After months of waiting, Fida Ghanem was granted a permit by Israel and Egypt to leave Gaza for urgent lymphoma treatment in the spring. But the next morning, Israeli forces seized the only border crossing from Gaza to Egypt, in Rafah, as part of a military offensive against Hamas in the area.

Ms. Ghanem, 42, died one month later in early June. The border was still shut.

“She should have been allowed to leave as soon as they found the cancer,” said her husband, Maher Ghanem. “But it was delay after delay.”

President Vladimir V. Putin’s strategy for defeating Ukraine can be summed up in one revealing moment in his February interview with the former television host Tucker Carlson. Addressing the possibility of heightened U.S. involvement in Ukraine, the Russian leader asked Americans: “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

After several tumultuous weeks in American politics, Mr. Putin appears closer than ever to getting the answer he seeks.

President Biden, Ukraine’s most important ally, is engulfed in the biggest political crisis of his tenure, with calls from fellow Democrats to withdraw from the presidential race. Former President Donald J. Trump, favored in the polls, has picked as his running mate one of the loudest critics of American aid to Kyiv.

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A court in Russia was expected to deliver a verdict on Friday in the espionage case of Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, after prosecutors reportedly asked the court to sentence him to nearly 20 years in a penal colony.

The proceedings were recently moved up by more than three weeks, and although Mr. Gershkovich is expected to be convicted, a verdict would open the way for a prisoner swap between the United States and Russia.

On Wednesday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, said that the two countries were holding talks on a possible swap involving Mr. Gershkovich, who was arrested almost 16 months ago.

Russian officials have said that discreet talks were being conducted with the United States about Mr. Gershkovich, but that any prisoner swap would come only after a verdict was handed down.

The court in Yekaterinburg, where Mr. Gershkovich was initially detained while on a reporting assignment, said in a statement that it had concluded hearing evidence, including testimony from witnesses and a statement from Mr. Gershkovich, who was also interrogated as a witness.

Judge Andrei N. Mineev, who is hearing the case, was formulating his verdict, the court said, and an announcement was expected in the afternoon. The Russian state news agency Tass reported Mr. Gershkovich had pleaded not guilty, and that prosecutors were seeking an 18-year sentence in a high-security prison.

Mr. Gershkovich, his employer, and the American government have repeatedly denied the espionage charges against him, saying that he was accredited to work as a foreign correspondent in Russia and was engaged in journalism, not spying. They have called the charges politically motivated.

Russian prosecutors said in their indictment that Mr. Gershkovich used “painstaking conspiratorial methods” to obtain “secret information” about a major Russian weapons factory near Yekaterinburg.

The release of the indictment last month was the first time the Russian state had revealed details about the case against Mr. Gershkovich, but they did not provide any evidence to back up the charge.

The proceedings on Friday, when both sides delivered their final arguments, were held behind closed doors. Journalists who came to the regional court building in Yekaterinburg, about 900 miles east of Moscow, were not allowed to see him in the courtroom even before the hearing started.

The case against Mr. Gershkovich picked up speed Tuesday, when it was announced that the second hearing in his case had been moved ahead by more than three weeks. The first hearing in Mr. Gershkovich’s case took place on June 26.

On Thursday, during the second hearing, the court wrapped up its investigation of the evidence and hearing witness testimony.

Espionage cases in Russia usually take about four months but can take up to a year, according to lawyers who have worked on such cases. Vladimir A. Zherebenkov, a Russian lawyer who has worked on a similar espionage case, described proceedings in Mr. Gershkovich’s case as “fast.”

There was no comment from Mr. Gershkovich’s lawyers. His case is classified, meaning the lawyers are prohibited by law from speaking publicly about the case, under penalty of imprisonment.

Mr. Gershkovich is one of several American citizens who have been detained in Russia in recent years, and his case has raised fears that the Kremlin is seeking to use American citizens as bargaining chips to be exchanged for Russians held in the West.

On Thursday, a court in Moscow sentenced Michael Travis Leake, an American rock musician who had been living in Russia, to 13 years in a high-security penal colony after prosecutors accused him of organizing a drug trafficking ring.

Mr. Leake’s plea has not been made public. The court also sentenced Veronika Grabanchuk, whom it identified as his accomplice, to eight years in a penal colony.

Other Americans held in Russia include Paul Whelan, a Marine veteran; Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; and Marc Fogel, a teacher at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, who in 2022 was sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony for drug smuggling.

In June, a Russian court sentenced Yuri Malev, who holds both American and Russian citizenship, to three and a half years in a penal colony after he criticized Russia, its leadership and its war in Ukraine on social media.

After more than 100 years in the rainforest, Varî Vãti Marubo walks with a stick and, as she always has, barefoot.

So when her Indigenous tribe, the Marubo, gathered for meetings this year in a village that would require a 13-mile hike across streams, fallen logs and dense forest to reach, everyone knew it would be difficult for her to attend.

But, as she has for a century, Varî Vãti dealt with the elements. She caught a ride on the only transportation available: her son’s back.

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They may have chosen a contemplative life of prayer, detached from world affairs, but last month a small community of Benedictine monks threw a very big bash for the opening of their new monastery on a hill overlooking the central Italian town of Norcia, where St. Benedict was born.

After a Mass and a seated dinner for 1,000 — about half of them Norcia residents — the monks officially settled in, eight years after a devastating earthquake upended a sizable part of Norcia and destroyed their previous space.

At the festivities, they served “Nursia,” their craft beer whose sales supported the restoration of the 16th-century capuchin monastery that the community had bought after returning to Norcia 25 years ago, following a two-century hiatus. The celebration was also a moment of hope for an area struggling to revive itself after the earthquake compounded years of depopulation.

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