In Ukraine, Small, Fluffy Dogs Offer Wartime Comfort
For two days last month, a vision of canine paradise emerged in the heart of a city regularly pounded by Russian drones and missiles.
Under sunny skies, thousands of dogs of all sizes and shapes reveled at a festival held in a former Soviet-era factory in the city, Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. They frolicked in sandboxes, splashed in plastic pools and dove into ball pits — all to the backdrop of pop music blaring from loudspeakers.
In tents and disused warehouses, artists sketched dog caricatures, vendors displayed patterned pajamas and hats for pets, and groomers pampered Pomeranians and chow chows with brushes and lotions.
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A Changing Climate Is Scorching the World’s Biggest River
Reporting from Rio de Janeiro
The world’s largest river is parched.
The Amazon River, battered by back-to-back droughts fueled by climate change, is drying up, with some stretches of the mighty waterway dwindling to shallow pools only a few feet deep.
Water levels along several sections of the Amazon River, which winds nearly 4,000 miles across South America, fell last month to their lowest level on record, according to figures from the Brazilian Geological Service.
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A Ghostly Life for Those Trickling Back to Villages Attacked on Oct. 7
Johnatan Reiss and Amit Elkayam visited several villages in southern Israel for this article.
Before Oct. 7, Naama Giller let her children roam freely through her Israeli village on the border with Gaza. Her front door was rarely locked. She liked living in a place animated by communal festivities, outdoor life, the din of boys and girls playing.
Now, she darkens her home at night to avoid being targeted in strikes from Gaza. Most of the children in the village, Netiv Ha’asara, left and have not returned. Military patrols and the thud of bombs are the soundtrack to a spartan and ghostly life.
“Our village now is empty, deserted,” Ms. Giller said.
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U.K. Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Sue Gray, Resigns
Sue Gray, the chief of staff to Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, resigned abruptly on Sunday after weeks of speculation about turf wars in Downing Street, a media storm over her pay and questions over responsibility for a series of political errors.
Ms. Gray, a career civil servant with decades of experience at the heart of government, said in a statement that it had “become clear to me that intense commentary around my position risked becoming a distraction to the government’s vital work of change.”
Mr. Starmer thanked Ms. Gray in a statement for “all the support she has given me, both in opposition and government, and her work to prepare us for government and get us started on our program of change.”
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Ship in Need of Repairs Has Explosive Cargo, but No Dock
The MV Ruby has languished off the coast of Britain for more than a week, its hull cracked, its propeller damaged. Yet no port will let the ship dock, fearing that the thousands of tons of Russian fertilizer it carries could lead to a disastrous explosion.
Over the weekend, the MV Ruby remained 14 miles off the coast of Kent, in southeastern England, where it has been since last month.
For weeks now, the ship has sailed around northern Europe’s coastline, looking for a friendly port. But no country has allowed it to approach, fearing a repeat of the explosion in 2020 in Lebanon that destroyed the Port of Beirut and killed more than 190 people.
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Tunisia’s Autocratic Leader Is Poised to Steamroll to Election Victory
For many Tunisians, there seems to be little point to the presidential election on Sunday. There are barely any candidate posters, no debates and not much suspense. The president, Kais Saied, appears so sure of victory that he has not even issued any policy proposals.
His leading challenger is in prison, serving three separate sentences on what his lawyers say are falsified charges, the longest sentence lasting 12 years. At least eight other would-be candidates are in jail or under a form of house arrest, and others have been disqualified from the ballot.
More than a decade after mass protests toppled the country’s longtime dictator, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, prompting other Arab Spring revolts across the Middle East, few in Tunisia still believe they live in a democracy. The string of punishments for the president’s critics and his ever-tightening hold over the election process in recent months have left little doubt that Mr. Saied’s one-man rule is here to stay.
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