The Headlines - Russia Steps Up Its Battlefield Attacks, and America’s Drinking Drops to Record Low

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Plus, a C.I.A. secret up for auction. On Today’s Episode:Russia Makes a Swift Battlefield Advance, Seeking an Edge in Trump Talks, by Constant MéheutBakers on Texas-Mexican Border Are Found Guilty of Harboring Illegal Workers, by Edgar SandovalU.S. Drinking Drops to New Low, Poll Finds, by Dani BlumWhat Happened When Mark Zuckerberg Moved In Next Door, by Heather KnightYou Can Buy One of the C.I.A.’s Greatest Mysteries at an Auction House, by John SchwartzTune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. 

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, August 14th. Here's what we're covering. On the front lines in Ukraine, what had been a slow grinding battle for months has now taken a turn. This week, the Russian forces have pushed through a section of the front line,

and that has threatened the Ukrainian units in the area. because the Russians can now outflank them and they can tighten the news and force the Ukrainian forces to withdraw. My colleague Constant-Maya has been covering the grueling fight for control of the Donetsk region, where many residents have been frantically evacuating, boarding buses equipped with drone-jamming systems,

hoping to make it out safely. Konstant says that Russia is escalating its attacks there to get the upper hand, as Vladimir Putin prepares to sit down with President Trump tomorrow for peace talks in Alaska. The strategy here is basically to send a warning to America that Moscow's forces remain capable of making big gains on the battlefield. Putin is likely to argue to President Trump

that it would be essentially easier, perhaps faster, to reach a deal where Ukrainian forces withdraw from that part of Donets instead of continuing the fight and losing many lives and equipment. At the same time, Constance says that Russia seems to be making another calculated move. They have been pulling back on their drone strikes. For much of this year, they were hitting Ukraine with hundreds of drone attacks every night. But in the past few weeks, that number has dropped by more than half.

That could be because Trump has specifically criticized those strikes and the civilian casualties that they've caused. So some analysts see the shift as a way for Putin to try and curry favor with Trump ahead of the talks. One said, quote, the Russians know very well how to read Trump's mind. In Texas, a federal jury has convicted a couple who owns a small bakery near the U.S.-Mexico border of harboring and conspiring to transport illegal workers.

They now face up to 10 years in prison. The husband and wife are among the first employers to be prosecuted under President Trump's crackdown on immigration. Back in February, immigration authorities were captured on video, raiding the bakery. The authorities found eight undocumented workers there, and they say the couple admitted they knew the staff didn't have the legal right to work in the U.S., but gave them jobs anyway and a place to stay in a property nearby. Prosecutors called it an open-and-shut case, though one immigration expert the time. Times talked to, called the trial unsettling. She said the government chose to target a small minority-owned business, the couple immigrated from Mexico. And she called out the contrast between this case and other workplace immigration crackdowns, where large corporations have been fined

rather than threatened with jail time. A new poll from Gallup suggests that the number of Americans, suggest that the number of Americans who drink alcohol has reached a record low. The data released yesterday shows that just 54% of Americans say they drink, the lowest percentage in the almost 100 years that Gallup has been collecting data. For decades, at least 60% of Americans said they drank. Notably, the poll specifically suggests that middle-aged adults are cutting back. A reversal after drinking among that group ticked up during the pandemic.

The poll also showed that for the first, First time, the majority of Americans said they believe that even one or two drinks a day could be bad for their health. Experts say that's a big change from what was conventional wisdom for decades, that a little alcohol, a glass of red wine at dinner, could be good for you. In recent years, there's been growing evidence that even moderate amounts of alcohol can be harmful. For example, a recent Surgeon General's report found that for men who have one drink a day, about 10% will develop an alcohol-related cancer. Experts think that reality has sunk in with the younger generation, too. The poll showed youth drinking rates are continuing to go down, potentially driven in part by increasing awareness of the risks,

as well as other factors, like a shift toward marijuana use. Back in 2011, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, bought a home in the Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto. It's a leafy, quiet part of the California city that's at the heart of Silicon Valley. But a new investigation from the Times has traced how, over the next decade, Zuckerberg went on to buy 10 other houses there, angering neighbors and leading some of them to accuse the city of looking the other way as the billionaire transformed the neighborhood. A few of the things my colleagues found. For one, the city quashed an early plan Zuckerberg had to demolish four of the home. to create a giant compound, but it didn't stop him when he skirted the city's review process

by just moving forward incrementally with the massive project, which permits now show includes 7,000 square feet of underground space. Also, they found that starting in the pandemic, Zuckerberg and his wife ran a private school in one of the homes for two of their daughters and 12 other children. That violated city code because Zuckerberg never obtained the necessary permit. But the city didn't shut it down. And neighbors say that Zuckerberg brought intense levels of surveillance to the neighborhood, including a team of private security guards who question people on public sidewalks and sometimes film them. One neighbor said, quote, billionaires everywhere are used to just making their own rules. A spokesman for Zuckerberg and his wife said

the couple tries to do right by their neighbors, for example, giving them a heads up. when they're going to be hosting a large gathering at the compound, or even sending them noise-canceling headphones when there have been disruptive events. The spokesman also said the family was unaware that the school violated city regulations. It has since been relocated. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the city of Palo Alto

said all the construction that Zuckerberg did followed city code and that he didn't get preferential treatment. You can find the full investigation, along with a map of how the compound has grown, at NYTimes.com. And finally, for over 30 years, a mysterious statue made of copper and petrified wood has stood in the courtyard of CIA headquarters,

stumping everyone. Called Cryptos, from the Greek for Hidden, the statue features four panels of encrypted text. The artist Jim Sanborn designed it as an ode to the agency, a house of secrets. And ever since it went up, people have been trying to crack it. Over the years, codebreakers in the government and outside it have tackled the first three panels. There was a reference to King Tut's Tomb and the coordinates of the CIA. But nobody's been able to figure out the fourth panel, which Sandborn says is key to solving another overarching

riddle. He knows people are trying. He's gotten tens of thousands of emails from people working on it. It got to the point where there were so many messages. He started charging $50 if you want to reply. Now, Sanborn has announced, he's going to put the secret up for auction. He's nearly 80 years old, and he's worried about what might happen if he dies suddenly, leaving the mystery without a guardian. The company that will be handling the auction, which will happen in November, estimates it could bring in as much as half a million dollars.

Sanborn says his ideal winner is someone who will still keep it a secret. Without the secret, you have no power, he told the times. But, quote, if someone buys it and does happen to give it up, that's the risk I'm taking. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.