Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.
Trump said he reached a deal over the future of GreenlandPresident Trump took the stage today in a room full of world leaders and demanded that the U.S. assume ownership of Greenland. He issued several explicit and implicit threats if his wishes were not granted. “All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland,” the president said during a lengthy speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Hours later, after meeting with Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, Trump said he had reached a framework agreement over the future of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. As a result, he dropped his threat to impose tariffs on countries that refused to heed his territorial demands. The exact details of the agreement were unclear. But Trump’s announcement followed a NATO meeting where top military officers discussed a compromise in which Denmark would give the U.S. sovereignty over small pockets of Greenland where the U.S. could build military bases, according to officials familiar with the discussion. When asked directly about whether the U.S. would own Greenland under the deal, Trump declined to elaborate. However, he said that the agreement “gets us everything we needed to get.” In related news:
Justices seem likely to reject Trump’s Fed firing effortAfter two hours of lively arguments today, a majority of Supreme Court justices appeared poised to halt Trump’s attempt to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board. Conservative justices, who have repeatedly allowed the president to oust leaders of other independent agencies, questioned whether the allegations against Cook were serious enough to allow the president to remove her. Accepting the president’s view, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, would “weaken, if not shatter, the independence of the Federal Reserve.” The justices appeared likely to return the case to the lower courts, pausing the president’s broader goal of remaking the Fed. Here are the biggest takeaways from the hearing.
A harsh winter storm is looming across the U.S.A potent winter storm is expected to sweep across a large swath of the U.S. at the end of this week. But where the worst of it will hit is still unclear. Winter storm watches are in place from New Mexico, Oklahoma and Central Texas through much of Tennessee, as well as in Arkansas, southern Kansas and northern Louisiana. Sleet and freezing rain may move from the southern Plains through to the Carolinas. The region from the southern Rockies and the Plains and east through the Mid-Atlantic could see lots of snow. Cold air is expected to surge into the Southeast tomorrow, ahead of snow and ice from Friday into the weekend. Here’s what we know.
A cheating scandal has rocked an Olympic sportJust weeks before the start of the Olympics, a cheating scandal has cast a cloud over the ski jumping team from Norway, a country that has dominated the Winter Games for a century. After the release of incriminating footage by a whistle-blower, two former coaches and a former suit technician for the team admitted to conspiring to manipulate the suits of top jumpers, making the crotches more aerodynamic. Matthew Futterman of The Athletic joined the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast to walk through the bizarre details. Watch it here. More top news
In this video, the author Jonathan Haidt joins “Hard Fork” to discuss new research about teens and social media. (It’s free to watch.)
A beloved Paris cinema gets a second lifeThe movie theater La Clef was, for years, considered one of Paris’s leading art-house movie theaters. But audiences dwindled as streaming became more popular. In 2018, it closed its doors. A handful of former employees wouldn’t accept that fate. They squatted in the building for years and eventually raised enough money from the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese to buy the building and reopen this month. La Clef now bills itself as Paris’s only volunteer-run cinema, with no fixed ticket prices and entry by donation.
Try our new word gameMy colleagues at New York Times Games just released Crossplay, a two-player word game in which you and a friend (or anyone from around the world) take turns building off each other’s words, earning points and competing to win. It’s available now on the new Crossplay app, which you can download here. Once you’ve got the hang of it, check out Cross Bot, a tool that analyzes your play and guides you through strategies to sharpen your skills.
Dinner table topics
Cook: Crisp up some gnocchi and toss in some sausage and peas. It’s delicious. Watch: “Oh, Hi!” is one of this month’s top under-the-radar streaming gems. Read: Two new books trace the rise of vigilante violence. Listen: Our critics recommend these gloriously nonsensical songs. Carry: The top-handle bag is a 1930s design that never went out of style. Test yourself: Take our quiz |
