Jeison Gabriel España left home on July 28 to vote for the first — and last — time in his brief life.

A day after casting his ballot in a presidential election that had united millions of Venezuelans in a call for change, Mr. España, 18, was shot and killed in the streets.

The country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, had claimed victory, despite overwhelming evidence that the opposition candidate had won. Then he sent security forces to crush dissent.

“Why did they kill my child?” Mr. España’s aunt, who raised him, cried at his funeral.

Now, Venezuela is in mourning, not just for the roughly 24 people dead amid violent demonstrations but also for the last shreds of a long-tattered democracy. Whatever small spaces still existed for resistance in the country are vanishing by the day, if not the hour, as an angry Mr. Maduro pummels an electorate that tried to vote him out.

For years, many Venezuelan families splintered by migration believed that they would eventually unite in an improved, if perhaps not wholly democratic, Venezuela. Following the election, many are burying that dream.

“I will never return to Venezuela,” said one young woman, a data scientist living in Chile, asking that her name not be published because her mother and other relatives remain in her home country. “Venezuela has become my worst nightmare.”

In Caracas, the capital, the police are setting up checkpoints to search phones for any signs of dissent. Black X marks are appearing on the homes of supposed opposition voters. Security forces are rounding up everyday citizens over the smallest indications of protest.

Once it was mostly activists who risked arrest. But more than 1,400 people have been detained in recent weeks, according to a watchdog group, Penal Forum. Many are everyday citizens, and more than 100 are under 18. The authorities are canceling passports of human rights activists and others, trapping them in the country. Journalists are fleeing amid tips that the intelligence police are after them.

On Saturday, members of the National Guard dragged away a priest in the state of Zulia as his congregation watched.

“Christ, prince of peace,” they sang, falling to their knees as he disappeared from sight.

In the past, the government generally avoided arresting church figures.

The country’s opposition leaders, Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, have tried to maintain a message of optimism. While their public appearances have been rare since the vote, they have not been arrested.

On Saturday, as part of a global rally meant to support their movement, hundreds gathered in Caracas, despite the government’s deployment of thousands of security forces throughout the city.

“We are not afraid!” opposition supporters shouted, many waving photocopies of the “actas,” or tally sheets, printed at voting machines on July 28.

Ms. Machado was there, delivering a speech from the roof of a truck. But Mr. González did not make an appearance. Attending such rallies carries a high risk of detention — for leaders and supporters — and it’s unclear how long these events can last.

For the most part, censorship reigns.

“Freedom!” two people dared to shout at the funeral procession for Olinger Montaño, a 24-year-old barber who died the same day as Mr. España.

Other mourners quickly hushed them. At the cemetery in Caracas, where Mr. Montaño’s mother sobbed over his coffin, no one called for justice or ventured to raise the tricolor national flag.

“Today it was him,” said one friend, “and now it could be us.”

The New York Times attended the funerals and reviewed the death certificates of five young men killed in protests in the days after the election, and interviewed the families of several others. For their protection, The Times is withholding the names of many people who spoke for this article.

Mr. Maduro has publicly doubted the veracity of these deaths. Tarek William Saab, the chief prosecutor and a political ally of the president, has said that the dead are not victims, but actors.

“They fall on the floor, they pour ketchup on the person,” he said at a recent news conference, asserting that the government would find and detain people who had “faked” their deaths.

Mr. España, the 18-year-old, knew no government other than that of the socialist movement that took power in 1999.

His parents died when he was a boy, and his aunt took him in. They lived in a poor part of Caracas and lacked much. But he did not want to migrate, as millions of other Venezuelans had done. He wanted to vote.

A day after casting his ballot, Mr. España went with neighbors to protest for the first time in his life, his aunt said. But Mr. Maduro had already sent security forces and allied gangs, called colectivos, into the streets. That evening, Mr. España’s aunt received a call: Her boy was dead.

A single gunshot to the chest, reads his death certificate. It is unclear who killed him.

The July 28 election pitted Mr. Maduro, in power since 2013, against Mr. González, a previously little-known former diplomat who had the backing of Ms. Machado, a popular opposition leader.

Mr. Maduro has long held elections to add the appearance of legitimacy to his authoritarian government, often manipulating the system in his favor.

As this year’s vote approached, few believed that Mr. Maduro would cede power, even if he lost. The United States has offered a $15 million reward for information leading to his capture, and the International Criminal Court is investigating him for crimes against humanity. Both make him vulnerable if he leaves office.

Still, the overwhelming support for the González-Machado movement lit a flame in many who held out for a miracle. Maybe Mr. Maduro would concede and flee to a friendly nation?

Then, after polls closed, Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s legislature and a powerful Maduro ally, appeared on television. “We can’t tell you the results,” he said, grinning widely, “but we can show you our faces.”

The government claims that Mr. Maduro won 52 percent of the vote but has not shared evidence to back this up. The opposition, which has collected printed tallies from more than 80 percent of ballot boxes and posted them online, says Mr. González won with 67 percent of the vote.

Mr. Maduro’s assertion of victory has been the subject of widespread condemnation; even normally conservative political analysts have called the election an outright steal.

The United States has said it considers Mr. González the victor. The European Union and Colombia and Brazil, Venezuela’s neighbors, have declined to recognize Mr. Maduro as the winner.

A United Nations report published Tuesday found the country’s electoral body “did not comply with the basic measures of transparency and integrity that are essential for the conduct of credible elections.”

The state is unlikely to hold anyone accountable for those killed during demonstrations; similar crimes in past protests have gone unpunished.

Dorián Rondón, 22, from Caracas, left his home to protest on July 29 with two cousins and his younger brother. Around 10 p.m., amid tear gas and gunshots, the group lost sight of Mr. Rondón. His brother searched for him much of the night.

Finally, at noon the next day, a photo of Mr. Rondón’s body lying in some bushes, clinging to his backpack, began to circulate in his community’s text messages.

Mr. Rondón’s death certificate said he died from a gunshot that pierced his lung.

At his funeral, his mother said she was so angry she could barely cry. Her hope now, she said, is to escape Venezuela with her younger son.

Mr. Maduro’s new term does not begin until January, and the opposition, the United States and the governments of Colombia and Brazil are using the time to try to negotiate with Mr. Maduro.

Their goals include to convince him to leave office, enter a power-sharing deal with the opposition or, at the very least, agree to more democratic conditions for local and legislative elections next year.

But officials from all three countries have expressed skepticism that negotiations will lead to change.

One recent day far from Caracas, on Venezuela’s western edge, a group of classmates held the body of Isaías Fuenmayor aloft, encased in a junior-size coffin.

At age 15, Isaías is one of the youngest victims of the postelection unrest, not even old enough to vote.

His mother cried in pain as they marched to the cemetery. She said her son had not participated in a demonstration. Rather, he had crossed paths with protesters after leaving a rehearsal for a birthday party when he was killed, she said. His death certificate says he was shot in the neck.

Isaías’ friends and neighbors made three signs to accompany the funeral.

The first read: “They stole Isaías’ dreams.”

The second read: “Isaías, we will always remember you.”

And the third dared to call for action: “Justice for Isaías.”

In the Russian city of Kursk, several dozen miles from the heart of the fighting, Ukraine’s surprise thrust into Russia is not visible even as smoke on the horizon. But the scars of its impact are impossible to miss.

More than 130,000 people, according to the Russian authorities, have fled border areas or been evacuated from them since Ukrainian forces began their incursion on Aug. 6. Many have found themselves in this regional capital, a city of about a half-million.

During a recent visit, people awaited in long lines for help with accommodation and other basic necessities like blankets. They jostled for position and sometimes shoved, but they did not move when sirens wailed repeatedly, warning of a potential drone or missile attack.

Many walls bore posters seeking word of loved ones who lived in the path of the Ukrainian incursion. Some had been placed by Lyubov Prilutskaya, 36, a Kursk resident who has lost contact with her parents in Sudzha, a town six miles from the border that Ukraine now says it fully controls.

“They didn’t want to leave,” she said. “And then it was too late.”

Others had escaped, Ms. Prilutskaya said, because they “left the territory themselves,” before any official warning or help with evacuation. She learned of the danger looming for her parents only when one of their neighbors called, asking whether she knew of a place to stay in Kursk.

“Why didn’t the top react?” she asked. “Why didn’t they tell people?”

Many of those who fled the border areas spoke of shock and confusion.

Alesya Torba, 41, from Kasachya Loknya, a village near Sudzha, said that on Aug. 5, “Such shelling began that it was no longer possible to stay.”

Her 18-year-old daughter, Albina, had given birth the day before, she said — to a girl, Sonya — after being taken to Kursk in an ambulance. Ms. Torba herself left the day the incursion began; she saw fires and wrecked cars on the road out.

Her grandmother, uncle and aunt were still in the village, and out of contact, along with her dogs, cats and chickens.

“Probably there will be nothing to return to,” she said.

Lyudmila Brakhmova, 66, was evacuated from Sudzha by the army on Aug. 7, along with her son, Nikolai, 43, a disabled veteran of the second Chechen war. “It’s simply unbearable,” she said, adding of the destruction Ukrainian forces had wrought in the town, “I don’t understand why there’s so much hatred.”

“I have no hatred for any nation and everyone is equal,” she said. “We all want to live.”

Individuals and organizations in Kursk have scrambled to help with the panicked influx.

Natalia Chulikova, the director of House of Good Deeds, a local charitable group, said 15,000 families had passed through its doors. “We need food, we really need it,” she said. “And everyone asks for pillows,” she added. “They fled from home without anything.”

Ivan Kruitikovo, who said he had served for four months with a Russian private military force near Kherson in southern Ukraine, has turned his boxing club in Kursk into a temporary shelter.

He has been expecting something like this attack for more than a year, he said, adding: “A lot of people still do not understand the overall seriousness of what is happening.”

“Many people ignore the situation around them and think it will pass them by,” he said. “But we are already experiencing it first hand.”

With all the cars that have come in from the border areas, the traffic is denser in Kursk now, and there seemed to be anger in the air.

Some was directed toward the Defense Ministry and the local authorities, who were accused of failing to prevent the incursion or to respond to it more quickly. “Groups of people are fighting for power and this greatly interferes with work,” Ms. Prilutskaya said.

Some was directed toward the state-controlled media, which has acknowledged the border fighting but shown relatively little of what has happened. “What do we read and what do they show on TV?” Ms. Torba said. “There are no similarities at all.”

And much was directed toward the Ukrainians. “There should be no peace negotiations,” said a woman from Ryisky District, about two miles from the border, who for fear of reprisals would give only her first name, Tatyana. “Now we must go to Kyiv,” she added of Russian forces.

“Imagine how many people there will be who lost everything,” said Mr. Kruitikovo, the former soldier, thinking over the prospects for the war. “And the enemy also needs to be respected — how many left without a father, without a brother? It will be very difficult to wash away this hate.”

As for himself, he said, because of the incursion he would probably sign another military contract.

While their curly-haired rescue dog napped on the floor, an Italian couple logged on to a late-night video call with their American surrogate, sunbathing in her garden in Oregon. The fathers-to-be cooed as she told them she was playing fairy tales close to her belly that they had recorded for their future daughter. “And she is kicking!” she said.

But the men, both civil servants, said they had not dared to share their excitement with almost anyone around them. They did not talk about the pregnancy with many friends, colleagues or neighbors or post about it on social media. They asked to remain anonymous for this article.

They have reason for caution. Surrogacy is already illegal if conducted in Italy. But the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wants to expand the prohibition. It has promoted a bill that would also punish Italians who make use of surrogacy even in places abroad where it is legal, like in parts of the United States. Those Italians who do could face up to two years in prison and be fined the equivalent of about a million dollars.

Italy’s lower chamber of Parliament approved the bill last summer, and the Senate’s justice committee greenlighted it last month. The Senate is expected to vote on it as soon as the fall.

On the international stage, Ms. Meloni has presented herself as a pragmatic partner for mainstream European leaders and aligned herself with Western democracies on the issues that matter to them, like support of Ukraine.

But at home, Ms. Meloni has asserted her conservative credentials on cultural issues such as abortion, gender, gay rights and surrogacy.

“No one can convince me that it is an act of freedom to rent one’s womb,” she said in the spring at an event in Rome. “No one can convince me that it is an act of love to consider children as an over-the-counter product in a supermarket.”

“Uterus renting is a shameful, inhuman practice,” she said. “It will become a universal crime.”

While Ms. Meloni’s stance may reflect her own deeply held convictions, analysts say such rhetoric also serves to please the right-wing base of her Brothers of Italy party. Polls show that her party’s voters are disproportionately more opposed to surrogacy and adoption by gay couples than the general population is.

“On the economy and foreign policy, she took completely mainstream positions,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political scientist at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. “And she compensates her mainstream positions with the fact that she still uses an old-right rhetoric on things that don’t matter to define her international profile.”

Issues like surrogacy and same-sex parenthood “still define her as a right-wing person sensitive to traditional values,” Mr. D’Alimonte said. “And she exploits this when she can.”

Many of those positions — for instance, against gay parenthood and favoring abortion prevention rather than access — place Ms. Meloni in much the same ranks as other social conservatives and the Roman Catholic Church.

But her Italian critics say that by pressing for further restrictions on gay families in a country that already ranks near last in Europe when it comes to such civil liberties, Ms. Meloni has taken a particularly hard line.

Her moves on the cultural front have often been subtle, like her tinkering with Italy’s abortion law. When it comes to surrogacy, many feminists also oppose it, and other European countries also outlaw it, though it is allowed in some, like Britain or Greece, under certain conditions.

But analysts and opponents say Italy’s proposed new law is especially perplexing because it is tailored to penalize a relatively small number of Italians and is so far-reaching that some experts are skeptical it could withstand legal challenges.

“It’s pure propaganda,” said Susanna Lollini, a lawyer for L.G.B.T.Q. families, “but it’s spreading absolute panic.”

Most Italian couples who use surrogacy are believed to be heterosexual, and they could also be affected by the proposed new law. But because same-sex couples need a third party to have children, many gay Italians feel that the change in the law would leave them vulnerable to special scrutiny. Also, adoption is allowed only for heterosexual couples, leaving gay Italians with few options.

“I can’t tell I am about to become a father,” one of the future fathers said. The other added, “We can’t tell our story, because my government is persecuting me and my family.”

Ms. Meloni’s lawmakers have not hidden whom the law is targeting. Carolina Varchi, who presented the anti-surrogacy bill, wrote on Facebook in June that with the new law, her party was working against L.G.B.T. “ideology.”

Even before Ms. Meloni took office at the end of 2022, Italy, home to the Vatican, was one of the few European Union countries not to recognize same-sex marriage, and the couples interviewed for this article were joined by civil union or unmarried.

Still, L.G.B.T.Q. activists say, while they had to challenge previous governments to advance their rights, now they are playing defense.

In another step aimed at same-sex couples, Ms. Meloni’s government this spring appealed a court decision that allowed parents to be identified as “parent” on their children’s IDs, instead of as “mother” and “father.”

“I think it would be wrong to prevent by law a child from having a father and a mother,” Ms. Meloni said on Italian television in July.

Members of Italy’s L.G.B.T.Q. community are especially concerned by what they consider to be a tone by the government that singles them out.

“No member of the L.G.B.T.Q. community could say that this government has a moderate attitude,” said Emanuela Bruno, a lesbian mother, who is trying to prevent Italian authorities from removing her name from her twin children’s birth certificates.

Ms. Meloni’s government has sought to vigorously enforce a court decision that had barred a mayor from registering children born through surrogacy abroad as having two fathers. Cities that used to issue such certificates, like Milan, stopped doing so.

The government’s directive has had the ripple effect of encouraging Italian prosecutors in several cities to also revise the birth certificates of children born to lesbian couples.

In the northern city of Padua, prosecutors are now trying to remove at least 38 mothers from the birth certificates of their children.

Among the mothers is Brona Kelly, an Irish teacher who has a child with her Italian wife, Alice Bruni.

Ms. Bruni, who is the child’s biological mother, is undergoing treatment for breast cancer, and she worries that if Ms. Kelly were to lose her recognition in court, their 1-year-old son would become an orphan in the event of her death.

Like other gay parents, Ms. Bruni is considering leaving the country, but for now she has to stay put because of her cancer treatment.

When her case went to court, Ms. Bruni said, she listed to the judges what she considered the serious problems facing the world: wars, violence, abuse.

“And we are here for what?” she asked. “Because I have a child with the woman I love?”

Their windows broken and roofs smashed, the abandoned homes in an otherwise bucolic valley carpeted with cornfields and orchards near Serbia’s border with Bosnia look like the wreckage of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

But the houses are actually the casualties of a current struggle freighted with geopolitics: where and how Europe can get the materials it needs to make electric car batteries and break its dependence on sources like China.

The houses, in the Jadar Valley in the west of Serbia, were bought up years ago by the minerals behemoth Rio Tinto, which planned to tear them down and start mining and processing lithium, a crucial element for electric car batteries. Its plans stalled by vociferous opposition, the company left the properties to crumble.

The project has been supported by the United States and the European Union, which is in desperate need of lithium to meet its climate goals. But it has generated a wave of public fury in Serbia, where fears that the mine will poison the air and water have set off huge street protests against President Aleksandar Vucic.

Europe has plenty of lithium and more than 20 mining projects for the mineral at various stages of development. But none have started producing battery-grade lithium. The giant project in Serbia was aimed at filling that hole.

“There is no green transition in Europe without this lithium,” said Chad Blewitt, the head of Rio Tinto’s Serbian operations, adding that the company planned to invest more than $2.55 billion in the project.

The Serbian government gave preliminary approval in 2019, but, worried about losing votes during protests against Rio Tinto before a 2022 election, canceled it.

Under pressure from the European Union, which Serbia aspires to join, the government changed its mind in July, allowing Rio Tinto to revive the project. The British-Australian multinational says it has already invested nearly $600 million to buy land, dig 500 exploratory holes, commission studies and make donations to the local soccer club and other entities.

Serbia’s mining minister, Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic, said mining probably would not start for another two years, but once it did, lithium from the Jadar Valley would allow Serbia to manufacture batteries and electric cars, providing about 20,000 jobs.

A report by The Hague Center for Strategic Studies estimates that if it is to reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, Europe will need 60 times more lithium by that year than what it imported in 2020 from China and elsewhere.

Michael Schmidt, a lithium expert at Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, said Europe might be able to reach its targets without supplies from Serbia. But, he said, “the Serbian project is one of the largest, and that is why it is so significant.” He added, “We need each and every project to reach targets.”

The success of the projects ultimately depends on the price for lithium on the global market and whether companies like Rio Tinto can recoup their investments. The price has collapsed over the past 18 months as Chinese demand has slackened and its output soared.

The proposed mine in Serbia has not only provoked fury among farmers, environmental activists and ordinary citizens, it also has become a proxy battleground in the West’s efforts to extract the country from the orbits of Russia, its traditional ally, and China.

Geoffrey R. Pyatt, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for energy resources, this past week cheered the Serbian lithium project on social media as “an opportunity to contribute to the green transition at home & abroad.”

For those who view Serbia as a partner for the United States and Europe rather than a Moscow-aligned and authoritarian regional bully, Mr. Vucic’s support for Rio Tinto, along with his assent to Serbian-made weapons being sold covertly to Ukraine, is evidence he was serious about disengaging from Russia.

Russia has strong support among hard-line Serb nationalists, and some diplomats and analysts say Moscow has been stirring the unrest over the mine. Mr. Vucic, however, has said Moscow told him that the West is orchestrating the protests because it wants to topple him.

“Unfortunately, it has become a political fight, a big political battle,” said the mining minister, Ms. Djedovic Handanovic.

Among those taking part in recent nationwide demonstrations against Rio Tinto have been leaders of People’s Patrol, an ultranationalist group aligned with Moscow. Social media accounts known for spreading Russian disinformation have been active in promoting horror stories about the planned lithium mine.

But leftists and middle-of-the-road pro-Europeans have also joined the protests, chanting opposition to a project that has become a lightning rod for diverse grievances against the government.

“He sold out Kosovo but is not going to take away our clean water,” read a sign denouncing Mr. Vucic that was held by Angela Rojovic, 25, at a recent protest in Belgrade, the capital. She said the president had not done enough to defend the interests of Serbs living in mainly ethnic Albanian Kosovo.

And she said Mr. Vucic was sacrificing Serbia’s environment to serve Europe’s climate goals. “I don’t need green cars,” she said. “I need green apples and green grass.”

In Gornje Nedeljice, a Jadar Valley village that sits atop Europe’s biggest known deposit of high-grade lithium, the project has alienated Mr. Vucic’s previously stalwart rural base.

Dragan Karajcic, the district head for a cluster of small settlements around the proposed mine, said he was a member of Mr. Vucic’s governing party but still joined a local protest group hostile to Rio Tinto and the government.

“We are not trying to bring down the government,” he said. “The government is doing that itself.”

Goran Tomic, a native of Gornje Nedeljice who now lives mostly in Germany, said he understood the need to combat climate change by moving away from gasoline-powered cars, but he was still appalled that his older brother had agreed to sell his house and land to Rio Tinto.

“He allowed himself to betray himself for money, and in doing that he betrayed us all,” Mr. Tomic said, sitting on his front stoop with his mother, who was also angry but proud that two of her three sons refused to sell to Rio Tinto.

Its assurances over safety undermined by past misbehavior, Rio Tinto has tried to counter what it dismisses as lies and disinformation spread on social media by recently disclosing preliminary findings of an environmental impact assessment. It was carried out by Serbian and foreign scientists who debunked much of what protesters believe about lithium mining.

Wild claims on social media included one last week that an exploratory hole bored by Rio Tinto was belching radioactive fluid.

Mr. Vucic, rattled by the scale and intensity of public anger, has also veered into fear-mongering, claiming protests were led by “anarchists, Marxists and hidden fascists.”

The real leaders, however, were people like Nebojsa Petkovic, a villager from Gornje Nedeljice and an activist who traveled to Belgrade to help organize a demonstration on Saturday, Aug. 10, that attracted tens of thousands of people.

“Let the Germans save the planet,” Mr. Petkovic said. “We need to save ourselves.”

Eager to get mining started, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and executives of Mercedes Benz, which has big electric vehicle plans, visited Belgrade last month to applaud the Rio Tinto project.

Germany’s role, however, has only amplified opposition.

Mr. Karajcic, the district head, said he was infuriated by German assurances that the mine would be safe, recalling Nazi atrocities in a nearby town in 1941 that the Germans had promised would be left unhurt.

He said his great-grandfather fought nearby against Austrian troops during World War I. “He fought to keep our land, and now I’m supposed to give it away to Rio Tinto. No way,” he said. “There is a lot of bad blood in these hills.”

They came into the village just past sundown, dozens of Israeli settlers wearing masks, dressed in dark clothes and armed with rocks, Kalashnikovs and M-16s, witnesses said.

A local resident, Muawiya al-Sidee, said his 13-year-old daughter was one of the first to spot them as she and her younger siblings were playing on Thursday in their front garden in the village of Jit, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“‘Baba, settlers are coming!’” the girl screamed.

Mr. al-Sidee and his wife, who was breastfeeding their 2-year-old daughter at the time, piled their five children into their car and drove off just as the settlers reached their front door.

Seconds later, he said, the Israelis from the nearby Eli settlement smashed the windows of his family’s home and threw in three Molotov cocktails, burning rooms where, moments earlier, the family had gathered.

As the family fled, a call went out over mosque loudspeakers in the village of some 3,000 people, imploring young men to come out and defend against the rampaging settlers.

When Mr. al-Sidee returned hours later, after the settlers had withdrawn, he found the sofas in his house were charred husks and the overhead lamps had melted.

Elsewhere in the village, Rasheed al-Seda, 23, awoke when the call for defenders sounded from the mosques. He joined a group determined to defend the village, armed with nothing but stones.

It would cost him his life, his mother and the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.

The Israeli military confirmed the attack on the village.

“Dozens of Israeli civilians, some of them masked, entered the town of Jit and set fire to vehicles and structures in the area, hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails,” a military statement said, adding that the military had opened an investigation and was looking into reports of a fatality.

More than 2.7 million Palestinians reside in ancestral cities, towns and farming villages in the West Bank, where, for generations, many have lived off the land. But that existence is increasingly under threat as more Israelis move to the territory — they now number nearly 500,000 — to live in settlements considered illegal under international law.

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza, attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians across the West Bank have become common. There have been about 1,250 such attacks in this time, according to the United Nations — 25 in the past week alone.

More than 589 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or Jewish settlers in the West Bank since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health officials. Eighteen Israelis have been killed in the territory in the same time period, according to the United Nations.

On Thursday night, Mr. al-Seda became one of the latest Palestinian casualties.

He had just joined the other men who were running in the direction of the rampaging settlers when, according to residents and Palestinian health officials, he was shot in the chest by a settler.

Multiple residents said the Israeli army was preventing ambulances and fire trucks from entering the village. The Israeli military denied the accusations.

Other men carried Mr. al-Seda to a car — his blood staining the pavement. Residents said he was driven to the entrance of the village, where he was transferred to an ambulance that had been blocked from entering. From there he was taken to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

In total, four houses and six vehicles were burned, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group.

The military said that its forces, along with Israeli Border Police, had been dispatched to the site and dispersed the rampage by firing shots into the air and “removing the Israeli civilians from the town” within about 30 minutes from the time it began.

But rights groups and Palestinians have said in the past that the Israeli military often does nothing to stop such attacks. And Jit residents said that the military had not arrived at the scene until more than an hour after the settler rampage had begun.

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, whose coalition government includes West Bank settlers in top positions, said the leader “takes seriously the riots that took place this evening in the village of Jit, which included injury to life and property by Israelis who entered the village.”

But far-right members of Mr. Netanyahu’s government, including Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, have made inflammatory statements about Palestinians before and have advanced policies to expand Israel’s hold on the West Bank.

In October, Mr. Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police, promised to provide thousands of guns to Israelis, including to settlers. He posted photographs that showed him handing out assault rifles to civilians.

Jit residents said Mr. Netanyahu’s government bore some responsibility for the attack.

“Ben-Gvir gave them these weapons to attack us,” said Oomyma al-Sidee, a relative of Muawiya al-Sidee. She said she was holed up in her home with her six sons and other relatives as settlers tried to break through the metal front door.

“This is terrorism,” she said.

From the roof of their home, her sons threw rocks at the settlers, trying to push them away from the home and two vehicles parked out front. Some of the settlers smashed the vehicles’ windows and set them on fire with Molotov cocktails, she said.

Despite the danger, she said, Ms. al-Sidee’s husband ran outside with a hose to try to put out the fire, worried that the vehicles would explode and ignite their home.

“We escaped death,” she said.

This was not the first time that the family had been targeted, she said. In October, Israelis from the same settlement kidnapped her husband for an hour, beat him with guns and threatened to shoot him.

Since then, Ms. al-Sidee said, she has kept their IDs, important documents and gold jewelry in a lunchbox that she carries with her every time she leaves her house.

On Thursday night, after the attack, she and her family slept at a relative’s house.

“Tonight, I don’t know where we will sleep. They might come back,” Ms. al-Sidee said on Friday, expressing a widespread fear throughout the village.

She had just returned from the wake for Mr. al-Seda, who had been a student in an Arabic class she teaches.

Throughout the village, mourning posters had gone up for Mr. al-Seda. At his family’s home, a banner hung outside as villagers streamed in to attend the wake. Recitations from the Quran played in the background as women came in, offering their condolences and sipping bitter coffee.

In one corner, his mother, Iman al-Seda, sat reciting prayers and lamenting the loss of her son.

“My love, my life,” she said, weeping and wiping her bloodshot eyes with a crumpled tissue.

Mr. al-Seda, who had worked in computers, was a sociable person who brought life to their home, his mother said. He would always kiss on her cheeks and hands, a common sign of respect for elders in Arab culture.

“What am I going to do?” she said. “I wish he hadn’t gone to help.”

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken arrived in Israel on Sunday to try to clinch a deal that could end the war in Gaza, even as the Middle East remained on edge amid the looming threat of wider regional conflict.

The visit, part of an intensive diplomatic campaign led by the Biden administration, comes days after Israel’s negotiating team held talks in Qatar with senior American officials, as well as Qatari and Egyptian representatives who are mediating between Israel and Hamas.

Those talks ended without a major breakthrough, but the White House said on Friday that the United States had put forward a “bridging proposal,” with Egyptian and Qatari support, aimed at closing the remaining gaps between the sides. It said that teams would continue to hash out details and that senior negotiators hoped to reconvene in Cairo before the end of this week to finalize an agreement.

While the Biden administration had suggested that the process was “now in the end game,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel cautioned on Sunday that the negotiations were “very complex” and called his approach to the talks one of give and take — “not give and give.”

“There are things we can be flexible about, and there are things we cannot be flexible about,” he said in remarks recorded at the beginning of his weekly cabinet meeting.

“We know very well how to distinguish between the two,” Mr. Netanyahu added, saying that he was insisting on certain principles that he considered vital for Israel’s security.

Mr. Blinken landed in Israel on Sunday evening. On Monday morning, he is scheduled to meet in Jerusalem with Mr. Netanyahu, whom some officials have accused of stalling by adding new conditions for a deal. Mr. Blinken will also meet with Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, and the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, according to senior State Department officials. On Tuesday, Mr. Blinken will travel to Egypt to continue his efforts to broker an agreement.

While Mr. Netanyahu has portrayed Hamas as the obstacle to reaching an agreement, Hamas officials say the Israeli leader is to blame.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas spokesman based in Beirut, told Al Jazeera English on Sunday that the Israeli side had introduced new ideas in the cease-fire negotiations and was not prepared to withdraw all its forces from Gaza or commit to a permanent cease-fire — conditions that the group has set for any deal. Israel has balked at making such commitments from the outset.

The deal that Mr. Blinken is hoping to help seal would be carried out in three phases and is based on principles laid out by President Biden on May 31, then subsequently endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. It would usher in a cease-fire in Gaza and see hostages held in the enclave freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in Israel.

The Biden administration has created a degree of linkage between the cease-fire efforts and the threat of Iranian-led retaliation against Israel for the back-to-back assassinations of senior figures from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia, and Hamas in Beirut and Tehran in late July.

Mr. Biden said that part of the reason he was sending Mr. Blinken to Israel — beyond continuing “intensive efforts” to conclude a deal — was “to underscore that with the comprehensive cease-fire and hostage release deal now in sight, no one in the region should take actions to undermine this process.”

Amid fears that any reprisals and subsequent Israeli counterstrikes could escalate into a broader regional war, American officials have expressed hope that progress on the diplomatic front could stave off a broader conflagration.

Mr. Netanyahu warned on Sunday that Israel was prepared to meet any threat, defensively and offensively, saying the country was “determined to exact a very heavy price” from anyone who dared to attack it.

In the meantime, the fighting in Gaza, where local authorities say more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, has continued. The Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said on Sunday that 14 people were killed in strikes in Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an earlier statement, the military had said that its troops were operating in the areas of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, where Israeli aircraft had “struck targets.”

Hiba Yazbek, Gabby Sobelman, Myra Noveck, Johnatan Reiss and Robert Jimison contributed reporting.

Elon Musk said he closed the Brazilian office of his social network X on Saturday because a Brazilian Supreme Court judge ordered the company to suspend certain accounts or face the arrest of its legal representative in Brazil.

X said its service would remain available to users in Brazil. The company did not say how many people it employed in Brazil.

The move is a sharp escalation in Mr. Musk’s monthslong feud with the Brazilian judge, Alexandre de Moraes, whom he has accused of silencing conservative voices online. Mr. Moraes has said he is cleaning up the internet by removing misinformation and attacks on Brazilian institutions.

What is the fight about?

For the past several years, Mr. Moraes has ordered social networks to suspend hundreds of accounts and posts for spreading content that he says threatens Brazil’s democracy. His orders are typically sealed from public view and do not explain what an account did to warrant suspension.

Those orders have largely targeted right-wing supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, including some who questioned Mr. Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss and sympathized with protesters who raided Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices in a bid to invoke a military takeover. Mr. Moraes has also overseen several criminal investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies.

That has made Mr. Moraes one of Brazil’s most powerful and polarizing figures. On the left, he is considered a hero; on the right, a villain.

In recent months, he has also become one of Mr. Musk’s most frequent targets. Mr. Musk has criticized Mr. Moraes dozens of times in posts on X, saying the judge’s orders are censorship and break Brazilian law.

Mr. Moraes declined to comment via a spokeswoman. Mr. Moraes has said that Brazilian law empowers him to block content online in order to protect the country’s institutions from what he has called a dangerous threat from some of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters.

“Freedom of speech is not freedom of aggression,” he said in April.

What led Musk to pull out of Brazil?

In recent days, X’s government affairs team published images of what it said were Mr. Moraes’s orders to remove at least 19 accounts, including those of right-wing influencers and a federal lawmaker.

In one document dated Friday, Mr. Moraes told the company that it had not complied with a takedown order. The judge said the company faced fines or the potential arrest of its legal representative in Brazil.

In 2016, Brazilian federal police officers arrested a local executive of Facebook because the company did not comply with a court order.

On Saturday, X’s official government affairs account posted that “to protect the safety of our staff, we have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately.”

The account added: “The people of Brazil have a choice to make — democracy, or Alexandre de Moraes.”

Mr. Musk quickly weighed in, saying that if his company complied with Mr. Moraes’s orders, “there was no way we could explain our actions without being ashamed.” He also called for the judge’s removal and mocked his appearance, comparing him to the “Harry Potter” villain Voldemort.

Brazil’s Supreme Court declined to comment on the documents published by X or the criticism.

Mr. Musk has had a big effect on Brazilian politics.

After Mr. Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss, his far-right political movement had been sputtering. He had been ruled ineligible to run in the next election and was under investigation in several cases that could lead to prison time. He and his supporters were struggling to find a voice.

Then Mr. Musk arrived with a torrent of posts harshly criticizing Mr. Moraes. Over 17 days in April, Mr. Musk posted about Mr. Moraes more than two dozen times, calling the judge a dictator and comparing him to Darth Vader. Brazilian magazines and newspapers put Mr. Musk and Mr. Moraes on their covers, and the issue was debated in Brazil’s Congress.

Several U.S. House Republicans then also got involved.

The House Judiciary Committee, led by Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, published sealed court orders from Mr. Moraes and accused him of leading a “censorship campaign.” In May, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee held a hearing on the issue, which was frequently interrupted by cheers and boos from Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters.

Over the past week, one of Brazil’s top newspapers, Folha de São Paulo, has published a series of articles written in part by the American journalist and pundit Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Brazil and has been one of Mr. Moraes’s loudest critics. The articles used leaked text messages to show how Mr. Moraes and his colleagues worked behind the scenes to suspend accounts. In some cases, the messages suggest that Mr. Moraes targeted specific accounts and asked officials to find justification to suspend them.

In response to the articles, Mr. Moraes said that he had always acted within the law, against accounts that spread anti-democratic messages, hate speech and attacks on Brazil’s Supreme Court, including death threats.

In Brazil, the attention from the United States helped rejuvenate the nation’s right-wing movement — particularly its efforts to target Mr. Moraes. On Saturday, Mr. Musk shared a prominent Brazilian congressman’s call for a march to demand Mr. Moraes’s impeachment.

Mr. Musk has increasingly used his enormous platform on X to boost certain politicians, including Donald J. Trump and President Javier Milei of Argentina, while getting into spats with others, as when he recently criticized Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain over protests in the country.

What could happen next?

While X said Brazilians could continue to use its social network, Mr. Moraes could move to block the service in Brazil if the company does not comply with his orders.

In 2022, Mr. Moraes announced a ban in Brazil on the messaging app Telegram because he said the company ignored court orders. After the company quickly responded, he dropped plans for a ban.

Mr. Musk has said that he plans to stand up against Mr. Moraes even if it hurts X’s business. The company has not disclosed how many users it has in Brazil, but analysts have said it is one of the company’s largest markets.

Ukraine pressed ahead with its offensive inside Russian territory on Sunday, pushing toward more villages and towns nearly two weeks into the first significant foreign incursion in Russia since World War II.

But even as the Ukrainian army was advancing in Russia’s western Kursk region, its troops were steadily losing ground on their own territory. The Russian military is now about eight miles from the town of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, according to open-source battlefield maps. The capture of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian stronghold, would bring Moscow one step closer to its long-held goal of capturing the entire Donetsk region.

That underscored the gamble Ukraine’s army took when it crossed into Russia: throwing its forces into a daring offensive that risked weakening its own positions on the eastern front.

Whether that strategy will prove advantageous remains to be seen, analysts say.

On the political front, the offensive has already had some success: Ukraine’s rapid advance has embarrassed the Kremlin and has altered the narrative of a war in which Kyiv’s forces had been on the back foot for months.

Here’s what to know about Ukraine’s cross-border operation, which President Biden said last week was creating a “real dilemma” for the Russian government.

What happened?

Ukrainian troops and armored vehicles stormed into the Kursk region of western Russia on Aug. 6, swiftly pushing through Russian defenses and capturing several villages.

The assault, prepared in the utmost secrecy, opened a new front in the 30-month war and caught not only Russia off guard: Some Ukrainian soldiers and U.S. officials also said they lacked advance notice.

Analysts and Western officials estimate that Ukraine deployed about 1,000 troops at the start of the incursion. But military analysts say that it has since poured more troops into the operation to try to hold and expand its positions.

How far into Russia have Ukrainian troops advanced?

Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top commander, said last week that his army now controlled more than 80 Russian settlements in the Kursk region, including Sudzha, a town of 6,000 residents. His claims could not be independently verified, although analysts say that Sudzha is highly likely to be under full Ukrainian control.

Ukraine’s advance in the Kursk region has slowed in recent days, according to open-source maps of the battlefield based on combat footage and satellite images, as Russia sends in more reinforcements. The Ukrainian army appears to be trying to dig in along the border area rather than pushing deeper into Russia.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine acknowledged that on Saturday, saying: “Now we are reinforcing our positions. The foothold of our presence is getting stronger.”

Why is this significant?

Kyiv has regularly bombarded Russian oil refineries and airfields with drones since Moscow’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. It has also helped stage two other ground attacks in Russia. Those, however, were smaller forays by Russian exile groups backed by the Ukrainian army, and they ended in quick retreats.

Until two weeks ago, Ukrainian forces had not counterattacked in Russia. The gains in Kursk are the quickest for Ukrainian forces since they reclaimed the Kherson region of their own country in November 2022.

How has the Kremlin responded?

As Ukrainian forces pushed deeper into Russia, Moscow scrambled to shore up its defenses, and President Vladimir V. Putin convened his security services to coordinate a response. The Russian military said it was sending more troops and armored vehicles to try to repel the attack, with Russian television broadcasting images of columns of military trucks.

Military analysts and U.S. officials have said the Russian command had so far brought in reinforcements mainly from within Russia so as to not deplete its units on the Ukrainian battlefield, in what they described as a disorganized effort.

“Russia is still pulling together its reaction,” Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, NATO’s top military commander, said last week during a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He described the Russian response as having been “fairly slow and scattered” as the authorities sorted out which military and security forces should take the lead.

And what about Putin?

The incursion has embarrassed Mr. Putin and his military establishment, prompting questions about Russia’s level of preparedness.

Underscoring how the attack rattled the Kremlin, Mr. Putin lashed out last week at the West in a tense televised meeting with his top officials. “The West is fighting us with the hands of the Ukrainians,” he said, repeating his frequent depiction of the war, which he started, as a proxy campaign against Russia by the West.

Ukraine’s incursion has brought the war into Russia like it never has before, and tens of thousands of civilians have evacuated the border area.

What is the goal of Ukraine’s incursion?

Analysts say that Ukraine’s offensive has two main aims: to draw Russian forces from the front lines in eastern Ukraine and to seize territory that could serve as a bargaining chip in future peace talks.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a top Ukrainian presidential adviser, said last week that Russia would be forced to the negotiating table only through suffering “significant tactical defeats.”

“In the Kursk region, we can clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade” Russia to enter “a fair negotiation process,” he wrote on social media.

The operation has offered a much-needed morale boost for Ukrainians, whose forces have been losing ground to Russian troops for months.

But military analysts have questioned whether Kyiv’s cross-border assault is worth the risk, given that Ukrainian forces are already stretched on the front lines of their own country.

How is it affecting the fight inside Ukraine?

Russian forces have been pummeling Ukrainian troops in the east even as Moscow races to respond to the incursion into Kursk, according to analysts, Western officials and Ukrainian soldiers.

Russia has begun to withdraw small numbers of troops from Ukraine, they said, to try to help repel the Ukrainians, but not enough to significantly affect the overall battlefield for now.

Senior American officials have said privately that they understood Kyiv’s need to change the narrative of the war, but that they were skeptical that Ukraine could hold the territory long enough to force Russia to divert significant resources from the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine.

While Kyiv’s allies have in the past been wary that Ukrainian incursions in Russia could escalate the war, the European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell Fontelles, said last week that Ukraine had the bloc’s “full support.”

Ukraine has used some Western-supplied weapons in the Kursk operation. But so far, the United States and Britain, two of Kyiv’s closes allies, have said the incursion did not violate their policies.”

What happens next?

As the Ukrainian offensive approaches its two-week mark, analysts say that Kyiv has several options, each with its own challenges.

Ukrainian forces could try to keep pushing farther into Russia, but that will become harder as Russian reinforcements arrive and Ukraine’s supply lines are stretched.

They could keep digging into the territory they now hold and try to defend it, but that could expose fixed Ukrainian positions to potentially devastating Russian airstrikes.

Or, battered by continual losses in eastern Ukraine, they could decide that they have made their point and pull back.

Thibault Fouillet, the deputy director of the Institute for Strategic and Defense Studies, a French research center, said Ukraine’s next move would depend on how Russia responds. “The coming week will be decisive,” he said.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

She transcended racing to become a household name in Australia and revived, for a time, a sport in decline. At the height of her career, she graced the cover of Vogue, met Queen Elizabeth II and had her own line of shampoo and conditioner.

Black Caviar, the Australian racehorse whose unbeaten streak of 25 victories from 2009 to 2013 made her a cultural icon, died on Saturday, one day before her 18th birthday.

Her death was confirmed by the Victoria Racing Club in a statement. Australian news media reported that her trainer, Peter Moody, said Black Caviar was euthanized after giving birth to a foal because she was suffering from laminitis, a painful disease that affects the hooves of horses. Mr. Moody could not immediately be reached for confirmation.

Between 2009 and 2013, Black Caviar won 25 races from 25 starts, earning more than $5.3 million (about 8 million Australian dollars) in prize money. From 2010 to 2013, she was ranked the world’s best sprinter racehorse by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. Some media outlets described her as “the world’s most popular racehorse.”

“Very rarely do we get a hose that transcends the sport,” Matt Hill, an Australian race caller, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday, “but everybody, even if they didn’t follow horseracing, knew who Black Caviar was.”

At times, Black Caviar’s fame transcended her equine nature. In 2012, she was named “sportswoman of the year” by one newspaper, controversially beating out a human Olympic hurdling champion, Sally Pearson. That same year, Black Caviar became the first animal to be featured on the cover of Vogue Australia.

“The statuesque bay mare is not our everyday cover girl, yet she is undeniably beautiful,” the magazine said at the time.

One of Black Caviar’s most dramatic victories came at the Royal Ascot in England in 2012, where the local press began calling her the “Wonder From Down Under.” Her jockey, Luke Nolen, had eased up just before the finish line, and another horse threatened to snatch victory from Black Caviar. But she prevailed, and after the race, Queen Elizabeth II gave her a pat on the nose.

Black Caviar at her peak of fame inspired a fervor in Australia that sold out events where attendance had previously been declining, racing experts have said.

At races, spectators waved flags in her colors: salmon pink with black polka dots. Some wore ties in that pattern — sold through Black Caviar’s official store, which was also where the collection of horse shampoo and conditioner products was available.

“She makes people feel good about themselves, and it is certain that one day old-timers will boast of having seen her race,” Wayne Peake, an Australian racing historian, said in 2012.

Writing about a race in the city of Adelaide that year, he said, “There is a sense that Black Caviar’s visit was the equine equivalent of one by the queen on royal tour duty, venturing out to visit her subjects at the far reaches of her empire.”

In 2013, Mr. Moody said that Black Caviar would retire and be used for breeding. “She’s done everything we asked her to do; she couldn’t possibly have done any more,” he said at the time.

The retirement made headlines. Julia Gillard, then Australia’s prime minister, said on social media: “We’ve never seen anything like Black Caviar before and may never again.”

Black Caviar would go on to have nine foals in total, according to racing.com, including Prince of Caviar, Out Of Caviar, Ready For Caviar and Invincible Caviar.

When she retired, Gerard Whateley, a journalist and race caller who wrote a biography of the horse, said, “She’s meant everything to Australian racing,” an industry in decline, and had “reminded everyone that there’s such a predisposition toward loving racehorses in this country.”

“She seemed to give everyone an emotional stake when she ran,” he added.