LONDON — When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone by hand? As we entrust our laptops and phones with more and more of our lives, the once-ubiquitous art of handwriting is seemingly in danger of going extinct. But at a London hotel on a recent Sunday morning, thousands of people turned up to demonstrate that the humble pen may be far from meeting the fate of the dinosaurs.

WASHINGTON — Two chunky pandas, a male and a female, arrived from China this week at the National Zoo in Washington. If everything goes as planned, they will eventually have cubs.

INGLETON, England — The women made their way up the narrow stone steps in a winding line, the rolling green fields of the English countryside stretching out across the valley below. The steep climb, which had begun in the early morning, brought them high above an elevated rail line, its imposing Victorian arches rising in the distance.

KYIV, Ukraine — For two days last month, a vision of canine paradise emerged in the heart of a city regularly pounded by Russian drones and missiles.

Voters have a lot to weigh: leadership qualities, policy agenda, experience. But over the past decade, one race has been defined by the amount of wild salmon that can be smashed into a mouth.

Like so many other leaf-peeping enthusiasts, Tim Yates ventured out to Virginia’s Smith Mountain Lake State Park late this summer to see the early whispers of the fall foliage, which would soon give way to bright bursts of orange and red.

The women walk into the surgeons’ offices with photos cued up on their phones. Miley Cyrus. Keira Knightley. Bella Hadid. “I want my breasts to look like this,” they say. They’ve already spent hours on YouTube watching plastic surgeons’ infomercials; on Instagram poring over before-and-afters; and on TikTok, where an army of ordinary women post about their breast reductions. “Ask me,” they say — whether their nipple sensation has changed, what their boyfriends said, whether they cared.