Good morning. We’ve got the latest on the devastating forest fires in Europe. And the war in Iran is entering its sixth month. That’s below.

I’m going to start, though, in Cuba.

The Cuban way

Six months ago, President Trump predicted that Cuba would soon be ruined. He had just taken control of Venezuela’s oil, a lifeline for the island, and blockaded all other fuel sources. “It’s just going to fall,” he told reporters.

Jack Nicas, who covers the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico for The Times, recently traveled to Cuba to report on the state of the island. With him were Alex Pena, a video journalist, and Lisette Poole González, a photographer. Jack and Alex were there on the first journalism visas Cuba had granted to The Times in seven years.

As our journalists discovered, even amid Cuba’s worst ever energy crisis, with mass blackouts plaguing the electrical grid, the Cuban government — and the Cuban people — are still standing. “After a week on the ground,” they write, “we found that while Cubans are clearly suffering, they are also doing what perhaps they do best: adapting.”

Out: those gas-guzzling Chevys they’ve kept running since the Communist revolution. In: electric rickshaws from China. Cubans are importing big lithium batteries to run appliances during blackouts and installing solar panels on roofs to charge them. Amateur mechanics all over the country are jury-rigging generators to run on more accessible natural gas.

One farmer even devised a tiny backyard refinery to make gasoline out of shredded plastic, fuel for his motorcycle and cook stove. “Cubans thrive amid crisis,” he told Jack.

On the ground

Yesterday, I reached out to Jack to ask him a couple of questions about his reporting and the team’s experience on the ground. Stories and videos from their trip to Cuba appear on our website today, and tomorrow and Thursday as well.

Sam: I want to ask you about that farmer you met, the one making his own gasoline. Did you see a lot of that kind of ingenuity in Cuba?

Jack: One of the most important words in the Cuban lexicon is “resolver.” It literally means “to solve,” but in Cuba, after decades of a U.S. trade embargo, it really means “to figure things out by any means necessary.”

It explains how Cubans put Soviet engines into 1950s American cars to keep them running or ate breaded grapefruit rinds to imitate meat during their economic crisis following the fall of the Soviet Union.

And now they’re resolviendo again. We saw a lot of creativity during our trip across Cuba. People drilled solar panels to the tops of electric rickshaws. They are using lithium batteries to power concerts. There are even stories of people powering their cars with charcoal and cooking oil.

As a result, the country is still functioning, despite the hardship.

Sam: What was your reception in the country like? It’s been a long time since the Cuban government has allowed Times journalists to report there.

Jack: Everywhere we turned there were stories, and the Cuban people were eager to tell them. We spoke to dozens of people in Havana and beyond who wanted to express their frustration and exhaustion with the status quo. It was a mixed bag on whom they blamed. Some saw the Cuban government at fault for failed economic policies and political repression, while others believed Trump was making them suffer for his own personal gain. Many blamed both.

Sam: How hard was it to get your visa? Did government minders follow you around?

Jack: It took a lot of convincing to get. I met with top Cuban diplomats in Mexico City, Havana, Washington and New York over six months, and sent many letters, to persuade them that we would tell this story fairly. Once we got to Havana to report, we met with Cuban officials a few times, but they otherwise didn’t bother us. We traveled around freely, decided our story targets and chose whom we interviewed.

Read the team’s first dispatch here. And watch Jack in the field in the video below. Click to play.

TODAY’S WORD

Pyrocumulonimbus

— That is a giant, fire-generated thunderstorm that forms above an intense heat source like a wildfire or a volcano. Also known as a fire cloud, it can produce lightning, which can spark more fires, and generate high and unpredictable winds, which fan flames and spread embers. Officials say the clouds have been an “unprecedented” feature of the devastating fires in France this past week.

• About 100 people died in Guyana when a state-run ferry capsized this month.

• The police in Europe said that Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, had quietly made it more difficult to track down scammers and fight money laundering.

• A police officer who spent nine years enforcing China’s repression campaign against Uyghurs is seeking asylum in Germany, claiming that he is also a victim of the state policy.

Crime

Other Big Stories

OPINIONS

Did Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” modernize Odysseus for our times? Yes — and that’s disappointing, Maureen Dowd writes. Yes — and it’s what we deserve, B.D. McClay writes.

Consider adopting the life of a tradwife, at least a little bit, JoAnna Novak writes.

MORNING READS

Reclaiming a ritual: New Zealand’s British colonial rulers outlawed traditional Maori tattoos. Now, young people are embracing the art form.

In Montana: A nurse on a hike trekked 10 miles to safety after impaling himself on a hiking pole. You won’t believe this photo.

Weeknight dinners don’t have to take up all of the weeknight. Sometimes I’ll grab a rotisserie chicken on my way home from work, rinse some rice, get it into the rice cooker and let time do its thing. I add some chopped nuts and dried fruit to the grains when they’re finished and carve the chicken — dinner is served. That’s what we call a no-recipe recipe. Try it!

A decade after Johnny Depp’s Hollywood career went south — dragged down by a long and public legal fight with his ex-wife Amber Heard, in which each accused the other of abuse — Paramount Pictures believes audiences are ready to re-embrace him. The studio has made Depp the star of its forthcoming Thanksgiving film, “Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol.”

“The master of misfits returns,” the film’s teaser trailer declares, then cuts to Depp, made up and costumed as Ebenezer Scrooge. He rasps: “It’s good to be back.”

More on culture

• Lindsay Zoladz, a Times pop music critic, has a banger of a review for the new Charli XCX album, “Music, Fashion, Film.” She calls it “proudly prickly,” “satisfyingly scuzzy” and “brief, barbed and unrepentantly personal.” The whole thing’s just a delight to read.

• Most ballet slippers are manufactured in a pale pink. But New York City Ballet’s repertoire requires a rainbow of colors. Meet the Picasso of pointe shoes.

• Late night hosts mocked Trump’s speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS

Read Ismail Muhammad’s essay in The Times Magazine about how Colson Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy has turned away from the pessimism of his earlier novels to offer a more hopeful vision for Black history.

Get a facial, the Well team says. Get one regularly. Among other things, it’s a good way to get rid of stress.

Stop using nonstick pans. One fanatical Wirecutter writer tested roughly one gajillion of them to discover that, eventually, they all start to fail. Embrace stainless steel or cast iron instead.

GAMES