Your Wednesday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/briefing/russian-ukraine-power-france-strikes.html

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Russian strikes have destroyed 30 percent of Ukraine’s power stations and caused “massive blackouts across the country,” according to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, leading to shortages of electricity, water and heat. The W.H.O. has warned of a potential humanitarian crisis if Ukrainians are without basic services such as heat and water during the upcoming winter.

The Russian barrage heralds a new phase of the war. Civilians and infrastructure have been targets since the start of the invasion, but Russia has begun to focus on vital utility networks, whose collapse would yield a new kind of humanitarian disaster.

Russia’s stepped-up campaign of striking cities far from the front lines comes even as its forces have struggled in eastern and southern Ukraine. Since early last month, the Ukrainians have been on the offensive, retaking territory seized by Russia this year, though the movement appears to have slowed in recent days.

By the numbers: A Ukrainian government minister, Oleksii Chernyshov, said 408 sites in the country had been struck, including 45 energy facilities. Many of the attacks have hit thermal energy plants that generate steam for heating homes and businesses.

In other news from the war:

The Danish authorities said that “powerful explosions” caused the Nord Stream pipelines to rupture last month but declined to say who might have caused them.

After selling drones to Russia, Iran sent trainers to help the Russian military in Crimea use them, U.S. officials said.

The E.U. has been severing economic ties with Russia to support Ukraine, but some goods, like diamonds, remain conspicuously exempted.

Railway and postal workers, nurses, some teachers and even high school students in France followed in the footsteps of workers at refineries and nuclear plants by striking yesterday, in the biggest test yet to face Emmanuel Macron during his second term as president. The action followed large protests in Paris on Sunday against rising costs of living.

Macron’s government is under pressure from voters and in Parliament, where opposition parties are refusing to pass the budget. The president is now struggling to mollify anger on three different fronts — in factories, on the streets and in Parliament — before it coalesces into major social unrest.

Oil workers’ original call for wage increases to keep up with rising inflation has captured underlying concerns about the country’s economic inequalities and mounting bills for working families. The strikes have left about a quarter of the pumps across the country fully or partly dry.

Subsidies: Macron’s government has spent nearly 100 billion euros ($98 billion) since November to subsidize energy bills for households and businesses, but inflation has pushed up the costs of many basics in French supermarkets, from frozen meat to tissues.

Federal Reserve officials in the U.S. plan to raise interest rates, currently around 3.1 percent, by three-quarters of a point next month, as policymakers grow alarmed by the staying power of rapid price increases — and increasingly worried that inflation is now feeding on itself. While the central bank anticipated a peak of 4.6 percent next year, that could nudge up.

Officials face two huge choices: when to slow rapid rate increases and when to stop them altogether. The labor market in the U.S. is still strong, and inflation is unrelenting at 6.6 percent over the year through September, even with fuel and food prices excluded.

Fed officials have grown steadily more aggressive in their battle against inflation this year, as the price burst sweeping the globe has proved more persistent than just about anyone expected. Officials fear that if they allow fast inflation to linger, it will become a permanent feature of the American economy.

Europe: The annual inflation rate for September in France was at 5.5 percent, while Germany’s and Italy’s were at 10 percent and 9.4 percent, respectively. New figures for Britain, where the annual rate was at 9.9 percent in August, will be published this morning.

An Iranian athlete breached the Islamic Republic’s rules for women by competing in an international climbing competition without her hijab, raising concerns about her safety.

Giorgia Meloni’s likely turn as Italy’s prime minister will depend on support from Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire who held the office for years.

The U.S. Justice Department reached a roughly $780 million agreement with a French cement company, which had paid off terrorist groups in Syria in 2013 and 2014 to ensure that it could keep operating.

President Biden pledged to codify abortion rights if Democrats expand their control of Congress in the forthcoming midterm elections.

After significant pushback, Liz Truss, the British prime minister, has abandoned her free-market tax cuts and adopted several measures favored by the opposition.

Australia rescinded its recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing a decision made in 2018 by the previous government.

A record-breaking 6,000-pound southern sunfish, found near the Azores in the Mid-Atlantic, shows that the ocean is still healthy enough to support the world’s largest animals.

A landmark 1979 study found that depressed people had a more accurate reading of their ability to affect outcomes. New research calls that conclusion into question.

How do Southern California’s alligator lizards eat venomous black widow spiders with such abandon?

The bananas found in supermarkets have genetic markers tying them to at least three wild banana ancestors not yet discovered by botanists, according to a new study.

New research shows that our assumptions about eating disorders are often wrong — and that people who are starving themselves may come in many shapes and sizes. Sharon Maxwell, above, suffered from disordered eating for 19 years before receiving a diagnosis.

“Most people in higher-weight bodies are shocked to hear that they have anorexia,” one psychologist said. “Nobody ever told them that you can be in a higher-weight body and have anorexia, and they’re convinced that their problem is their weight.”

For one of soccer’s greatest scorers, the goals aren’t enough: Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappe is a gifted striker, but he craves the roles occupied by Lionel Messi and Neymar.

What do the FIFA world rankings really mean for the World Cup? It’s complicated. Which country is on top? Which team has improved the most? Who will be the World Cup’s lowest-ranked team and which is the “group of death”?

“Y’all,” a pronoun that functions as something like a necessarily plural “you,” may be a Southern term, but it is emblematic of the messiness and heterogeneity of American English, a language both inspiringly polyglot and marked by an ugly history, Maud Newton writes in The Times.

The origins of “y’all” are mysterious: While the term could have originated with Scottish-Irish immigrants, it may derive at least in part from the vernacular of enslaved Black people, whose influence on Southern speech is undeniable but difficult to trace.

Moving to Tallahassee, close to the border with Georgia, Newton began to use “y’all” more and more, she writes. “I began to enjoy its warmth and inclusivity, the way everyone was equally gathered under its umbrella. I had to admit: It didn’t feel sexist, racist or classist. It felt friendly and — most of the time — genuine.”

For more: What does the way you speak say about you? Revisit this Times classic to create your own U.S. English dialect map.

A sherry pan sauce turns this chicken into a sophisticated weeknight dinner.

Six podcasts to help you get organized.

Set in postwar Germany, “Plan A” tells the story of Jewish survivors who sought revenge through an astonishing undercover operation.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Rap’s Megan ___ Stallion (four letters).

And here are today’s Wordle and the Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. Thanks for joining me. — Natasha

P.S. Mark Zuckerberg and Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, will speak at the DealBook Summit on Nov. 30. Here’s the full lineup of the event.

The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the effects of Hurricane Ian.

You can reach Natasha and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.