The meeting was the first to be held between the two leaders since Minsk helped end a revolt by Russian Wagner fighters.

A Russian overnight strike on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa damages the Transfiguration Cathedral located in the city centre.

The Cornetto maker says it will comply with Russian law to permit staff to be conscripted.

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The FIFA Women’s World Cup is about more than just soccer. Here’s a guide to getting into the game.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Colson Whitehead loses the plot. The surprising key to understanding the Barbie film The secret to a good conversation

A Women’s World Cup Guide

I’m not a crier. I didn’t cry watching The Notebook, and even the saddest episodes of my longtime favorite show, Grey’s Anatomy, usually only leave me slightly welling up. But every time I read or listen to something about a player’s journey to the 2023 Women’s World Cup, I absolutely lose it. I’ve never played a game of soccer, but I’ve been following the women’s game since 2015. There’s something about the journey of these women and these teams that transcends sport.

This year’s tournament kicked off on Thursday, with New Zealand’s women’s national team securing their first-ever win in a World Cup game in front of a home crowd of more than 42,000—record attendance for a soccer match, men’s or women’s, in the country. Meanwhile, the U.S. Women’s National Team is facing tough competition as it looks for its third consecutive win. They secured a win against Vietnam in their first match on Friday.   

Even if you don’t typically keep up with women’s soccer—or soccer at all—below are three reasons you should pay attention to the games.

Megan Rapinoe’s goodbye: Rapinoe skyrocketed to national attention for a viral clip in which she refused to go to the Trump White House in 2019, but she was taking public stances long before that, including kneeling in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and helping lead the national team’s fight for equal pay. As my colleague Franklin Foer wrote in 2019, Rapinoe makes resistance look effortless. Rapinoe, now 38, announced her retirement earlier this month, meaning this World Cup will be your last chance to witness her creative form of play on a global stage. Progress on equal pay: Soccer players at the 2023 Women’s World Cup will earn, on average, 25 cents for every dollar earned by men at their World Cup in 2022, according to a new CNN analysis. In 2019, women’s pay was at less than eight cents per dollar. This very incremental progress comes just over a year after the U.S. Soccer Federation and the U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association signed a new collective-bargaining agreement that stipulates the teams will split World Cup prize money from both the men’s and women’s tournaments (a big disparity remains in the prize amount for each World Cup). The global growth of the game: Around the world, women’s soccer is gaining an unprecedented level of recognition. Other countries, including England, New Zealand, Brazil, and Australia, have signed equal-pay agreements with their men’s and women’s teams. Meanwhile, the 2022 Women’s Euro was the most watched in that tournament’s history. This World Cup, Australia’s opening match against Ireland was originally booked in a much smaller stadium and had to be moved to a bigger venue that seats more than 80,000 people. The game sold out, again.

Below are a few recommendations for what to watch and listen to if you want to further explore the world of women’s soccer.

Listen

Snacks: This podcast from Just Women’s Sports is hosted by Lynn Williams, who is making her World Cup debut on the U.S. team this year, and her friend, the former World Cup champion Sam Mewis. In casual conversations, the two women break down happenings in the National Women’s Soccer League and in the game around the world.

I’d suggest you start with the most recent episode. It features Ali Riley, the American-born captain of the New Zealand women’s national team, who talks about playing host to the World Cup, and discusses how many women’s teams across the globe lack the training and resources provided to the U.S. team.

Watch

Angel City: This three-part docuseries, streaming on Max, takes viewers through the founding of the National Women’s Soccer League’s first majority-women-owned major professional sports team in the U.S. With its inaugural 2022 season, Angel City FC set out to do things differently, prioritizing community engagement, drawing big crowds, and giving players a cut of ticket sales. The team succeeded in some ways but not in others: They didn’t make the playoffs last year, and after a rocky start to their second season, they fired their coach. The documentary also gives you a look at some of the players you’ll see at the World Cup this year, including Japan’s Jun Endo, Canada’s Vanessa Gilles, and New Zealand's Ali Riley.

And, of course, the matches themselves. Here are a few to look out for in the group stage of play:

USA–Netherlands, (July 26, 9 p.m. ET), England–Denmark (July 28, 4:30 a.m. ET), France–Brazil (July 29, 6 a.m. ET), Japan–Spain (July 31, 3 a.m. ET)

In the U.S., the matches will air on Fox. You can also stream the matches on the Fox Sports App and on YouTube TV. Telemundo and Peacock are providing Spanish-language coverage.

The Week Ahead

The 11th season of Futurama premieres Monday (streaming on Hulu). The third book in Richard Russo’s North Bath Trilogy, Somebody’s Fool, features continued father-son tensions and a dead body in an abandoned hotel (on sale Tuesday). Sympathy for the Devil, a psychological thriller starring Nicolas Cage and Joel Kinnaman (in theaters Friday)

Essay

Starz

Porn Set Women Up From the Start

By Sophie Gilbert

Late last year, when the streaming platform formerly known as HBO Max announced the abrupt cancellation of Minx a week before Season 2 finished filming, the news struck me as grimly ironic. Minx, created by Ellen Rapoport, is a buoyant, ’70s-set comedy about the first feminist porn magazine, loosely based on the real-life publications Playgirl and Viva. It’s a sweet, funny, shrewd show that also features plenty of full-frontal male nudity. The effect is hard to categorize; Minx isn’t “raunchy” or “smutty” or “filthy” or even “risqué.” Unlike Euphoria or The Idol, it’s not interested in hollow provocation. And the penises that proliferate on-screen aren’t there to titillate, exactly, although a montage in the first episode brings to mind what the French film theorist Jean-Louis Comolli once described as “the frenzy of the visible.” If anything, the show’s insistent focus on male nudity feels impertinent, as though we’re all participating in a ritual desanctification of dicks. The show’s clever inversion of subject and object makes erotica seem faintly absurd: Here are men’s bodies exposed for us to look at. …

Sexual representation, for women, particularly straight women, has always been a bind—our desires are often informed by the same chauvinistic terrain we’re trying to transcend. Both Minx and Viva make one thing clear: Men have set the parameters of porn since the beginning.

Read the full article.

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Mountainside art in Switzerland, a moon-bound rocket launch in India, and more in our editor’s selection of the week’s best photos.

P.S.

U.S. Soccer actually oversees 27 National Teams, including Extended National Teams with adapted rules of play, such as Deaf Soccer, CP (Para) Soccer, and Power Soccer (electric wheelchair) teams. As I mentioned above, I don’t play soccer, but I am a para athlete, and I know firsthand that many para competitors receive a fraction of the attention (and funding) given to able-bodied competitors. Para sports might look different, but it’s athleticism all the same. Some of these extension teams are new, and it will take time for us to fully integrate para athletes into the lexicon of our sporting culture. The first step is knowing they exist; the second is choosing to pay attention.

— Kate

Katherine Hu and Kelsey Waite contributed to this newsletter.

Russia struck the Ukrainian Black Sea city of Odesa again on Sunday, local officials said, keeping up a barrage of attacks that have damaged critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine in the past week.

Officials say air attack wounded 19 people, including several children, and severely damaged Odesa's largest cathedral.

Odesa's regional governor said 14 people were hospitalised in the blasts, including four children.

These are the main developments as the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its 515th day.

Poland has become one of Ukraine's staunchest allies since Russia invaded the country in 2022, and it has been refusing entry to people who support ...