence messages as word spread that his body had been found.

Kirui was a lover of the outdoors, who ran ultramarathons and climbed some of the world’s most daunting mountains, according to colleagues.

“His indomitable will and unwavering passion for mountaineering led him to conquer the world’s most awe-inspiring landscapes,” KCB Group CEO Paul Russo wrote of him. “His recent triumphs on Mt Manaslu and Mt Everest are a testament to his adventurous spirit and determination.”

Mount Everest, the highest peak in the Himalayan mountain range, is also the tallest mountain on Earth, rising 29,035 feet (8,850 meters) above sea level on the border between Nepal and Tibet — an autonomous region in China. More than 300 people are known to have died on the mountain.

Spring is the prime time to climb Everest, although some mountaineers might climb in the less favorable autumn season. Most climbers try to ascend the peak in May. There’s a brief window of time – usually after mid-May – when temperatures are warmer, and the high-altitude winds known as the jet stream have moved away from the mountains.

Correction: This story has been updated to amend the name of the Nepali official.

Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager and computer prodigy who earned the nickname “God’s influencer,” is set to become the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint.

Pope Francis has recognized a second miracle attributed to Acutis, a gamer and computer programmer who died from leukemia in 2006 at age 15.

During his life, Acutis used his technological skills to spread awareness of the Catholic faith, including setting up a website documenting miracles.

Born in London 1991, he later moved to Milan, Italy with his family. Although Acutis’ parents were not religious, the young boy’s faith was nurtured by his Polish nanny. After his death, his body was moved to the Italian town of Assisi, where it is now displayed in a shrine, alongside other relics linked to him.

Prospective candidates for sainthood normally need to have two miracles attributed to them before they can be canonized. The latest miracle attributed to Acutis relates to the reported healing of a girl from Costa Rica who had suffered a head trauma after falling from her bicycle in Florence, Italy, where she was studying. Her mother said she prayed for her daughter’s recovery at the tomb of Acutis in Assisi.

Acutis was beatified and declared “blessed” after his first miracle in 2020, when he reportedly healed a Brazilian boy who had a birth defect in his pancreas that left him unable to eat food normally.

Following the attribution of two miracles, the next step is for the Pope to convene a meeting of cardinals to agree on Acutis’ sainthood and decide on a date for the canonization.

His story is seen as helpful for the Catholic Church as it seeks to connect better with younger generations in a digital age.

Acutis – considered a millennial as he was born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s – is remembered by friends and family as enjoying playing video games such as Halo, Super Mario and Pokémon.

Rescue workers are scrambling to reach a remote village in northern Papua New Guinea after it was hit by a major landslide, the prime minister said Friday, adding that an unspecified number of people had been killed.

The disaster hit the village of Kaokalam in Enga province, about 600 kilometers (372 miles) northwest of the capital Port Moresby, Australian public broadcaster ABC said.

Authorities have yet to announce a death toll and the full extent of the damage is still being assessed, with bodies being recovered.

Prime Minister James Marape said in a statement that authorities are working to address the disaster.

“We are sending in disaster officials, PNG Defence Force, and the Department of Works and Highways to meet provincial and district officials in Enga and also start relief work, recovery of bodies, and reconstruction of infrastructure,” Marape said in a statement, according to ABC and Reuters news agency.

“I extend my heartfelt condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in the landslide disaster.”

In comments carried by ABC, officials said houses were flattened when the side of a nearby mountain gave way.

Enga provincial governor Peter Ipatas told news agency AFP that the landslide caused “loss of life” and damaged property.

The remoteness of the affected village is hindering rescue efforts.

Footage of the aftermath carried by AFP showed a wide scar of mud and rocks on a steep mountainside slope and locals clambering to look for survivors.

A Pacific island nation home to around 10 million people, Papua New Guinea is rich in resources, but its economy has long trailed those of its neighbors and it has one of the highest crime rates in the world.

Violence remains widespread. Chaos erupted in the capital earlier this year after police walked off the job in protest about a drop in their pay, which government officials later blamed on a computer glitch in the payroll system. Shops were looted and buildings set on fire during the disturbance.

Hundreds of tribes are spread across the archipelago’s remote and often inaccessible terrain. But its vast and diverse mountainous landscape, as well as a lack of roads, has made it difficult and costly to upgrade basic services like water, electricity and sanitation.

More than a dozen people were also injured in Palma de Mallorca, the capital of Mallorca, police said.

Search efforts are ongoing to locate anyone who might still be trapped under the debris.

The restaurant was a two-story building by the beach and victims were taken to various hospitals in Palma, according to Reuters.

Psychologists are on the scene to help those affected, according to emergency services.

Mallorca is part of Spain’s Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean. The island’s relatively warm climate all year round, and abundance of beaches, make it a popular destination for tourists from across Europe.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez expressed his condolences to those killed in the collapse.

“I am closely following the consequences of the terrible collapse that occurred on the beach of Palma,” Sanchez said on X.

China’s military drills around Taiwan are designed to test its ability to “seize power” over the island, the People’s Liberation Army said Friday as its forces kicked off a second day of large-scale exercises encircling its democratic neighbor.

The drills are the largest in more than a year and come just days after Taiwan swore in its new president, Lai Ching-te, who is openly loathed by Beijing for championing the island’s sovereignty and distinct identity.

Beijing has denounced Lai as a “dangerous separatist” and decried his inauguration speech on Monday, during which he called on China to cease its intimidation of Taiwan, which has grown much more pronounced under Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The PLA, which dwarfs Taipei’s outgunned military, kicked off the exercises on Thursday morning, sending warships and fighter jets around Taiwan and its outlying islands in what it called “a strong punishment for separatist acts of Taiwan independence forces.”

On Friday, the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command said it was continuing the drills on both sides of the Taiwan island chain to “test the ability to jointly seize power, launch joint attacks and occupy key areas.”

China’s ruling Communist Party views Taiwan as part of its territory, despite never having controlled it, and has vowed to take the island by force if necessary.

The vast majority of Taiwanese have no desire to live under Chinese rule. But Xi, China’s most authoritarian leader in a generation, has made clear the island’s “inevitable reunification” with the mainland cannot be put off indefinitely.

The two-day exercises, involving joint operations of China’s army, navy, air force and rocket force, are being conducted in the Taiwan Strait – a narrow body of water separating the island from mainland China – as well as north, south and east of Taiwan, according to the PLA.

For the first time, the PLA drills also involved China’s Coast Guard, operating in areas around Taiwan’s outlying islands of Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu and Dongyin, located just off the southeastern coast of China.

CCTV aired footage on Friday that shows PLA soldiers moving mobile artillery and missile systems into position, though it did not show any live fire.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry has condemned China’s military exercises as “irrational provocations” and dispatched its own sea, air and ground forces in response.

Between 6 a.m. Thursday and 6 a.m. Friday, the ministry detected 49 Chinese aircraft, including 35 that crossed the Median Line, an informal demarcation point in the Taiwan Strait that Beijing does not recognize but until recent years had largely respected.

A total of 19 Chinese warships and seven coast guard vessels were detected near the Taiwan Strait, according to the ministry.

Taiwan’s presidential office said Thursday it is “regrettable to see China threatening Taiwan’s democracy and freedom and regional peace and stability with unilateral military provocations,” adding Taiwan has the “confidence and ability to protect national security.”

First week in office

Lai has had a busy and politically turbulent start to his presidency after taking over from two-term leader Tsai Ing-wen, to kick off a historic third consecutive term for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

The PLA’s drills pose the first real test for the veteran politician in managing tensions with Beijing, which has refused his offer to talk and to resume cross-strait tourism and student exchanges.

On Friday, China’s Defense Ministry accused Lai of pushing Taiwan into “a dangerous situation of war”and “playing with fire.”

“Those who play with fire will burn themselves,” ministry spokesperson Wu Qian told reporters, using rhetoric China frequently deploys for Taiwan’s government. “Whenever ‘Taiwan independence’ (forces) provoke us, we will push our countermeasures forward until the complete reunification of the motherland is achieved.”

Domestically, Lai is facing chaos in the legislature, where opposition parties who favor closer ties to China hold a majority, and have pushed to subject his administration to tighter scrutiny.

Thousands of mostly young people have taken to the streets to protest the opposition’s attempt to fast-track the proposed bills to grant the parliament more power.

But despite Beijing’s large show of force, life continued as normal in Taiwan, whose 23 million people have become used to China’s military threats, even as they become more regular and prominent in recent years.

“If the Chinese Communist Party does attack Taiwan, it won’t be easy for them to take Taiwan. Taiwanese people are not afraid of war.”

A 42-year-old mother, who gave her surname Tsai, said she wasn’t even aware the PLA drills were taking place.

“I believe leaders will prioritize people’s happiness, so I’m not worried. I think peace will be maintained,” she said.

‘Blockading Taiwan’

China’s military drills are often as much about playing to a domestic audience as signaling intentions internationally, and state media has ramped up coverage of the drills.

Zhang Chi, a Chinese military expert, told China’s state broadcaster CCTV that the PLA’s exercises focused on “practicing a new mode of blockading Taiwan.”

“Taiwan is an isolated island, suspended in the sea with weak self-sufficiency. Taiwan’s economy is export-oriented, and most of its energy consumption relies on imports. Once besieged and blockaded, it can easily lead to economic collapse, turning it into a dead island,” he said.

The exercises to the south of Taiwan are crucial for the blockade, targeting Kaohsiung port, Taiwan’s largest port and an important base for the island’s navy, Zhang said. Meanwhile, drills to the east of Taiwan are designed to practice cutting off the island’s energy imports, the escape routes for “Taiwan independence” forces and the support line from the US and its allies, he added.

The US maintains close but informal relations with Taiwan and is bound by law to supply the island with weapons to defend itself.

Zhang also noted that the drills had achieved “a new breakthrough” by entering waters near Wuqiu and Dongyin, which hold significant geographical importance.

“The Taiwanese military views them as the front outposts for Taiwan Strait defense operations. This exercise further squeezed the activity space of the Taiwanese military,” he said.

Analysts said the China Coast Guard movement close to and around the outlying islands was an important new aspect of the current drills, which follow previous encirclement exercises in August 2022 and April 2023.

“The pressing of Coast Guard and other forces into waters close to those offshore islands is provocative,” said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

He said he expected such Chinese activities to continue and that they “will become the norm,” with Beijing at any point able to then turn an exercise into a real military operation.

Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said China’s pattern of exercises around Taiwan does not signal an imminent invasion threat.

“These drills aid in blurring the lines between peace and war, so much so that future exercises could be used as a pretext for an actual invasion,” Singleton said.

But Singleton and others say the exercises are sending a bigger political message than a military one.

“Joint Sword – 2024A aims at reactivating the military pressure lever to assert a degree of influence on the new (Taiwan) administration and its narrative,” said Lionel Fatton, assistant professor of international relations at Webster University in Geneva, using China’s name for this week’s drills.

Beijing will use the pressure of the drills to try to increase divisions within Taiwan, which could “weaken” the island from the inside, he said.

“Constant and visible military pressure on the island will also help polarize the political apparatus, if not the social fabric itself,” Fatton said.

Turks and Caicos officials have slammed remarks from US lawmakers who traveled to the islands earlier this week to press for the release of the Americans who were arrested there – and could possibly face 12-year sentences.

In a House of Assembly address, the islands’ Premier Washington Misick said, “The accusation of congressman (Guy Reschenthaler) against the government and people of the Turks and Caicos Islands are nothing more than diabolic falsehoods.”

A US congressional delegation traveled to the islands to meet with officials earlier this week to press for the release of the detained Americans charged with the possession of ammunition.

Three of the Americans – Michael Lee Evans, Bryan Hagerich and Tyler Wenrich – have pleaded guilty to possession of ammunition while traveling in Turks and Caicos, according to the Turks and Caicos government, with Hagerich set to be sentenced on Friday.

A fourth person, Ryan Tyler Watson, will appear in court on June 7. A fifth person, Sharitta Shinese Grier, was arrested last week and is awaiting trial after making bail, according to Kimo Tynes​​​​, director of communications in the Office of the Premier and Public Policy.

One of the US lawmakers, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, said in a statement on Monday, “Unfortunately, despite our willingness to work with Turks and Caicos officials to get our constituents home, we were not able to find a path forward today.”

In an interview with ABC News earlier this week, Reschenthaler said, “It’s to the point now, (where) every third week an American is being detained wrongfully and Turks and Caicos.”

“They were innocent mistakes. Any other nation would handle this with a fine in sending that person back to the country of origin. Here, that’s not happening,” he said, adding, “The prison on Turks and Caicos has been flagged by the UN for humanitarian concerns.”

The congressman said the minimum 12-year sentence that ammunition charges carry is “completely unacceptable” and that the Americans brought the ammunition unknowingly.

Turks and Caicos Gov. Dileeni Daniel-Selvaratna said in a news release on Wednesday that Turks and Caicos values its relationship with the US and that the two countries work in “strong partnership to tackle shared threats in the region.”

The statement said Turks and Caicos did not target US citizens and called Reschenthaler’s remarks about the congressional delegation’s trip to the islands to meet with officials “highly regrettable.”

“His characterisation of our meeting is not one we recognise,” the statement read.

“Our discussions were professional and respectful with a focus on clarifying the legal position and the well-being of the individuals,” the statement continued.

The governor added that the mandatory minimum 12-year sentence for possession of firearms and/or ammunition is in place to protect those in the islands and that the law provides discretion in “exceptional circumstances” for the judge to impose a reduced sentence.

No US citizen has received the 12-year sentence to date, according to the statement.

Premier: ‘Law must be applied even-handedly’

Misick said out of a total of 195 people sentenced for firearm-related offenses over the last six years, only seven were US citizens. The premier said Thursday no special treatment should be given to any group.

“The law must be applied even-handedly,” Misick said.

While the US and Turks and Caicos work together in battling narcotics, terrorism and money laundering, “our laws and processes are not congruent,” Misick said. “We are a separate sovereignty. We respect the United States’ laws and we will never think to interfere in its operation.”

The government of Turks and Caicos, Misick said, would take “decisive and comprehensive action to preserve the safety and security of our nation,” adding while the country does not manufacture firearms or ammunition, the number of firearms finding its way to the islands has increased.

The appointed member of the opposition, Alvin Garland, expressed his concern over the American citizens who have been arrested in Turks and Caicos for possession of ammunition over the last six months.

Garland said the islands’ governor is correct in not interfering with the ongoing court cases in order to adhere to the government’s separation of powers, but added he believes most, if not all, of the cases involving American tourists will fall into the “exceptional circumstances category” and sentences could be shorter than the mandatory 12-year minimum.

This story has been updated with additional information.