Ecuador’s president, who unexpectedly surged in the polls to secure a shortened term in 2023, was declared the victor of the presidential election with a decisive lead on Sunday in a race that showed voters’ faith in his vows to tackle the security crisis with an iron fist.

Daniel Noboa, 37, defeated Luisa González, 47, the handpicked successor of former President Rafael Correa.

Both candidates accused the other of electoral violations throughout the election season, and Ms. González said she would not recognize the results of the election, in a speech from the headquarters of her party, Citizen Revolution.

“I want to be very clear and emphatic: The Citizen Revolution has always recognized a defeat in the last elections when polls, tracking and statistics have shown it,” Ms. González said. “Today, we do not recognize these results.”

Mr. Noboa celebrated his victory from the coastal town of Olón.

“This day has been historic,” he said. “There is no doubt who the winner is.”

The day before the election, Mr. Noboa declared a state of emergency in seven states, most of them González strongholds, raising fears that he was trying to suppress the vote among her supporters. The declaration restricts social activities and allows police and military to enter homes without permission.

The president said the measure was in response to violence in certain parts of Ecuador. Ms. González described it as an attempt to curb political participation.

“Declaring a state of emergency in the middle of an electoral process due to alleged serious internal unrest is very questionable,” said Mauricio Alarcón Salvador, the director of Transparency International’s chapter in Ecuador, who added that the decision should be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

But he said that any claims of electoral fraud “must be substantiated,” something he saw as less likely given Mr. Noboa’s large margin of victory. “It cannot and should not be simply an assertion thrown into the air.”

Mr. Noboa has positioned himself as a law-and-order president but has so far achieved minimal results in tackling the nation’s persistent drug violence and unemployment.

In the past five years, Ecuador has experienced an explosion in violence linked to drug trafficking. A justice system plagued by overcrowding in jails, corruption and underfunding has become fertile ground for prison gangs allied with powerful international drug cartels.

This shift has turned the once-peaceful nation of 18 million into a significant player in the global drug trade, disrupting the lives of Ecuadoreans and altering the country’s status in a volatile region.

At the same time, just 36 percent of Ecuadoreans are adequately employed, according to government data, making the economy a top concern.

Mr. Noboa received 56 percent of the vote, compared with Ms. González’s 44 percent, with more than 97 percent of votes counted on Sunday evening, according to official figures.

In a race that was expected to be tight, Mr. Noboa took a decisive lead early in the night. By 8 p.m., hundreds of his supporters were gathered outside of the national electoral council in Quito blowing horns, waving flags and holding the emblematic cardboard cutouts of his likeness.

At the nearby headquarters of Ms. González’s party, hundreds of supporters were shouting “recount.”

Mr. Noboa projected an image of himself on social media as the law-and-order candidate, but that posture wasn’t reflected in reality, according to Caroline Ávila, an Ecuadorean political analyst.

“On a day-to-day basis, you won’t find people on the streets doing surveillance,” she said. “But you will have a TikTok video reminding you of the last raid.”

Mr. Noboa also sought to cast himself as Ecuador’s best representative on the world stage, emphasizing his ability to build relationships with global leaders, including President Trump.

Mr. Noboa, a Harvard-educated heir to a multibillion-dollar banana empire, took office in 2023 after his predecessor called for early elections amid impeachment proceedings.

He first entered politics just four years ago, when he ran for a seat in the national legislature. In the 2023 presidential contest, he managed to rise from the bottom of the polls to second place in the first round of voting after a strong debate performance. He then beat Ms. González in the runoff.

Ms. González, who served in various positions in the leftist Correa government, is largely seen as the representative of the former president, a divisive figure in Ecuador who led from 2007 to 2017. Many revere Mr. Correa for the booming economy, low crime rates and investment in health and education that Ecuador experienced under his government. But others condemn him for his corruption conviction in 2020 and his authoritarian tendencies.

Junior Yazbek, 39, a car dealership owner, said he had voted for Mr. Noboa because he thought that foreign investment and trade would be higher under his leadership, which he thought were key to boosting Ecuador’s economy.

“We really need good allies, big people like the United States,” he said.

Luis Cando and his wife, Mónica Sánchez, both 39, said they were planning to vote for Mr. Noboa in part because of the economy, which is worsened by the high crime levels.

“To have a small business, you can’t open too late or too early, because the thieves are on the lookout,” said Ms. Sánchez, carrying their infant on her chest.

She was drawn to Mr. Noboa’s promises to combat crime and create job opportunities.

“I hope he delivers on that, too,” she said. “That it’s not just a proposal.”

José María León Cabrera contributed reporting from Quito.

A South Carolina man pleaded guilty on Thursday to importing sperm whale teeth and bones from four countries and selling them in the United States, federal prosecutors said.

The man, Lauren H. DeLoach, 69, of St. Helena Island, S.C., pleaded guilty to Lacey Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act charges for importing and selling sperm whale parts, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina.

Mr. DeLoach admitted to importing the sperm whale teeth and bones to South Carolina, including at least 30 shipments from Australia, Latvia, Norway and Ukraine, from July 2022 through September 2024, according to court documents and statements made in court.

Mr. DeLoach sold at least 85 pieces on eBay worth more than $18,000 and labeled the items as “plastic” to avoid detection by U.S. customs officials, prosecutors said.

The authorities said they had seized about $20,000 worth of sperm whale parts during a search of his residence.

It was not immediately clear on Sunday how Mr. DeLoach had obtained the items and who then bought them from him. The teeth and the bones are prized for decorations or use in artwork, such as engravings and carvings, prosecutors said.

Sperm whales, the largest species of toothed whale, are found in all deep oceans, from the Equator to the edge of the pack ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Females can grow up to 40 feet in length and males up to 52 feet, the agency said.

Sperm whales have been protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1970 and under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The Lacey Act makes it unlawful to sell any wildlife that has been illegally imported, prosecutors said.

“Illegal wildlife trafficking is a multibillion-dollar global business that endangers protected animals and fuels organized crime,” said Brook B. Andrews, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina. “We will continue to enforce the Lacey Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act so vulnerable species like the sperm whale are not killed and sold for parts.”

Nathan S. Williams, a lawyer for Mr. DeLoach, said in a statement on Sunday that Mr. DeLoach “regrets his decisions and has accepted responsibility for them.”

Mr. DeLoach faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the felony Lacey Act charge, and a maximum sentence of one year in prison for the misdemeanor Marine Mammal Protection Act violation.

The case was the latest involving protected wildlife.

In February, a California couple reached a plea agreement in Butte County, Calif., for violating fish and game laws after wildlife officers on a plane heard them boasting how they had once illegally hunted a mountain lion, and how they were smuggling the skull of an endangered turtle in their carry-on bag, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said.

African music lost one of its titans last week with the death of Amadou Bagayoko, a guitarist who recorded with American rock stars, performed at the Nobel concert for Barack Obama, and became a national icon in his home, Mali.

With his wife, the singer Mariam Doumbia, Mr. Bagayoko composed the duo Amadou & Mariam, which rose to international fame in the 2000s and 2010s with hits like “Beautiful Sundays.”

Mr. Bagayoko was 70 when he died last week, of complications from a malaria infection. He and his wife, who is 66, were scheduled to perform across Europe next month. And while their fame has faded in the United States since the peak of their global success, they remained huge celebrities in Europe and in West Africa, where their music inspired generations of artists.

We asked relatives and friends of Mr. Bagayoko for their favorite songs by Amadou & Mariam, and the significance of the guitarist and his music — a blend of blues riffs, guitar solos, and djembe — to them.

‘Toubala Kono’

Cheick Tidiane Seck, a keyboard player who knew Mr. Bagayoko since the guitarist was 14, was in neighboring Ivory Coast for a concert last week when Mr. Bagayoko died.

Mr. Seck opened the concert with “Toubala Kono,” a song he wrote with Mr. Bagayoko, whom he called a “brother.”

But he couldn’t finish performing it, he said in an interview, adding, “I would have collapsed.”

With only a spare, reverberating guitar doing circular riffs, the song revolves around loneliness, a feeling that Mr. Seck said had haunted him since his friend’s death.

‘Mogoya’

Sam Bagayoko is the only one of Mr. Bagayoko’s and Ms. Doumbia’s three children who embraced a musical career. He had toured with his parents and was in Paris to organize their planned concerts in France this summer when Mr. Bagayoko died.

His parents were especially proud of how their songs kept appealing to younger generations, he said in a telephone interview from Bamako, Mali’s capital and the family’s home, where visitors were coming this week to pay tribute.

His favorite song is “Mogoya,” which he composed for his parents to perform with him. In the song, he plays the guitar with his father while his mother sings about daily life in Mali and promises that people often fail to keep.

“It was always an honor to play with my parents, but this was our last collaboration together,” said Sam, who is 45. “I will never see nor hear my father’s guitar anymore.”

‘I Think About You’

Idrissa Soumaoro, a well-known musician and singer in Mali, met Mr. Bagayoko in 1973, when at 19 years old he joined the band Les Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako.

He quickly saw that “Amadou was bright and ambitious,” he said.

Later in that decade, Mr. Soumaoro trained Mr. Bagayoko and Ms. Doumbia at a Malian national school for blind people, where they deepened their friendship. (Mr. Bagayoko was blind, as is his wife.)

At the school, Mr. Soumaoro said, they would listen to blues for hours in a rehearsal room, working on tonalities in what Mr. Soumaoro called “research work like I’ve never done with any other musician.”

Mr. Soumaoro picked “I Think About You,” a love song that the duo released in 2005, saying, that the couple’s love “was also part of their success.”

“In it, Amadou sings, ‘I think about you, don’t abandon me,’” said Mr. Soumaoro, who is 75. “He didn’t abandon her, but the sad reality is that he has left her.”

He added, “I hope Mariam will have the strength to bear life.”

The Trump administration on Sunday evening doubled down on its assertion that a federal judge cannot force it to bring back to the United States a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador last month.

In a brief legal filing, the Justice Department reiterated its view that courts lack the ability to dictate steps that the White House should take in seeking to return the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to U.S. soil, because the president alone has broad powers to handle foreign policy.

“The federal courts have no authority to direct the executive branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner,” lawyers for the department wrote. “That is the ‘exclusive power of the president as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.’”

The position taken by Trump officials was not the first time they had tried to defy efforts compelling them to seek Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador. Still, their continued recalcitrance meant that Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, would for now remain at the CECOT prison in El Salvador, where he was sent with scores of other migrants on March 15.

The administration’s stubbornness was also likely to heighten tensions between the White House and the judge overseeing the case, Paula Xinis. Judge Xinis has scheduled a hearing to discuss next steps in the matter on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Maryland.

The conflict has persisted even though the Supreme Court last week unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody. Trump officials have in fact already admitted that they made an “administrative error” when they put Mr. Abrego Garcia on the plane to El Salvador in the first place.

The dispute — just one of the legal battles involving Mr. Trump’s deportation plans — threatened to spill over into an official visit from President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who is set to meet with President Trump on Monday.

When the Supreme Court ruled on the case last week, it seemed at first like a victory for Mr. Abrego Garcia and his family. But the court’s order contained an ambiguous passage that Trump officials have seized on in their ongoing effort to avoid doing much of anything to ensure his return to the United States.

In their ruling, the justices agreed with Judge Xinis that the White House should do what it could to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release, but they never defined the specific steps officials should take to actually “effectuate” the plan.

Indeed, they sent that question back to Judge Xinis, cautioning her that as she clarified what the administration should do, her decision needed to be made “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

On Saturday, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers asked Judge Xinis to order the administration to send a plane to El Salvador to pick him up and to have Trump officials travel with him to “ensure his safe passage.”

But lawyers for the Justice Department, in their filing on Sunday, said that the administration should not have to do any of that because it would intrude on dealings between the White House and the Salvadoran government.

“All of those requested orders involve interactions with a foreign sovereign — and potential violations of that sovereignty,” the lawyers wrote. “But as explained, a federal court cannot compel the executive branch to engage in any mandated act of diplomacy or incursion upon the sovereignty of another nation.”