Standing behind heaping piles of drugs stacked in clear plastic bags and storage boxes, Toronto’s police chief last week announced the force’s largest-ever cocaine seizure, intercepted at the border in a truck entering from the United States.

A few hours later, President Trump also addressed cross-border drug trafficking — but in his case to lay blame on Canada, at least in part, for a deadly fentanyl scourge.

“The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive,” Mr. Trump told reporters the day after his inauguration. “The fentanyl coming through Mexico is massive. And people are getting killed and families are being destroyed.”

It was a repeat of his claim that Canada and Mexico have not done enough to reinforce their borders and block the flow of narcotics — and migrants — to the United States. He has threatened to impose punitive tariffs of 25 percent on exports from both countries on Feb. 1.

Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary nominee, reiterated that stance at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, calling for Canada to “respect America.”

“If we are your biggest trading partner, show us the respect,” Mr. Lutnick said. “Shut your border and end fentanyl coming into this country.”

To stave off the threatened tariffs, the Canadian government has been sending drones, canine units and helicopters to support surveillance at the border. But recent announcements by law enforcement officials about those efforts and assurances from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada seem to have done little to appease the new U.S. administration.

Given the limited role Canada plays in the cross-border fentanyl trade, however, it’s not clear how much it could really do to ease the American opioid crisis.

Where does fentanyl in Canada come from?

Before 2020, trafficking networks in Canada were primarily conduits for imported fentanyl and other opioids. But in recent years, they have increased domestic production, a trend that other countries are expected to follow, according to a report published this month by Canada’s financial intelligence agency.

Canadian officials believe there were about 100 organized crime groups involved in fentanyl production in the country last year, a more than fourfold increase from 2022.

The police have located clandestine fentanyl labs around the country, primarily in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. In November, officers in British Columbia said they had shut down Canada’s largest lab yet, hidden on a rural property, seizing enough chemicals to produce 96 million doses of fentanyl. The investigation showed links to Mexican cartels.

Before the shift toward domestic drug production, the Canadian police and border agents were combating the flow of fentanyl powder — to be pressed into pills — that was shipped into the country in near-undetectable quantities in the mail. Now, the focus is on the import of chemicals used to synthesize fentanyl, known as precursors.

How much Canadian fentanyl crosses into the U.S.?

As the opioid epidemic raged in the United States, killing thousands, Congress in 2020 established a commission to look into ways to reduce the flow of the drugs into the country. The commission found that “Canada is not known to be a major source of fentanyl, other synthetic opioids or precursor chemicals to the United States, a conclusion primarily drawn from seizure data,” according to its February 2022 report.

Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents intercepted about 19 kilograms of fentanyl at the northern border, compared with almost 9,600 kilograms at the border with Mexico, where cartels mass-produce the drug.

Financially, it doesn’t make sense for Canadian criminal groups to focus on exporting fentanyl south, said Daniel Anson, the director of intelligence and investigations at the Canada Border Services Agency. “Mexican fentanyl, due to the cost and the street price, is very difficult to compete with in the U.S.,” he said.

Canada’s public safety agency said that while local crime groups producing opioids tend to service the domestic market, they have also expanded to other markets, including in Australia, New Zealand and Japan. The Australian police in 2022 intercepted a large fentanyl shipment from Canada, about five million doses.

What is Canada doing about it?

Canada has some of the strictest chemical import regulations in the world under its Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, but health officials and police often struggle to keep up with the evolving chemical components used by organized criminals to produce fentanyl.

About 80 percent of the chemicals used to make fentanyl can legally be imported from China or purchased within Canada, according to a report published this month by the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada. Some criminal groups are setting up private companies to shield the intent of their purchases, the report said.

In a recent case out of Alberta, a man operating what was believed to be the province’s largest illicit fentanyl lab was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Investigators found the operation by tracking shipments of precursor chemicals legally imported into Canada from Chinese manufacturers.

While the quantities of fentanyl leaving Canada for the United States are minuscule — 0.2 percent of what is seized at the U.S. southern border — Mr. Anson said the Canadian border agency had established new teams to focus on the export of the drug, as well as the import of synthetic chemicals. It will also set up a border financial crime center over the next year to target trade-based money laundering and fraud.

“I am 100 percent oriented toward ensuring that we don’t become the weak link,” Mr. Anson said.

Three people have been arrested in connection with a brazen heist at a museum in the Netherlands over the weekend in which thieves stole ancient artifacts, including a prized golden helmet on loan from Romania, the authorities said on Wednesday.

The three people were arrested in Heerhugowaard, a city about 30 miles north of Amsterdam and more than 100 miles west of the Drents Museum in Assen, where the theft took place. The police identified two of them as Douglas Chesley Wendersteyt and Bernhard Zeeman, both from Heerhugowaard. The police identified the third person who was arrested as a woman, also from the same city, but did not release her name.

The police said that they had searched homes in Heerhugowaard, but that the stolen pieces had not been found. The authorities said they were also looking for a fourth person in connection with the theft. They released three surveillance images of a man wearing glasses and a dark shirt and ball cap that they said were taken at a hardware store in Assen.

“This is an absolute priority of the police and the public prosecutor,” the police said in a statement.

Early Saturday morning, thieves blew up a heavy access door to get into the Drents Museum. Grainy footage from a surveillance camera showed three hooded figures tugging at the door before an explosion and a flurry of sparks. The authorities said it was part of an elaborate effort to break into the art and history museum and steal some of its treasures.

Among the artifacts that were taken, the authorities said, were three golden bracelets and the helmet of Cotofenesti, an elaborately decorated solid-gold headpiece from the fifth century B.C. The helmet, which weighs a little over two pounds, features large studs across its top and depicts various scenes, including someone sacrificing a lamb.

The helmet, which is well known in Romania and is believed to have been used in ceremonies, dates to the time of the ancient Dacians, who inhabited parts of the Balkan region. It was among several golden artifacts that were being shown as part of a traveling exhibition from the National History Museum of Romania. The items had been on display at the Drents Museum since July 2024.

The authorities declined to attach a monetary figure to the stolen goods. Romanian officials have said their value to Romania’s culture was “incalculable.”

After the heist, Harry Tupan, the director of the Drents Museum, said in a statement that it was a “a dark day for the Drents Museum in Assen and the National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest.”

“We are intensely shocked by the events last night at the museum,” he said. “In its 170-year existence, there has never been such a major incident.”

Romania’s culture minister said the general director of the National History Museum had been fired after he refused to resign, according to reports in the Romanian media.

The Dutch police said in their statement that their investigation, camera footage and tips submitted by the public had led to the arrests. They also recovered a bag of clothes in Assen, where the heist took place.

The Drents Museum said in a statement on Wednesday that it was “very pleased with the hopeful news regarding the arrests.”

“The safe return of the stolen artifacts would be a fantastic next step for all involved,” it said. “Not only for us, but especially for the Romanian people.”

Israel and Hamas exchanged a new group of hostages and prisoners on Thursday in a handover that devolved into chaos as the armed militants struggled to control a chanting, jostling crowd of Palestinians trying to catch a glimpse of Israelis held captive during 15 months of war.

Hamas released a total of eight Israeli and Thai hostages in the Gaza Strip, including the tightly choreographed handover of an Israeli soldier, Agam Berger, 20, in the northern town of Jabaliya.

But the tumult surrounding the release of two other Israeli hostages — Arbel Yehud, 29, and Gadi Moses, 80, in the city of Khan Younis — infuriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. It led his office to announce he had suspended the release of more than 100 Palestinian prisoners as called for under the truce brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

The episode briefly cast doubt on whether the prisoner release would happen at all.

Mr. Netanyahu blasted the “shocking scenes” of crowds yelling and jostling to get nearer to a fearful-looking Ms. Yehud and a grim-looking Mr. Moses. “This is additional proof of the inconceivable brutality of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the Israel prime minister said.

He called on the international mediators to secure guarantees from Hamas for “the safe exit of our hostages in the next rounds.” The Israeli government later relented, releasing the imprisoned Palestinians, saying that mediators had promised safe passage for hostages in future exchanges.

In a statement, Hamas said that the turnout of the crowds for the hostage handovers showed that Palestinians were determined to remain on their land. To Israelis, the chaos illustrated Hamas’s desire to humiliate and torment the hostages even as they were being freed.

In previous handovers, the militants have driven hostages into jubilant, sometimes jeering crowds before transferring them to Red Cross officials, who then handed them to Israeli officials.

In addition to three Israeli hostages, Hamas on Thursday freed five Thai agricultural workers who were among those abducted when the militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They were Pongsak Thanna, Sathian Suwannakham, Watchara Sriaoun, Bannawat Seathao and Surasak Lamnao​. The fate of one remaining Thai hostage, Nattapong Pinta, remained unclear.

The exchanges came during the first phase of a provisional cease-fire lasting 42 days, and Israel and Hamas still have to negotiate the next one.

Before the hostages were freed in Khan Younis on Thursday, large numbers of Palestinians gathered near the home of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza who was killed by Israel in October. A small white van carrying the captives and surrounded by armed gunmen slowly pushed its way through the yelling crowds.

Photos and video footage show Ms. Yehud, one of the last living female hostages to be held in Gaza, walking cautiously through the throngs while surrounded by rifle-wielding militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad as they made their way toward a Red Cross convoy. The Red Cross handed Ms. Yehud over to Israeli soldiers.

The third freed Israeli hostage, Mr. Moses, was also forced to wend his way through a tight crowd of spectators.

Yves Daccord, a former director general of the Red Cross, said the handovers in Khan Younis were “risky,” “unacceptable” and “absolutely psychological torture.”

“Releasing hostages in this way creates an enormous trauma on top of everything that has already happened,” he said in an interview. Ideally, he said, hostages should be released away from crowds and cameras.

After her release, Ms. Yehud was taken to Sheba Hospital in the city of Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv. She was met with crowds in Israel, too, but they were welcoming. “Our life’s mission to bring Arbel back to us has succeeded,” her family said in a statement.

Ms. Yehud was 28 when she was taken hostage along with her boyfriend, Ariel Cunio, from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel. Mr. Cunio is believed to still be a captive in Gaza. Ms. Yehud’s brother, Dolev Yehud, a medic, was identified last year as having been killed during the Hamas-led attack.

In a statement posted by the Hostage Families Forum, an umbrella organization, Ms. Yehud’s family urged Israeli officials to pursue the cease-fire agreement until all hostages were released. “Everyone must be brought home immediately so that we can heal as a society,” it said.

Ms. Berger, the soldier returned home from northern Gaza, was in “good” condition, according to Dr. Eytan Wirtheim, the chief executive of Beilinson Hospital, where she was taken.

She had been 19 and serving as a lookout at the Nahal Oz army base near the border with Gaza when the Hamas-led militants stormed the facility, killing more than 50 soldiers and abducting her and six other soldiers. Four of them were released in an exchange on Saturday.

Those four soldiers have been “improving from day to day” in the hospital, Dr. Wirtheim said in a televised statement. He said they had decided to stay in the hospital to keep Ms. Berger company during her first days of freedom.

Mr. Moses, a farming expert, was 79 when he was abducted in Kibbutz Nir Oz after trying to reason with the marauding militants.

His partner, Efrat Katz, had hidden inside a safe room in their home with her daughter and two visiting grandchildren, until they, too, were taken. Their kidnapping was captured on a video that showed them squashed together in the back of a pickup.

Ms. Katz was killed when an Israeli helicopter responding to the attack fired on the vehicle. Her daughter and grandchildren were released in November 2023.

The freed Thai men underwent initial medical examinations on Thursday and were found to be in “good” condition, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said in a statement.

Vilas Thanna, the father of Mr. Pongsak, who worked on a fruit farm, could barely get the words out as he digested the news of his son’s freedom “When we are happy, we cry,” he said. “When we are sad, we also cry. But these are happy tears.”

Economic hardship has spurred thousands of Thais, particularly from the Isaan region of northeastern Thailand, to take agricultural jobs in Israel. Thai farmhands working in Israel suffered a heavy toll in the 2023 Hamas-led attacks. At least 39 were killed and at least 31 taken hostage, according to the Thai Foreign Ministry.

Twenty-three of them were released in November 2023. Two others died in captivity, the Foreign Ministry said last May.

Hamas had pledged to free at least 33 hostages in exchange for more than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners during the cease-fire’s first phase. On Thursday, Israel released 110 Palestinian prisoners, including 32 serving life sentences for deadly attacks against Israelis.

Before the releases, Palestinians stood outside a government recreation center in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday, restlessly checking their phones for updates on the prisoners.

Samar Faisal stood in the crisp winter air, shivering as much from excitement as the cold. She was in disbelief, she said. After more than 20 years in an Israeli prison, her brother was being released.

“I’m anxious and praying for the moment I finally see him,” Ms. Faisal said, as volunteers in fluorescent vests moved through the crowd.

For some waiting outside the recreation center, anticipation was tempered by sorrow.

Alaa Zubeidi was dressed in black in memory of her eldest son, Mohamed, who she said had been killed by an Israeli drone strike in September in their hometown, Jenin. Now, she was awaiting the release of her husband, Zakariya Zubeidi, who over the past two decades has been a militant, a theater director and an escaped prisoner. Israeli forces recaptured him in 2019.

Finally, around 7 p.m., a chain of buses arrived, carrying dozens of former Palestinian prisoners. Sixty-seven others arrived in Ramallah on Thursday, including 27 children, officials said. An additional 14 Palestinians arrived in Jerusalem and nine in Gaza, while 20 were sent to Egypt.

In Beitunia in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as a Red Cross buses carrying freed Palestinian prisoners arrived Palestinians hurled stones at Israeli forces, who fired stun grenades in response, footage live-streamed on Arabic television networks showed. It was unclear if there were any casualties.

The exchanges were the third swap in the first phase in the 42-day truce that halted the fighting between Hamas and Israel. On Saturday, Hamas is expected to release three more male hostages in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners.

In all, some 250 people were abducted from Israel during the 2023 attack and about 1,200 killed, the Israelis said. Israel responded by unleashing airstrikes across Gaza. The devastation displaced millions of Palestinians and led to the death of more than 47,000, according to Gazan health officials, whose figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

On Thursday, months after Israel announced it had killed the leader of Hamas’s military wing, Muhammad Deif, in an airstrike, a Hamas official confirmed the death in a video statement.

Reporting was contributed by Isabel Kershner, Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, Liam Stack and Fatima AbdulKarim.

Hira Anwar, 14, lived in two contrasting worlds in New York, where she was born and raised. Outside her home, she was a typical American teenager, laughing with friends, posting videos on TikTok and dreaming of a boundless future.

Inside the home, her reality was very different. Her parents, Pakistani immigrants who had settled in the United States over two decades ago, expected her to adhere to their cultural and religious values, which demanded modesty from women. To them, Hira’s bold, expressive online presence was a direct challenge.

That tension, familiar in South Asian immigrant households across the West, ended in deadly violence this week. Hira was fatally shot by her father and an uncle on Monday night, several days after arriving in Pakistan on what she had been told was a family vacation, the police said. The authorities called her death an “honor killing.”

In a chilling confession in Quetta, the capital of the southwestern province of Balochistan, Hira’s father, Anwar ul-Haq, said she had brought shame to the family by posting what he called inappropriate videos online, the police said.

Hira’s death is part of a deeply ingrained pattern of violence against women in Pakistan and within its diaspora, rights advocates said, an ancient problem that has taken on dangerous new dimensions with the rise of social media.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent rights group, recorded 588 so-called honor killings in Pakistan in 2024, up from 490 in 2023 and nearly matching the 590 reported in 2022.

Women often become targets by refusing forced marriages, seeking divorce or separation, being in relationships deemed inappropriate by families, or engaging in other actions seen as violating conservative values. In one case last year, a girl was killed by her brother for using a cellphone. In another, a young woman was fatally poisoned by her parents for dating.

In several cases, families of Pakistani origin in Western countries have lured their daughters back to Pakistan under false pretenses. There, they have restricted their freedom, forced them into marriages with cousins — often to secure visas for the men — or, in some cases, killed them.

In 2022, two Pakistani sisters holding Spanish residency permits were tortured and killed a day after arriving in Punjab Province, the police in Pakistan said. Their husbands, an uncle and a brother carried out the killing after the sisters sought divorces from forced marriages, according to investigators.

Other killings have taken place in the West, and perpetrators in some cases have fled to Pakistan to avoid arrest.

In May, the authorities in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, working with Italian officials, arrested a woman who had been convicted, along with her husband, of murdering their teenage daughter. The killing, which took place in northern Italy, was over the daughter’s refusal of a forced marriage in Pakistan, the authorities said.

Experts studying the South Asian diaspora in Western countries say that intergenerational tensions are widespread, as younger overseas-born generations increasingly challenge traditional values.

Kavita Mehra, executive director of Sakhi for South Asian Survivors, a New York-based nonprofit organization, said that in the United States, gender-based violence happened at higher rates within South Asian communities. Nearly half of South Asians in the United States report experiencing such violence at least once, according to surveys.

“This is not because our community is inherently more violent,” Ms. Mehra said, “but rather because we are enmeshed in intergenerational trauma — cycles of pain, silence and patriarchal control, shaped by histories of colonialism, displacement and migration.”

In the case of the killing this week of 14-year-old Hira, her father initially told the police that unidentified gunmen had opened fire on him and his daughter while they were traveling to her uncle’s house, according to Babar Baloch, a police officer in Quetta.

But after gathering evidence and recording witness statements, the police became suspicious and detained the father, who worked as an Uber driver in New York and has two other daughters. The father, Mr. ul-Haq, and his brother-in-law were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of murder.

In his confession, the police said, Mr. ul-Haq expressed objections to his daughter’s clothing, lifestyle and social relationships.

Pakistan has introduced laws over the years, some carrying the death penalty, to curb so-called honor killings.

In 2016, after public outrage over the murder of the social media star Qandeel Baloch by her brother, Parliament passed a law closing a legal loophole that let families forgive perpetrators.

Still, gender-based violence persists because of societal acceptance and systemic bias in law enforcement and the judiciary in Pakistan, experts said.

“Honor crimes and femicide should be treated as crimes against the state,” said Shazia Nizamani, a Karachi-based legal expert. “Even if a family chooses not to pursue legal action, the state has a responsibility to ensure justice is delivered.”