For decades, one industry has sustained the small, remote Colombian village of Caño Cabra: cocaine.

Those who live in this community in the central part of the country rise early nearly every morning to pick coca leaf, scraping brittle branches, sometimes until their hands bleed. Later, they mix the leaves with gasoline and other chemicals to make chalky white bricks of coca paste.

But two years ago, the villagers said, something alarming happened: The drug traffickers who buy the coca paste and turn it into cocaine stopped showing up. Suddenly, people who were already poor had no income. Food became scarce. An exodus to other parts of Colombia in search of jobs followed. The town of 200 people shrunk to 40.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

They hide under residential neighborhoods, storing their weapons in miles of tunnels and in houses, mosques, sofas — even a child’s bedroom — blurring the boundary between civilians and combatants.

They emerge from hiding in plainclothes, sometimes wearing sandals or tracksuits before firing on Israeli troops, attaching mines to their vehicles, or firing rockets from launchers in civilian areas.

They rig abandoned homes with explosives and tripwires, sometimes luring Israeli soldiers to enter the booby-trapped buildings by scattering signs of a Hamas presence.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

Former Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan and his wife were acquitted on Saturday in a case that accused them of unlawful marriage, the latest in a string of legal victories for the embattled leader ousted from power two years ago.

However, he is unlikely to be immediately released from prison, where he has been held for nearly a year, as the authorities have recently suggested that he will face new charges. Earlier in the week, his prospects for bail dimmed in a case over accusations that he had incited violent riots and that his supporters had ransacked several military installations last May.

Just days before the Feb. 8 parliamentary elections, Mr. Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were convicted in back-to-back cases. In the one known locally as the illegal marriage case, Mr. Khan and Ms. Bibi each received a sentence of seven years in prison. A court found them guilty of having violated Islamic law by not adhering to the required waiting period between Ms. Bibi’s divorce and her marriage to Mr. Khan.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

During Ramadan, as her family fasted and prayed, Lina Boussaha, a professional soccer player, eagerly tore open a package in her bedroom in France. Inside were two head scarves she had ordered, labeled Nike, and marketed as a symbol of empowerment for Muslim women in sports.

Ms. Boussaha, 25, turned pro when she was 17. Her parents are Algerian, she grew up in one of Paris’s poorest suburbs, and until that Ramadan, in 2022, had never worn a hijab outside prayers. She usually wore her heavy curls in a high ponytail.

But she had recently decided she wanted to wear a hijab regularly, even during games. And that decision put her on a journey that eventually took her from France to start her career anew in the Middle East.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

The ceremony was on the grounds of the exclusive Bangalore Club, an oasis in one of India’s largest cities. The bride-to-be, Sreya Muthukumar, was ensconced on the terrace, wreathed in smiles, greeting and chatting with her guests. Two women were attending to her, each wielding a thin plastic cone filled with henna paste.

For seven hours last Thursday, the artists drew freehand, etching patterns, motifs and mandalas on Ms. Muthukumar’s limbs. When they were done, dark green lines stretched from the tips of her fingers to above her elbows. Four other artists catered to the palms of guests. Once the henna paste, known as mehndi, dried, it was washed or scraped off to reveal the bright orange stain that has long been associated with Indian weddings — no matter how modest or lavish.

“After all those hours, when, in the end, the bride looks at her hands and says ‘I love it,’ that’s the high point for me,” said Sunitha Parihar, who adorned Ms. Muthukumar’s arms. “We mehndi artists are so important to make the bride look and feel beautiful on her big day.”

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.