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Chinese J-10 fighter jets like the ones that intercepted a U.S. surveillance plane last weekend.

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As if there werent enough alarming news to pay attention to between the impending vote on the future of American health care and a possible looming constitutional crisis, things are getting a little tense on the military front in multiple theaters around the world.

Joshua Keating is a staff writer at Slate focusing on international affairs.

U.S. officials said on Monday that two Chinese jets had intercepted a U.S. Navy surveillance plane above the East China Sea on Sunday, coming close enough to force the American plane to change direction. After the incident, Chinas defense ministry said that U.S. surveillance activity in the area threatens China's national security, harms Sino-U.S. maritime and air military safety, endangers the personal safety of both sides' pilots and is the root cause of unexpected incidents.

These interceptions have happened before, but tensions are particularly high at the moment. The U.S. Navy recently sailed a destroyer close to a disputed island in the South China Sea in order to assert freedom of navigation rights in an area of the sea claimed by Beijing. The Trump administration is also preparing sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals for doing business with North Korea while the president has apparently now decided that China isnt doing enough to pressure the country to give up its nuclear program. China, meanwhile, continues to object to the U.S. deployment of a missile defense system in South Korea, which the U.S. plans to test again soon.

So thats China. Then theres Iran.

On Tuesday, a U.S. Navy ship fired warning shots at an Iranian patrol boat, believed to have been operated by the countrys Revolutionary Guard, after it came within 150 yard of the U.S. ships. Things are even testier than normal in the Gulf due to the ongoing blockade of Qatar by several of its neighbors, in part due to its friendly relationship with Iran. The U.S. position on that crisis has been a bit muddled, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson staying neutral at the same time President Trump has fully supported the blockade.

U.S.-Iranian relations continue to deteriorate: An American student was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran for spying while the U.S. congress is preparing new sanctions to punish Iran for its ballistic missile tests.

While both the China and Iran incidents ended without any loss of life or major damage, they are the sort of thing that can easily lead to much larger and more dangerous confrontations. Now back to the tweets.

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In Other News, US Military Has Close Calls With Iran and China - Slate Magazine (blog)

In Hong Kong, a proposal to lease part of a new rail terminal to China and to allow Chinese officers to enforce mainland law there has raised concerns about the erosion of the one country, two systems model.

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Chinas embattled human rights lawyers are the focus of a New York Times Magazine report.

Lawyers for dissidents often face a terrible choice: acquiescence or imprisonment.

We know we cant win. We cant do anything to make our clients not guilty, said a human rights lawyer, above.

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Even more surreal than Id expected.

Last week, the U.S. barred Americans from traveling to North Korea, after the death of a college student who was detained in the country for 17 months.

We asked readers who had traveled there to tell us why they went and what they found. Here is a sampling of the responses we received.

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Cardinal George Pell, one of the popes top advisers, above, is expected to make his first court appearance in Australia after becoming the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate to be formally charged with sexual offenses.

The still-unspecified charges followed years of criticism that he had at best overlooked, and at worst covered up, the widespread abuse of children by clergymen in Australia.

Cardinal Pell has vowed to fight the charges, calling them false and the result of a relentless character assassination.

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Michael Kors bought Jimmy Choo for about $1.2 billion. Our columnist examines whether the shoe fits and if the deal risks taking the luxury footwear brand down-market.

HNA Group, the Chinese conglomerate, tried to allay concerns about its ownership structure by releasing details of its largest shareholder a private investor who recently donated his 30 percent stake to the companys charity arm in New York.

Employees at a U.S. tech company are volunteering to have microchips injected between their thumb and index finger, making it easier to open doors and pay for food.

Tech report cards: Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported $26 billion in revenue. Facebook announces earnings today, Amazon and Twitter on Thursday.

U.S. stocks were higher. Heres a snapshot of global markets.

New footage of a gunfight that left three Americans dead near a military base in Jordan shows a deliberate attack that was initially explained as a mistake. [The New York Times]

At least 12 people were killed when a five-story building collapsed in a suburb of Mumbai. A rescue operation is underway to dig out people trapped in the debris. [The New York Times]

The Pentagon said a U.S. Navy spy plane took evasive action to avoid crashing into a Chinese fighter jet in contested skies above the East China Sea on Sunday. [The New York Times]

In Myanmar, two people died this week of swine flu (H1N1), bringing the total fatalities to three just days after 13 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus. [The Irrawaddy]

The governor of Okinawa filed another lawsuit against the Japanese government to halt the relocation of a U.S. military base in his prefecture. [The Asahi Shimbun]

Cambodias first national figure skating team trains at a public ice rink on top of a shopping mall. [Southeast Asia Globe]

India, Indonesia and Japan are among the few countries where companies offer women paid time off for period pain. Some experts fear these policies reinforce dated stereotypes. [The New York Times]

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

Recipe of the day: Weeknights call for comfort food like delicious chicken curry.

Can you test the health of your gut microbiota?

Toss care into the wind. Heres how not to get a job.

Smugglers are finding creative ways to get drugs into the U.S. through Mexico as the United States increases the number of agents, drones, sensors and cameras patrolling the border.

We documented the work of Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist who examined the brains of 111 N.F.L. players. She found that 110 were found to have C.T.E., the degenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head.

And our Game of Thrones newsletter examines Melisandres prophecy, explains why there are two characters named Nymeria and points out the internets best articles on the most recent episode.

War in a periscope declared the front page of The Times on this day in 1942.

The headline accompanied a photo from the U.S. Navy, the first combat action photograph taken through the periscope of an American undersea craft.

That got us wondering about other photographic firsts at The Times, so we dove into our archives.

The Times published its first photographs on Sept. 6, 1896, in the first edition of its Sunday Magazine. (The pictures were of two of the candidates in the 1860 presidential election. Photos of white, male politicians? Some things never change.)

It took another 13 years for a photo to finally appear on the front page. The Times sponsored a daredevil flight from Albany to New York City and ran a picture of the plane at takeoff.

We experimented with printing in color as far back as the early 20th century, but the front page was strictly black and white until Oct. 16, 1997, when a photo of the World Series-bound Cleveland Indians appeared.

Interested in more photos from The Timess archive? Check out our blog, The Lively Morgue, and follow @nytarchives on Instagram.

Chris Stanford and Ryan Murphy contributed reporting.

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Correction: An earlier version of todays briefing misstated the frequency of the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree. It is quadrennial.

We have briefings timed for the Australian, European and American mornings. You can sign up for these and other Times newsletters here.

Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online.

What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes.com.

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Jeff Sessions, North Korea, Iran: Your Morning Briefing - New York Times

Once dependent on Beijing during the years of international isolation imposed by the West for its nuclear program, Iran is now critical to Chinas ability to realize its grandiose ambitions. Other routes to Western markets are longer and lead through Russia, potentially a competitor of China.

It is not as if their project is canceled if we dont participate, said Asghar Fakhrieh-Kashan, the Iranian deputy minister of roads and urban development. But if they want to save time and money, they will choose the shortest route.

He added with a smile: There are also political advantages to Iran, compared to Russia. They are highly interested in working with us.

Others worry that with the large-scale Chinese investment and Chinas growing presence in the Iranian economy, Tehran will become more dependent than ever on China, already its biggest trading partner.

China is also an important market for Iranian oil, and because of remaining unilateral American sanctions that intimidate global banks, it is the only source of the large amounts of capital Iran needs to finance critical infrastructure projects. But that, apparently, is a risk the leadership is prepared to take.

China is dominating Iran, said Mehdi Taghavi, an economics professor at Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran, adding that the Iranian authorities do not see any drawbacks to being dependent on China. Together, we are moving ahead.

It is not just roads and rail lines that Iran is getting from China. Iran is also becoming an increasingly popular destination for Chinese entrepreneurs like Mr. Lin. With a few words of Persian, as well as low-interest loans and tax breaks from the Chinese and Iranian governments, he has built a small empire since moving to Iran in 2002. His eight factories make a wide variety of goods that find markets in Iran and in neighboring countries.

You can say that I was even more visionary than some of our politicians, Mr. Lin said with a laugh. Since 2013, when the One Belt, One Road plan was started, he has had dozens of visitors from China and multiple meetings with the Chinese ambassador in Tehran. I was a pioneer, and they want to hear my experiences, he said.

Mr. Lin established his factories along what will be a key part of the trade route a 575-mile electrified rail line linking Tehran and Mashhad, financed with a $1.6 billion loan from China. When completed and attached to the wider network, the new line will enable Mr. Lin to export his goods as far as northern Europe, Poland and Russia, at much less cost than today.

I am expecting a 50 percent increase in revenue, Mr. Lin said. He lit another cigarette. Of course, Irans economy will also grow. China will expand. Its power will grow.

He played Chinese pop music in his car and tapped his fingers on the wheel. Life is good in Iran, he said. The future is good.

Iranians who spotted Mr. Lin driving between his factories waved and smiled. Having mastered a few basic phrases in Persian over the years, he said hi and goodbye to some of his 2,000 employees. Iranians are hard workers, he said, but he does not like their food. We grow our own vegetables and eat Chinese food, he said. Just like home.

Even when the boss was out of earshot, workers in his factories said that they were very happy with the Chinese. They pay every month on time and only hire people instead of fire, Amir Dalilian, a guard, said. If more will come, our economy will flourish.

When finished, the proposed rail link will stretch nearly 2,000 miles, from Urumqi, the capital of Chinas western region of Xinjiang, to Tehran. If all goes according to plan, it will connect Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, Chinas state-owned paper, China Daily, wrote. Track sizes need to be adjusted and new connections made, as well as upgrades to the newest trains.

In a 2016 test, China and Iran drove a train from the port of Shanghai in eastern China to Tehran in just 12 days, a journey that takes 30 days by sea. In Iran, they used the existing track between Tehran and Mashhad, powered by a slower diesel-powered train. When the new line is opened in 2021, it is expected to accommodate electric trains at speeds up to 125 miles an hour.

Mr. Fakhrieh-Kashan, an English speaker who oversees negotiation of most of the larger international state business deals, said the Chinese initiative would do much more than just provide a channel for transporting goods. Think infrastructure, city planning, cultural exchanges, commercial agreements, investments and tourism, he said. You can pick any project, they are all under this umbrella.

Business ties between Iran and China have been growing since the United States and its European allies at the time started pressuring Iran over its nuclear program around 2007. China remains the largest buyer of Iranian crude, even after Western sanctions were lifted in 2016, allowing Iran to again sell oil in European markets.

Chinese state companies are active all over the country, building highways, digging mines and making steel. Tehrans shops are flooded with Chinese products and its streets clogged with Chinese cars.

Irans leaders hope that the countrys participation in the plan will enable them to piggyback on Chinas large economic ambitions.

The Chinese plan is designed in such a way that it will establish Chinese hegemony across half of the world, Mr. Fakhrieh-Kashan said. While Iran will put its own interests first, we are creating corridors at the requests of the Chinese. It will give us huge access to new markets.

A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 2017, on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Chinas Push to Link East and West Puts Iran at Center of Everything.

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For China's Global Ambitions, 'Iran Is at the Center of Everything ... - New York Times

By aligning the U.S. with Saudi Arabia, President Donald Trump is foolishly looking only to the short term. Iran is already the most influential country in Iraq. Its ally, Hezbollah, is the greatest force in Lebanon. Together, they are the primary reason why Bashar al-Assad is holding on in Syria.

Iran is behind the rebellion in Yemen. Its influence is growing in Afghanistan. Irans vision of the future as no longer dependent on oil has already won over the leaders of Qatar. Even the Trump administration has twice certified that Iran is complying with the nuclear agreement and many countries have renewed trade with it since the agreement took effect. Iran is destined to dominate the Middle East.

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The American public needs to better understand why many Iranians mistrust the United States. It was the CIA that overthrew Irans popular leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. It was the U.S. that installed Reza Shah Pahlavi, who ruled for 25 years in an increasingly cruel and despotic manner. When he was overthrown in 1979, the Shah fled to the United States. We tried unsuccessfully to bribe some of the revolutions leaders to assure continuing U.S. influence. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, we sided with Iraq and eventually furnished it with intelligence and arms. Over 2 million Iranians were killed or wounded in that war but Iran won. By 2003, the U.S. had occupied the two major countries on either side of Iran Afghanistan and Iraq and impliedly threatened Iran as a member of the Axis of Evil. Some Iranians remain convinced that the U.S. continues to have designs on control of Irans internal affairs.

Nevertheless, Irans anti-U.S. actions have been measured. Some Iranian students and leaders have called America the Great Satan and street crowds have chanted Death to America but we should judge the country and its people by their actions, not a few politically inspired words. Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979, but, unlike subsequent events in Benghazi and Nairobi, no embassy personnel was killed or seriously injured in Tehran. Although Saddam Husseins Iraq used poison gas against Iranians, Iran refused to do so because such weapons were considered unacceptable under the Koran. There were eight Saudis among the eleven terrorists that brought down the World Trade Centers; no Iranians.

No Iranian has been implicated in any terrorist attack in Western countries except a hard-to-believe allegation that an Iranian-American tried to hire a drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador. According to U.S. and Israeli intelligence reports, Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, when the Supreme Leader of Iran said the use of such weapons violates the Koran. Iran supplied arms and training for Shia militants in Iraq and Lebanon. Americans were killed in those countries, but we put our soldiers at risk when we foolishly invaded the countries in the first place.

Ironically, Iranians mistrust Russia as much or more than they mistrust America. Russia or the Soviet Union has occupied Iran on at least three occasions. Russia now fears Irans growing power. The limited cease-fire in southwest Syria is more about Russia wanting to limit the influence of Hezbollah and Iran over Assad than about peace.

VIEWPOINTS: The Statesmans editorial writers tackle local and national issues.

A common misconception about Iran is that it is not democratic. In fact, both local officials and members of parliament the Majlis are elected. Even the members of the Assembly of Experts that selects the Supreme Leader are elected. The current president, Hassan Rouhani, was elected with 50.9 percent of the vote in 2013 over five opponents largely because of his pledge of rapprochement with the world. He was re-elected in 2017. Iran has too few female candidates and too much influence from Muslim clerics to meet the U.S. ideal of democracy, but in comparison to some of its neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia, it is a bastion of democracy.

Irans 79 million people compared to Saudi Arabias 32 million are generally well-educated, well-led and enterprising. They are a natural ally for America. There are bad actors in Iran, but the most effective way for America to affect that countrys direction in the future is as a friend to its people, not as an enemy. America should attempt to understand Iran by building on the nuclear agreement with that country and working for peace in the region not foolishly aligning itself with the ultimately losing side like Saudi Arabia of an internecine dispute within the Muslim community.

Bickerstaff is co-author of International Election Remedies and retired from teaching law at the University of Texas.

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Commentary: Why Iran is positioned to dominate the Middle East - MyStatesman.com

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's top judge called on the United States on Monday to release Iranians held in U.S. jails and billions of dollars in Iranian assets, days after Washington urged Tehran to free three U.S. citizens.

The statement by Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani capped a week of heightened rhetoric over the jailing and disappearance of Americans in Iran and new U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

"We tell them: 'You should immediately release Iranian citizens held in American prisons in violation of international rules and based on baseless charges'," Larijani said in remarks carried by state television.

"You have seized the property of the Islamic Republic of Iran in violation of all rules and in a form of open piracy, and these should be released."

On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Tehran to return Robert Levinson, an American former law enforcement officer who disappeared in Iran more than a decade ago, and release businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer, jailed on espionage charges.

Trump said Iran would face "new and serious consequences" if the three men were not released. U.S. authorities imposed new economic sanctions on Iran on Tuesday over its ballistic missile program.

Earlier this month, Iran said another U.S. citizen, Xiyue Wang, a graduate student from Princeton University, had been sentenced to 10 years in jail for spying.

According to former prisoners, families of current ones and diplomats, Iran sometimes holds on to detainees for use for prisoner exchanges with Western countries. Tehran has denied this.

In a swap deal in 2016, Iranians held or charged in the United States, mostly for sanctions violations, were released in return for Americans imprisoned in Iran.

Also that year, Iran filed an International Court of Justice complaint to recover $2 billion in frozen assets that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled must be turned over to American families of people killed in bombings and other attacks blamed on Iran.

Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; editing by John Stonestreet

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Iran top judge demands US release assets, jailed Iranians - Reuters