Friday Briefing: The first wins in the Women’s World Cup

By Amelia Nierenberg

Writer, Briefings

Good morning. We’re covering the Women’s World Cup, tensions between Iraq and Sweden and a gathering of golden retrievers.

Australia and New Zealand win their first World Cup matches

The first matches of the Women’s World Cup showcased the growth and promise of women’s soccer — but also some of the sport’s persistent challenges.

The co-host countries each began the tournament with 1-0 wins. New Zealand beat Norway in front of the biggest crowd ever to see a women’s soccer game in the country. “We put so much pressure on ourselves because it wasn’t just about winning a game, it was about inspiring our entire country,” Ali Riley, the New Zealand team captain, said.

Australia then beat Ireland despite the absence of its biggest star, Sam Kerr, who was injured the night before the match. She will miss at least two games, the team announced. The tournament has been marred by knee injuries that have sidelined almost a dozen top players.

New Zealand shooting: Hours before the World Cup started, a gunman killed two people at a construction site about three miles from the stadium in Auckland. The gunman was also killed, the police said.

Looking ahead: The U.S., the two-time defending champion, will face Vietnam, which is playing in its first Women’s World Cup.

Here’s a schedule and a scorecard.

For more: Sign up for our daily newsletter briefing from the competition, and listen to a podcast from The Athletic.

Iraqi protesters set fire to Sweden’s embassy

Hundreds of protesters stormed Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad yesterday morning, setting fire to parts of it. (Here’s a video.) The unrest was the latest to ripple from a protest last month in Stockholm, where an Iraqi refugee tore up and burned a Quran outside the central mosque on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Sweden said no embassy staff were harmed. Later in the day, two protesters outside Iraq’s embassy in Stockholm kicked around copies of the Quran and stomped on a replica of Iraq’s flag. In response, Iraq severed diplomatic relations.

Details: Yesterday’s protest was staged at the urging of Muqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shiite cleric, who said that Sweden was “hostile” to Islam.

Free speech? Sweden has struggled with whether to allow protests involving the burning of the Quran, which have heightened diplomatic tensions during the country’s bid to join NATO.

Assault video highlights India’s ethnic conflicts

A violent video went viral in India on Wednesday, bringing renewed attention to bloody ethnic clashes in the northeastern state of Manipur, where two communities have essentially been at war over access to government benefits.

In the video, two women were assaulted and paraded naked down a street by a mob. It took more than two months for word of the shocking sexual assault to spread, partly because the internet in the region had been shut down — an increasingly common tactic used to restrict the flow of information in India.

The assault shocked the nation, further inflamed tensions and brought renewed attention to a conflict that has left more than 130 people dead and over 35,000 displaced. It also led to Prime Minister Narendra Modi making his first public comments about what he called a “shameful incident.”

Details: The mob raped one woman and killed her brother as he tried to protect her, according to a police complaint. Many in the mob were Meitei people, who form a narrow majority in Manipur. The victims were from a community of people known as Kukis.

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Golden retrievers and their human fans come to the Scottish Highlands every five years to celebrate the breed’s founding. This year’s gathering was the largest yet: 488 dogs showed up.

One man, whose last golden had just died, made the trip anyway. “I’m an addict,” he said, “and this is where I come to get me fix.”

Lives lived: Dermot Doran, an Irish priest, was a linchpin of the 1968 Biafran airlift in Nigeria, one of history’s largest civilian humanitarian efforts. He died at 88.

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ARTS AND IDEAS

Barbenheimer is here: Brace yourself

The moment is finally upon us, moviegoers: In one corner, we have “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s three-hour biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb.” In the other, we have “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s Day-Glo feminist-magical realist take on Mattel IP.

Our critic, Manohla Dargis, reviewed them both. She found Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of Oppenheimer to be a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms. And Gerwig figures out “Barbie,” Manohla writes, by “vibing on joy, tapping into nostalgia, and, for the most part, dodging the thorny contradictions and the criticisms that cling to the doll.”

Hype aside, the real test is the box office: Both films open in the U.S. today. The toy-based comedy is expected to draw $100 million this weekend, and the biopic about half that. How do you choose between these two chisel-cheeked midcentury marvels? Take our quiz.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

This cucumber salad with roasted peanuts is easy to make, but far from basic.

The second season of “Creamerie,” an apocalyptic comedy series from New Zealand, is full of violent payback and raunchy wit.

Copenhagen brims with innovative design, creative food and stunning architecture. Here’s how to spend a weekend in the Danish capital.

Play the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Beam of sunlight (three letters).

Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. Enjoy your weekend! — Amelia

P.S. Natasha Frost, who does not speak Yiddish, wrote about the joys and challenges of reporting on a Yiddish-only gathering outside Melbourne, Australia.

“The Daily” is about extreme heat in Arizona.

We’d like your feedback! Write to us at briefing@nytimes.com.

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