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A New Era of Soccer Moms Navigates a Rapidly Changing Game

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When Iceland’s Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir took maternity leave from her French team, Olympique Lyonnais, in 2021, the team refused to pay her full salary. So with the help of FIFPro, the global players’ union, she filed a claim with FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, and won a landmark judgment. Gunnarsdottir called it “a wake-up call for clubs.”

Sarai Bareman, the head of women’s soccer at FIFA, helped create those new rules, which mandate that clubs grant pregnant players a 14-week maternity leave paid at two-thirds salary and ensure they have a spot on the roster when they return. Now Bareman, a former player, has a young child of her own, a toddler who could be seen running around FIFA’s main hotel in Auckland during the World Cup.

Bareman said eight players had registered with FIFA to have their children travel with their teams at the World Cup, and that several others had made private arrangements. The support they receive, and their visibility, was uncommon even a decade ago.

“I think it’s very much driven by North America, because we’ve seen some very high-profile returning mothers,” she said. “I honestly feel that has influenced a lot of other female players around the world to be more publicly open about the fact that, yes, they’ve got kids, too. Their kids are there. That’s a massive, massive part of their life.”

Morgan had Charlie in 2020, and returned to the sport just in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, often wearing a gold ring with the word “MAMA” that she bought for herself as a reminder of her priorities. Since then, she has regularly included Charlie in her postgame celebrations on the field, carrying her around to see the fans and letting her frolic on the grass. Morgan’s 10.1 million Instagram followers are treated to regular updates on Charlie, including one last week with photos of them after they had been reunited after several weeks apart. “She made it, and my heart is full,” Morgan wrote in the post.

Ukrainian troops describe brutal, grinding battle

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STORY: This video released by the Ukrainian army shows its soldiers in battle near the village of Staromaiorske, which was recaptured from Russian forces last week.

The marines who fought in the battle, Ukraine’s biggest advance in weeks, said that fighting was brutal, their timing was off, and that the invaders were ready for them.

“The Russians waited for us. They shot anti-tank weapons and grenade launchers at us. My car drove over an anti-tank mine, but everything is well – the vehicle held the hit, and everyone was alive. We unloaded and ran towards the cover. Because the most important is to find cover and then move on.”

Kyiv’s current counter-offensive is backed by billions of dollars in Western military aid, equipment and training.

But war-stories of the battle of Staromaiorske, recounted to Reuters near the frontline in southeastern Ukraine, give an indication of why this highly-anticipated operation has proven slower and bloodier than expected.

“We advanced slowly but surely. What can I say – they shoot, everything flies. It was scary, but we moved on. Nobody backed up. Everyone did a great job. Many of us didn’t come back. But we mostly preserved our strength.”

The Russians have had months to prepare their fortifications and sow minefields, while the Ukrainians lack the air superiority that their NATO allies normally expect in their training drills.

Ukrainian commanders say the deliberately slower pace is needed to avoid high casualties.

Russia on Monday announced that Ukraine’s counteroffensive was not going as planned.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, speaking at a military conference in Moscow, said Ukraine was (quote) “desperately hurling new forces” into attacks on Russian positions, but had failed to advance.

“Over the past month, due to the successful actions of our troops, the enemy’s losses totaled more than 28,000 servicemen.”

Shoigu said Ukraine was wasting billions of dollars of weapons supplied by the West.

“Amid the failure of the so-called ‘counter-offensive,’ the Kyiv regime, backed by its Western sponsors, has focused on carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure.”

On Monday, two people were killed and four injured – according to Russian officials – in Ukrainian shelling of the city of Donetsk… which is under Russian control.

Some 250 miles to the West, smoke billowed from a gaping hole in an apartment building…. Seen here, in video posted on social media by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

According to Ukraine, a Russian missile attack – on the city Zelenskiy grew up in – killed at least six people and wounded dozens more.

Teen Competitive Cyclist Dies After Being Hit by Car

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Magnus White, a 17-year-old “rising star” in competitive cycling, has died after being hit by a car in Colorado while he was training for the world championships, the state police and U.S.A. Cycling, the sport’s governing body, said.

White excelled in cyclocross, an international sport in which racers compete on a course of multiple surfaces, including pavement and trails, and carry their bicycles over off-road obstacles. He was a junior member of U.S.A. Cycling, the Colorado Springs-based organization said.

White was struck by a car on Saturday in Boulder County, which has a population of about 320,000 and is in the north-central part of the state known for its rugged mountains, foothills, trails and the University of Colorado campus in Boulder.

He was on a north-south stretch of Highway 119 known as the Diagonal, which runs between Boulder and Longmont. The road is so frequently used by cyclists that local and state authorities are working on a long-term plan to add a separate bike trail in the middle of it.

At about 12:30 p.m., White was riding his endurance road bicycle southbound on the shoulder of the highway when a Toyota Matrix struck him from behind, ejecting him from the bicycle, Trooper Gabriel Moltrer, a public information officer for the Colorado State Patrol, said on Monday. White was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Mr. Moltrer said.

There was no indication that drugs, alcohol or excessive speed were involved, and the driver was not injured in the accident, which took place northeast of Boulder, Mr. Moltrer said.

White was a junior member of the 2023 Cyclocross World Championship team, U.S.A. Cycling said. He was making final preparations before leaving for Glasgow to compete in the Junior Men’s Mountain Bike Cross-Country World Championships on Aug. 10, it said.

“He was a rising star in the off-road cycling scene,” the organization said, “and his passion for cycling was evident through his racing and camaraderie with his teammates and local community.”

Cyclocross was invented about 100 years ago in Europe as an off-season training regimen for road-bike racers. Its appeal gained momentum in the United States in the early 2000s.

Most competitors modify their road bikes with knobby tires and other structural alterations to allow for better clearance as they navigate paved roads, hills, stairs and other obstacles during the race.

“Since the cyclocross season generally takes place from September to February, races are often times plagued with adverse weather conditions such as snow, rain, wind and mud — all of which add to the sport’s allure,” U.S.A. Cycling said.

White started cycling when he was 8, and the sport became his “greatest joy in life,” his family said in a statement. He received competitive training with Boulder Junior Cycling, which develops young athletes in the sport. White was spurred on by his Colorado childhood of cycling and skiing, he wrote on his website, and later developed into an ambitious athlete who was emerging on the international stage.

On his Instagram account, White described the rugged challenges of the sport, whether pushing through a muddy ride, battling food poisoning or overcoming a snapped chain during a race.

In 2021, White won the U.S.A. Cycling Cyclocross National Championships, and in 2022, he participated in his first world championship in Fayetteville, Ark., placing 25th in the junior division. In 2023, he competed in his second world championship in Hoogerheide, the Netherlands, coming in 20th in the under-19 group.

“These global events provided me with a deeper understanding of the international dynamics of the sport and allowed me to measure myself against the world’s best riders,” White wrote.

White had described the upcoming mountain bike race championship in Scotland as a “new and exciting chapter of my cycling career.”

Louise Levy, Who Was Studied for Her Very Long Life, Is Dead at 112

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Louise Levy, who along with hundreds of others 95 and older was part of a study to understand how their genetic makeup led to their good physical and cognitive health during extremely long lives, died on July 17 in Greenwich, Conn. She was 112.

Her daughter, Lynn Neidorf, confirmed the death, at a hospital. She said Mrs. Levy had broken a hip two months ago but, after surgery and rehabilitation that had her moving with a walker, had developed an infection that weakened her.

“She was a light of positivity,” Ms. Neidorf, who is in her 70s, said by phone. “She had that quality babies have: People were drawn to her. They wanted to be around her.”

Mrs. Levy lived independently in a senior living community in Rye, N.Y, until two years ago, during the pandemic, when she moved into its assisted living facility.

When she celebrated her birthday last year, she told The Rye Record, “I’m glad I can still speak and have my sense of humor, but I would caution you not to try and live to be 112!”

At her death she was the oldest known living person in New York State, according to LongeviQuest, which maintains a database of supercentenarians, people who have lived into a 12th decade.

Mrs. Levy was one of more than 700 people, all 95 or older, recruited since 1998 to participate in a study by the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx to learn the genetic reasons for their unusually long, healthy lives.

“It’s not luck,” Dr. Nir Barzilai, an endocrinologist who directs the institute, said by phone. “They exceeded luck. The biggest answer is genetics.”

Using the blood and plasma of the test group, all Ashkenazi Jews — a comparatively homogeneous population whose genetic variations are easier to spot — the institute’s Longevity Genes Project has discovered gene mutations that are believed to be responsible for slowing the impact of aging on people like Mrs. Levy and protecting them against high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

“The most striking thing about them is they had a contraction of morbidity,” Dr. Barzilai said. “They are sick, as a group, for very little time at the end of their lives.”

He added, “Did they do what we know we should do — exercise, diet and sleep and have social connectivity? The answer is mostly no. Sixty percent were smoking. Less than 50 percent did much household activity or biking. Fifty percent were overweight or obese. Less than three percent were vegetarians. So they weren’t special in that sense.”

The goal of the research is the development of drugs that would imitate what the centenarians’ genes do to protect their health.

Louise Morris Wilk was born on Nov. 1, 1910, in Cleveland. Her father, Louis, was a photographer and a movie theater manager. Her mother, Mollie (Morris) Wilk, was a homemaker. The three later moved to New York City, where Louis illustrated film posters.

Louise attended but did not graduate from Hunter College. In 1939, she married Seymour Levy, who sold housewares for a company founded by his father. He later took over the company, and Mrs. Levy became his office manager when he moved the business into their house in Larchmont, N.Y.

She continued to work into her 90s for the man who acquired the company after her husband died in 1991.

“Not full time, you know — two, three days a week for an hour or two until my car conked out,” she told WCBS Radio in 2019.

Mrs. Levy did not have heart disease, diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease but was treated for breast cancer and smoked cigarettes for decades, until 1965, when the U.S. Surgeon General put health warnings on cigarette packs.

Even as her hearing, eyesight and mobility diminished in recent years, she stayed active with tai chi and stretching classes, playing bridge and knitting sweaters for hospitalized babies. She began losing her short-term memory only in the last six months.

Mrs. Levy believed that her low-cholesterol diet, positive attitude and daily glass of red wine contributed to her extended good health. “Everybody says ‘good genes,’” she told the Canadian newspaper The National Post in 2012, “but I don’t think it’s good genes.”

She may have been onto something.

“There is more than one way to get to 100,” Dr. Barzilai said, “but some of them are genes that are related to cholesterol.”

In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Levy is survived by her son, Ralph, who is also in his 70s, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Ms. Neidorf, who believes her own good health may be tied to the same genetic makeup as her mother’s, recalled that the two were nonetheless different types of people.

“I was much more fresh and disobedient than she was,” Ms. Neidorf recalled. “She was sugar and spice and everything nice. I held her in great admiration because she never tried to make me be like her. She accepted who I was and believed in me.”

Dancing Till Dawn at a Music Festival in Albania

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More than a dozen sweaty people in various states of undress giggled as a capoeira instructor directed us to crawl around on the floor. Make eye contact, he told us as we tried to follow the flow of one another’s bodies. But it was hard not to stare at the sparkling blue Ionian Sea.

On one side of an open-air pavilion in Dhermi, a village on the Albanian Riviera, those waters glimmered under the summer sun, free of the yachts that crowd the Croatian and Greek shorelines to the north and south. On the other side, palm trees dotted the landscape. Behind them loomed the lush, green Ceraunian Mountains.

A sound check interrupted the class, an abrupt reminder of the larger reason we capoeira novices had gathered: Kala, a weeklong music-and-wellness festival. I was part of a crowd of about 3,500 mostly young people, resplendent in transparent flare pants, crop tops and cowboy boots, who had descended on Dhermi in late May and early June to sway and spin in the moonlight, hypnotized by the beats, and to pack our days with Kundalini yoga, breath work, massage and capoeira classes.

Across four stages, D.J.s like Hunee and Antal, CC:Disco!, Grace Sands and Daphni performed nightly, spinning techno and electronic beats mixed with funk, disco, jazz and more. A fifth stage, open during the daytime, beckoned from Gjipe, a canyon with soaring red cliffs, a short, scenic boat ride away.

In Dhermi, restaurants served fresh, delicious seafood and drinks at reasonable prices. Kala’s weeklong packages, which included tickets and accommodations, started at $370. (Similar U.S. festivals this year charged about $200 to $400 for a two- or three-day ticket, without lodging.) Residents joined in the fun, blasting their own music from bars, cars and balconies at night. And in the morning, some hung-over revelers were surprised to find themselves face to face with wandering goats on the village streets.

“I’ve gone from Ibiza, which got really built up, to Croatia, which got really busy. And I’ve spent a lot of time in India, and now Goa is super busy, too. And Greece is so expensive now,” said Annabel Turbutt-Day, 38, a corporate affairs director from London who drove to Kala from Tirana, Albania’s capital, with her partner and three friends. “Albania is still a little bit undiscovered, and a bit more affordable.”

Since its debut in Albania in 2018, Kala has helped drive a boom in international tourism in Dhermi. Three more events have joined Dhermi’s summer dance card, with support from Mainstage Festivals, the company that runs Kala, including the upcoming Ion Festival, which takes place there from Sept. 6 to 13. The tourism season in Dhermi, which used to last about six weeks, now runs from the end of May through September.

Dhermi’s landscape was integral to Kala’s appeal: The beaches where people sunbathed during the day turned into parties that lasted till sunrise — and the cycle repeated every day.

Each open-air stage was its own little world — a cozy cove, a platform jutting into the sea, a vast space surrounded by palm trees. When I got tired of bobbing my head to the music in one spot, I could weave down the street through shouting, laughing festivalgoers and slip into a different crowd swaying to a different set.

Spontaneous parties formed in the streets, too. One evening, after hours of dancing, I devoured a slice of pizza while watching a trio of locals and visitors join hands and spin in a circle, first to Albanian songs and then to Justin Bieber’s “Sorry.”

Dhermi’s rising popularity has mirrored Albania’s as a whole. In 2022, a record 7.5 million people visited the country, spending around $3.1 billion, compared with 6.4 million and $2.4 billion in 2019, according to the Ministry of Tourism and Environment. And in the first three months of 2023, Albania experienced a 54 percent jump in visitors compared with the same period in 2019, according to the World Tourism Organization.

Many of those tourists head straight for the resort towns and beaches of the Albanian Riviera, which are drawing European sun-and-sea seekers who find the Greek island of Corfu and Dubrovnik, Croatia, too expensive and crowded. On Instagram and TikTok, influencers compare Albania’s seascape to that of the Maldives or Bali.

At the same time, history buffs are flocking to Albania’s ancient Greek and Roman ruins, Ottoman-era architecture and the tens of thousands of repurposed concrete bunkers built by Enver Hoxha, who ruled the formerly Communist country with an iron fist for four decades. UNESCO World Heritage sites like the prehistoric ruins of Butrint and deep, ancient Lake Ohrid add to the attractions.

Outdoorsy types come to bicycle along the wild Vjosa River and hike in the Albanian Alps. Nearly 300 government-certified agritourism operators offer farm tours, wine tastings and homemade meals at properties growing cherries, walnuts, plums, quince and more.

Today’s tourist-friendly environment stands in sharp contrast to the Albania of the early 1990s as it emerged from four decades of isolation as one of the poorest countries behind the Iron Curtain. An economic crisis and a near descent into civil war followed. In early 1997, during a popular uprising, an estimated 550,000 weapons were looted from armories and at least 2,000 people died as government forces cracked down and insurgents battled. The United Nations finally sent in a multinational force to restore order. But all this left Albania with a reputation as a crime-ridden, dangerous country.

“The image of Albania was not the real one,” said Mirela Kumbaro, the country’s minister of tourism and environment. “It was only the bad parts.” Now, Albania want to show its “real face,” she said.

“Kala is one of our best ambassadors,” said Ms. Kumbaro, who had dropped by the festival for a news conference, following in the footsteps of other officials, including Prime Minister Edi Rama, who showed up to the first Kala in 2018 and later sent a pallet of free beer.

Development in the Dhermi area has accelerated at a breakneck pace: Half of the adjacent village of Drymades seems to be a construction site. The influx of foreign visitors to a place that only a few decades ago was sealed off to the world has brought both prosperity and challenges.

“It’s been a 100 percent transformation,” said Erjon Shehaj, 46, whose family opened a 10-table restaurant in Dhermi in 2016. “When we started, there was nothing.” Today, they own and operate the Empire Beach Resort, a luxury hotel on the same land where the small restaurant once stood. The resort hosted the biggest stage of the festival and was booked solid all seven days.

“I’ve never encountered so many tourists in Albania,” said Anisa Koteci, 33, a lawyer, who was born in the country then emigrated with her family to London when she was 8. Returning to Albania for Kala for the first time in four years, she said, has been “a bit of a shock to the system.” The abundance of foreign visitors made her excited and happy, she said, but she also worried that Albania might become known as just a party destination. She called the wave of tourism a “stress test” for her homeland.

In Dhermi, the electricity or water was sometimes turned off at hotels without warning, and bathrooms in restaurants and bars were left uncleaned for long stretches. On the second day of the festival, one local shopkeeper wiped her brow and grumbled as she surveyed an endless line of impatient bathing-suit-clad tourists waiting to buy chips, water, beer and sunblock. She was running the grocery store and the adjacent currency exchange alone, she explained, because her brother had stayed up all night registering local SIM cards for tourists.

The flood of visitors is also raising fears about possible harm to the region’s flora and fauna. In the city of Vlore, about an hour’s drive from Dhermi, an airport construction project the government promotes as a way to bring more tourists to the Albanian Riviera has faced protests from environmental groups that say it could endanger sanctuaries for birds like flamingos and pelicans.

Tomi Gjikuria, 34, an entrepreneur and a D.J. who grew up in Dhermi, said he was happy with all the new business and hoped for more visitors, but wondered how all the new construction would affect the landscape.

“When I was a child, there was no tourism,” said Mr. Gjikuria, who operates a campsite called the Sea Turtle Camp on land that his family owns in Drymades.

“I have 5,000 square meters where I put a campsite,” he said. “I could have built a casino, but I don’t want to cut down the trees.”

Despite all the challenges of development, residents of Dhermi have kept the welcome mat out — even if it sometimes has had a few wrinkles.

Alan Crofton, the manager and director of Mainstage Festivals, recalled the fall of 2017, when he and Rob Searle, Kala’s creative director, went to Gjipe Canyon to ask the owner of a local campsite if they could use its beach during Kala. The man they met insisted that before they agreed to anything, they needed to break the ice by toasting each other with a shot of raki, a local liquor. One shot turned into several, until finally the man told Mr. Crofton and Mr. Searle — by then quite buzzed — that he would lease them a space for the festival, Mr. Crofton said.

But when Mr. Crofton and Mr. Searle returned several months later, they found out that their raki-toasting host was not actually the landowner. He was the security guard who looked after the campsite in the winter.

Andrea Kumi, 47, founded Havana Beach Club, a place that helped draw some of the area’s first waves of tourists, after moving to Dhermi, his father’s hometown, when he was 24. Mr. Kumi, who grew up in Vlore and Athens, began inviting world-famous D.J.s to perform at the club about 15 years ago.

Today, besides the Havana Beach Club, Mr. Kumi owns two other restaurants. As the area continues to change, Mr. Kumi said, everybody is trying their best to be gracious and helpful hosts. As an old saying in Albania goes: “Our house belongs to God and guests.”

He illustrated this point with a story. In 2009, Mr. Kumi persuaded the Dutch D.J. Tiësto to perform in Dhermi. There were no luxury hotels, so, eager to please, he rented a three-story, 80-foot yacht for Tiësto to sleep on, but the D.J. started feeling seasick as soon as he boarded.

All the hotel rooms in the area were booked with the thousands of guests who’d come to see Tiësto perform, so Mr. Kumi offered up his own bedroom in his family’s house in the hills. Tiësto accepted, and the next day, Mr. Kumi said, the D.J. joined his parents and nephew for homemade pancakes.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023.

Russia Says Ukrainian Drones Hit Moscow Buildings in Latest Attacks

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The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had fired at least three drones at Moscow, the latest in a wave of attacks in Russia demonstrating that few places are off limits after more than 17 months of war.

One drone was destroyed in Odintsovo, outside Moscow, the Defense Ministry said, adding that two others struck commercial buildings in the capital after being intercepted by Russian air defenses. There were no injuries, Moscow’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app, but video footage from Russian state media showed blown-out windows and twisted beams in one of Moscow’s premier skyscrapers.

Ukraine does not typically claim responsibility for attacks in Russia, in an effort to maintain a military advantage and an element of surprise. However, senior Ukrainian officials said last week that recent drone attacks on Moscow were orchestrated by Kyiv.

In his evening address on Sunday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, did not explicitly mention the strikes in Moscow but noted that “gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia,” including military and “symbolic” centers.

“This is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process,” said Mr. Zelensky, who previously promised “retaliation” after two weeks of nonstop Russian bombardment on Odesa, a city on the Black Sea that is both vital to Ukraine’s economy and of great cultural and historical significance.

Ukraine has also been accused of using drones to attack Russian-occupied Crimea — with Moscow claiming on Sunday that a new wave was launched overnight — and oil facilities and military air bases deep inside Russia.

The attacks in Moscow, though they have become more frequent, have so far caused no deaths. They have also been far less extensive than the drone and missile strikes that Russian forces conduct nightly across Ukraine, often hitting civilian areas.

The first drone attacks on Moscow, on the Kremlin compound, came in early May, an assault that American officials said was most likely carried out by one of Kyiv’s special military or intelligence units. They were followed by attacks at the end of that month on a high-end Moscow neighborhood.

In July, there have been at least three drone attacks on Moscow, some coming within blocks of striking military facilities central to the war effort.

The attacks have upended the assumption of people in Moscow, about 500 miles from Ukraine, that the fighting would never touch them. And they have prompted criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin’s management of the war, which has taken an enormous economic toll on Russia and has cost tens of thousands of soldiers their lives.

The skyscraper complex that sustained damage on Sunday, known as Moscow City, is a symbol of Russia’s economic resurgence under Mr. Putin. Its 89th-floor restaurant with panoramic views of Moscow is a draw for the city’s moneyed elite, while its office space houses government ministries as well as finance and tech companies — including cryptocurrency exchanges linked to the illicit dealings of Russian hackers.

A few hours after Sunday morning’s attack, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman released a statement that neither accepted nor denied responsibility.

“They got what they wanted,” the spokesman, Yuri Ihnat, said on national television. “There is always something flying in Russia, including Moscow. Those who are not affected by the war are now affected, which creates certain moods. Russia can no longer claim it shot down everything.”

Late Sunday, Russian officials said a Ukrainian drone had crashed far closer to the front lines, in the southwestern Rostov region, near where Russia claimed to have shot down two missiles last week.

The regional governor, Vasily Golubev, wrote on Telegram that the drone had damaged a car and the roof of a house in Daraganovka, but there were no immediate reports of injuries. The town is just outside Taganrog, a port city on the Sea of Azov about 80 miles from the front lines. Russian officials said a downed Ukrainian missile injured at least nine people in Taganrog on Friday.

Hours earlier, Mr. Putin attended an annual Navy Day parade in St. Petersburg, the northern harbor city where the Russian president has in recent days hosted African leaders for a summit. Mr. Putin toured the naval parade on a speedboat on the Neva River, accompanied by his defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, who had just returned from a rare visit to North Korea.

Several African leaders in town for the summit, including Burkina Faso’s Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, who seized power in a coup last year, also attended the parade.

In a speech, Mr. Putin, as he frequently does, compared the Russian naval forces involved in the invasion of Ukraine with their predecessors who helped defeat the Nazis in World War II.

“In the name of Russia, our seamen are giving all their strength, showing true heroism, fighting with honor, as our great forefathers,” Mr. Putin said.

Ukraine has recently claimed responsibility for a series of bold attacks last year and was accused last week by Moscow of firing missiles into Russia, potentially signaling a more aggressive Ukrainian effort to expand the war.

These attacks come while Ukraine is intensifying its efforts in the south as part of its counteroffensive, using newly trained soldiers and new weapons — provided by the United States and Europe — to push past Russian soldiers who have spent months building a well-fortified defense. The campaign, which has been slow, has also included more consistent drone and missile strikes in Crimea, which is crucial to Russia’s war efforts and which it illegally annexed in 2014, to try to destroy weapons, ammunition and fuel supplies.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a separate statement early Sunday that it had intercepted 25 Ukrainian drones targeting Crimea overnight. The claim could not be independently verified.

At the same time, Ukraine’s Air Force said that Russia had launched four attack drones overnight at the Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions of southern Ukraine. It said in a post on Telegram early Sunday that all of the drones had been intercepted. Those claims also could not be independently verified.

In the north of the country, two people were killed and 20 others were wounded when a Russian missile hit a building on Saturday in Sumy, the City Council said in a statement.

Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed reporting.

Kansas transgender people find Democratic allies in court bid to restore their right to alter IDs

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Officials who work for the Democratic governor in Kansas are challenging a court ruling that has temporarily halted the state from allowing transgender people to change the gender on their driver’s licenses.

The state Department of Revenue says Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican, didn’t have legal authority to file a lawsuit that led to a district judge temporarily stopping transgender people from changing their licenses, at least until Nov. 1. The latest court response by Democrats was dated Friday.

Kobach argues that allowing people to change their gender identity on state IDs — which the state labels as their “sex” — violates a Kansas law that took effect July 1 and rolled back transgender rights. He sued after Gov. Laura Kelly said the changes would continue despite that new law. Kansas for now is among only a few states that don’t allow any such changes, along with Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

The state Department of Revenue oversees driver’s license issues in Kansas through its Division of Vehicles. The department argued in court papers filed Friday that the attorney general needed authorization from the governor, the Legislature or the local district attorney to file a case in state district court. Kobach contends that past court precedents and legal traditions allowed him to sue.

The case is being argued in Shawnee County, home to the state capital of Topeka.

“This is a most serious misrepresentation and without more, requires the immediate dismissal of this case,” attorneys for the Revenue Department argued in their most recent filing.

The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to text and email requests Sunday seeking a response.

District Judge Teresa Watson initially sided with Kobach when she scheduled a Nov. 1 hearing on whether to block changes in driver’s licenses past that date. She also has an Aug. 16 hearing on a request from five transgender Kansas residents to intervene in the case, something Kobach opposes.

The new law rolling back transgender rights defines male and female based on a person’s “reproductive system” at birth, preventing legal recognition of a change in gender identity, and applying the rule in “any” other law or regulation. The Republican-controlled Legislature overrode Kelly’s veto of the measure.

The Department of Revenue initially argued unsuccessfully that it still must follow older and more specific laws regarding driver’s licenses that conflict with the new law.

It’s new arguments also are technical. They rely on a strict reading of the law setting out the attorney general’s power and other laws detailing when agency actions can be reviewed by district courts.

The transgender people seeking to intervene in the lawsuit argue that the anti-trans rights law violates civil liberties protected by the Kansas Constitution, including a right to bodily autonomy.

Kobach also is trying to stop the state from changing transgender people’s Kansas birth certificates in a separate federal court case.

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Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna

Co-Host New Zealand Is Out; Colombia Stuns Germany

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New Zealand had the high of a win in their opening game, but were eliminated on Sunday with a draw against Switzerland.Credit…Lars Baron/Getty Images

The story of New Zealand’s journey in the Women’s World Cup, and of its exit on Sunday night, will be a familiar one to the team and its fans: not enough goals for New Zealand, and too many for everyone else.

For New Zealand, a co-host of the tournament with Australia, the ride had begun on a high. The team had earned its first-ever World Cup victory in the event’s opening match, leading a rugby-mad country to stir, if only momentarily, for women’s soccer. For a few days, even bigger achievements seemed possible.

But the opening victory had been narrow — the Football Ferns, as the team is known, had scored a single goal — and perhaps that was a sign. New Zealand never scores much, and it never scored again at the World Cup, eliminated quietly on Sunday in Dunedin after a 0-0 tie with Switzerland that was the home team’s ninth goalless outing in 12 games this year.

“Obviously we talked and we were proud of ourselves and what we’ve been able to accomplish, but at the end of the day we wanted to get out of this group stage and we just didn’t,” New Zealand midfielder Malia Steinmetz said. “It’s just black and white.”

In Auckland, meanwhile, Norway was raining goals on the Philippines, winning by 6-0 to save what had looked to be a star-crossed campaign. When the whistles blew to end both games, the math was unforgiving for the host nation: Switzerland and Norway were moving on, and New Zealand was out.

With that elimination, New Zealand became the first host ever eliminated in the group stage, a fate that Australia will try not to match in its own must-win game against Canada on Monday. Not even company will ease the sting for the Ferns, though.

Norway, on the other hand, will feel resurrected after a chilly night in Auckland. It had not particularly enjoyed the view from last place over the past week, not when it lost to New Zealand in its opener, not when its star Caroline Graham Hansen publicly challenged her coach to restore her to the lineup and then apologized for her outburst, not when the striker Ada Hegerberg sat out again with an injury.

Norway got on a roll.Credit…Abbie Parr/Associated Press

Faced with the humiliation of going out at the hands of the Philippines, though, something stirred in the Norwegians.

Forward Sophie Roman Haug scored on a one-time volley after only six minutes, then doubled her total with a header after only 17. Graham Hansen made it 3-0 before the half, then sent in the cross that was turned in for a Philippines own goal three minutes after halftime.

That silenced a profoundly pro-Philippines crowd of more than 34,000, and allowed Norway to set aside a week of grumbling and whispers of locker room discontent.

“We felt it was us against the world today and we performed from the very start, delivering when we really had to,” Norway Coach Hege Riise said. “This was the best response we could have given the Norwegian people and ourselves.”

Guro Reiten’s penalty made it five and then Roman Haug added her third, and Norway’s sixth, in injury time and that was that. But by then everyone knew it was over anyway, and the only outcome that mattered was the one in Dunedin, where New Zealand pressed and pressed for the goal that never came, the chance to change a scoreline the Ferns knew absolutely wouldn’t suffice.

When it didn’t arrive, when the whistle blew for full time, the players’ stunned faces told the story of a tournament that started brightly and, for them, is now over far too soon.

— Andrew Das Reporting from Auckland, New Zealand

Israeli Court Ruling May Determine Democracy’s Fate

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When the Israeli Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it would review a new law designed to curb its power, it set up a complicated choice for itself. Will it directly confront the elected branches of government by overturning the law? Or will it instead rule in such a way that sidesteps a constitutional crisis?

Over the last few decades, attempts to weaken the courts around the world have become recurring signals that a democracy is in trouble. Attacks on judicial independence were early steps toward one-party dominance in Russia, Turkey and Venezuela, for example.

But a move to limit the authority of the courts — like the new law adopted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition barring judges from using the longstanding legal principle of “reasonableness” to overrule government decisions — does not make democratic collapse inevitable. It’s more like a flashing red light, and how the judiciary responds can begin to decide how much damage is done.

“What helps determine whether courts come back from the brink?” said Rosalind Dixon, a law professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “The mix of skills and strategic behavior of the court, and the degree of support it has from civil society and institutions and elites.”

“If a court stands alone,” she added, “it’s very hard to see how the court prevails.”

And once judicial independence takes a major hit, the slide toward autocracy can come quickly, said Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociologist at Princeton.

Hungary became a full-fledged democracy after the Soviet Union loosened its grip on Eastern Europe in 1989, with the new Hungarian Constitutional Court serving as the primary check on the nation’s single house of Parliament and prime minister.

But in 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orban won election with a supermajority in Parliament, which his governing party then used to amend the Constitution and curtail the high court’s power to review legislation. The government also expanded the number of judges and put the new appointments in the hands of Parliament.

A slim majority on the court tried to hold the line, for example, by striking down a voter registration law as an unnecessary barrier to participating in elections. But Mr. Orban and his party amended the Constitution again to nullify several court decisions, going on to take control of the national media council, the election commission and other key institutions.

“By the time Orban ran for re-election in 2014, it was over,” Professor Scheppele said. “He captured everything.”

It was an example of rapid change to the judicial system that has fueled fears in Israel, where the courts also serve as one of the only formal checks on the power of a Parliament with a single house, and where Mr. Netanyahu and his allies have also proposed bills to further restrict judicial review and give the government greater control over the appointment of judges. And unlike Hungary, Israel does not have a constitution. Mr. Netanyahu needs only a simple majority to change the country’s Basic Laws, which set national standards.

Democratic deterioration unfolded more slowly after the courts came under attack in other countries, sometimes with changes that can seem unexceptional on the surface.

In Poland, for example, after the right-wing Law and Justice Party won the presidency and parliamentary majorities in 2015, it mandated the retirement of lower-court judges over the age of 65. The government also took control of the independent body that makes judicial appointments and created a new disciplinary chamber that can punish judges and has targeted more than a thousand of them.

The Polish Constitutional Tribunal did not invalidate these changes; the government had moved early on to bring it to heel. But other judges publicly denounced the moves and found support from a wide section of civil society and Polish opposition parties, which staged mass street protests and appealed to the European Union — Poland became a member in 2004 — for help.

In June, the European Court of Justice ruled that Poland had infringed on E.U. law by diminishing the independence and impartiality of the judiciary. Protests against the government have continued, and the opposition has a shot at winning elections this fall.

“I know people want to know, ‘Are we there yet?’” Professor Scheppele said of Poland’s democratic decline. “But it’s not clear.”

In India, too, the effort of a right-wing government to dominate the judiciary is still playing out.

The selection of new members of the Supreme Court of India has been in the hands of fellow judges since the 1990s. But in 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party pushed through a constitutional amendment to give the government greater say over judicial appointments.

Later that year, asked to review an attempt to limit its own power, just as the Israeli Supreme Court is being asked to do now, the Indian Supreme Court struck down the amendment.

Since then, though, Mr. Modi’s government has continued to chip away at judicial independence, tilting the court in its favor by refusing to accept or act on some appointments while fast-tracking those it favors, Nandini Sundar, a sociologist at the University of Delhi, has argued in a new article.

While continuing to make some progressive decisions in favor of gender and sexual equality, for example, the court has upheld the convictions of critics of the government, decided other key cases to the benefit of Mr. Modi and his party, and even refused to hear “challenges to laws that rewrite fundamental principles of the constitution,” Professor Sundar writes.

The upshot is that Mr. Modi and his government can “push some of the blame for what they’ve done to the courts,” Ms. Sundar said in an interview. “For example, if you demolish a Muslim mosque to build a Hindu temple, you can say the court gave its blessing.”

But Mr. Modi’s control over the courts is incomplete, she added. “We’ll know in the next election whether the country has rescued itself.”

In Brazil, judicial independence came under threat but survived after making it to the other side of a crucial election.

The right-wing former president, Jair Bolsonaro, went after the Federal Supreme Court after it ruled against him on several issues, and in August 2021, he asked the Senate to impeach one of the justices, Alexandre de Moraes. A month later, in a fiery speech to more than 100,000 demonstrators, Mr. Bolsonaro said he would not abide by Mr. de Moraes’s rulings. A mob gathered at the court, threatening to break in.

The court’s response at first was an approach that Yaniv Roznai, an Israeli law professor at Reichman University, calls “business as usual,” meaning neither directly confronting the government nor acceding to its demands.

Then in the run-up to Brazil’s 2022 election, Mr. de Moraes, who was also the country’s elections chief, ordered the removal of thousands of social media posts to stop the spread of misinformation and took other extraordinary steps to parry antidemocratic attacks by Mr. Bolsonaro, whom voters then ousted.

Some hailed Mr. de Moraes as the man who saved Brazil’s young democracy. But others argued he went too far, going beyond business as usual and taking too much power.

The Israeli Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the challenges to the law limiting its power in September. Professor Dixon said it should “carefully think through any frontal confrontation” with the government.

“In Israel, there is massive support from civil society for the court right now,” she said. “If the court plays nice a bit, maybe the anger of the right dissipates, and the court in due time works around this particular law. You try to live to see another day, so to speak.”

In October, though, two liberal judges are scheduled to retire from the 15-member court. If the government goes ahead with its plans to exert more control over judicial appointments, as well as to strip the court of the power to hear some cases, Professor Dixon argued, the calculation changes.

“Then,” she said, “the only options for the court will be confrontation or acquiescence.”

Flipping a Switch and Making Cancers Self-Destruct

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Within every cancer are molecules that spur deadly, uncontrollable growth. What if scientists could hook those molecules to others that make cells self-destruct? Could the very drivers of a cancer’s survival instead activate the program for its destruction?

That idea came as an epiphany to Dr. Gerald Crabtree, a developmental biologist at Stanford, some years ago during a walk through the redwoods near his home in the Santa Cruz mountains.

“I ran home,” he said, excited by the idea and planning ways to make it work.

Now, in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, Dr. Crabtree, a founder of Shenandoah Therapeutics, which is developing cancer drugs, along with Nathanael S. Gray, a professor of chemical and system biology at Stanford, and their colleagues report that they have done what he imagined on that walk. While the concept is a long way from a drug that could be given to cancer patients, it could be a target for drug developers in the future.

“It’s very cool,” said Jason Gestwicki, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. “It turns something the cancer cell needs to stay alive into something that kills it, like changing your vitamin into a poison.”

“This is a potentially new way to turn cancer against itself,” said Dr. Louis Staudt, director of the Center for Cancer Genomics at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Staudt wrote an editorial to accompany Dr. Crabtree’s paper.

Once the treatment is further developed, he added, “I would love to try it in a clinical trial with our patients who have exhausted all other options.”

In laboratory experiments with cells from a blood cancer, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, the researchers designed and built molecules that hooked together two proteins: BCL6, a mutated protein that the cancer relies on to aggressively grow and survive, and a normal cell protein that switches on any genes it gets near.

The new construction, a dumbbell shaped molecule, is unlike anything seen in nature. BCL6, at one end of the dumbbell, guides the molecule toward cell-death genes that are part of every cell’s DNA and are used to get rid of cells that are no longer needed. But when a person has diffuse large B cell lymphoma, BCL6 has turned off those cell-death genes, making the cells essentially immortal.

When the dumbbell, guided by BCL6, gets near the cell-death genes, the normal protein on the end of the dumbbell arms those death genes. Unlike other processes in the cell that can be reversed, turning on cell-death genes is irreversible.

The new approach could be an improvement over the difficult task of using drugs to block all BCL6 molecules. With the dumbbell-shaped molecules, it is sufficient to rewire just a portion of BCL6 molecules in order to kill cells.

The concept could potentially work for half of all cancers, which have known mutations that result in proteins that drive growth, Dr. Crabtree said. And because the treatment relies on the mutated proteins produced by the cancer cells, it could be extremely specific, sparing healthy cells.

Dr. Crabtree explained the two areas of discovery that made the work possible. One is the discovery of “driver genes” — several hundred genes that, when mutated, drive the spread of cancer.

The second is the discovery of death pathways in cells. Those pathways, Dr. Crabtree said, “are used to eliminate cells that have gone rogue for one reason or other” — 60 billion cells in each individual every day.

The quest was to make the pathways driving cancer cell growth communicate with silenced pathways that drive cell death, something they would not normally do.

When the hybrid molecule drifted to the cells’ DNA, it not only turned on cell-death genes but also did more. BCL6 guided the hybrid to other genes that the cancer had silenced. The hybrid turned those genes on again, creating internal chaos in the cell.

“The cell has never experienced this,” Dr. Staudt said.

“BCL6 is the organizing principle of these cancer cells,” he explained. When its function is totally disrupted, “the cell has lost its identity and says, ‘something very wrong is happening here. I’d better die.’”

But the main effect of the experimental treatment was to activate the cell-death genes, Dr. Crabtree said. “That is the therapeutic effect,” he said.

The group tested its hybrid molecule in mice, where it seemed safe. But, Dr. Staudt noted, “humans are a lot different than mice.”

The work is “exciting,” said Stuart L. Schreiber, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard and a previous collaborator with Dr. Crabtree. But he offered words of caution.

What Dr. Crabtree created “is not a drug — it still has a long way to go,” he said.

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