Russia-Ukraine, Boris Johnson, Lunar New Year: Your Monday Evening Briefing

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Good night. Right here’s the newest on the finish of Monday.

1. The U.S. and Russia engaged in a public diplomatic brawl on the U.N. Safety Council over the Ukraine disaster.

“The scenario we face in Europe is pressing and harmful,” mentioned Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador. “Russia’s actions strike on the very coronary heart of the U.N. constitution.” Russia objected to having the meeting at all, calling it “an try to mislead the worldwide group” and an instance of “megaphone diplomacy.”

The assembly of 15 nations, requested by the U.S., represented the highest-profile enviornment for the 2 powers to sway world opinion over Ukraine. As anticipated, it adjourned with no motion taken.

The U.S. has mentioned {that a} Ukraine invasion would set off extreme monetary sanctions for Russia. There are big risks that would result in global repercussions. In the meantime, a wave of bomb threats throughout Ukraine has intensified an already anxious temper.

2. A choose rejected a plea deal from two of the three white males dealing with federal hate-crimes prices for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.

Travis McMichael, 36, and his father, Gregory McMichael, had agreed to plead guilty, admitting for the primary time that they’d attacked Arbery, who was Black, due to his race. However the choose rejected the settlement that the boys had reached with the Division of Justice due to strenuous opposition from Arbery’s household, who objected to the truth that it allowed them to spend 30 years in federal jail, slightly than in state jail.

Arbery’s mom, Wanda Cooper-Jones, denounced the federal prosecutors. “They went behind my again. I’m completely, completely upset. My nervousness is over the roof,” she mentioned.

The McMichaels and a 3rd man had been discovered responsible of homicide in November. The federal hate-crimes trial is scheduled to start subsequent week in Brunswick, Ga.

3. A extremely anticipated report described management failures within the workplace of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and extreme office ingesting.

The report discovered that Downing Avenue held parties that breached pandemic lockdowns, throughout a interval when the federal government was urging the general public to keep away from socializing. The report didn’t instantly implicate Johnson in wrongdoing, leaving that judgment to a separate police investigation. Which will give him some political respiratory room.

In different pandemic information:

4. Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Celebration is dealing with new strains.

The previous president has left little doubt about his intentions — plotting an influential position within the 2022 midterm elections and one other potential White Home run. However shifts in polls of Republicans, disagreements on endorsements and jeers over Covid vaccines hint at tensions between Trump and the right-wing motion he spawned.

Individually, the Biden administration plans to resume enforcing mercury limits for coal-burning vegetation that had been weakened below Trump. The toxin is linked to developmental injury in kids.

5. Athletes and journalists arriving in China for the Olympics are encountering a number of the most intense safety measures ever imposed at a world sporting occasion.

A lot of these are precautions in opposition to Covid, however others mirror the Chinese language authorities’s growing intolerance of dissent and criticism, rounding up activists and shutting down social media accounts forward of the Video games that start on Friday. Whether or not any Olympic members, together with athletes, might be keen or capable of communicate out on points the federal government deems objectionable stays a query.

However first, these athletes, journalists and different members must get there. Name these the Logistics Video games, as a result of no Olympics in historical past have been this hard to put on, get to or be at.

Additionally out of China: A video of a mentally in poor health lady who appeared to have been chained up by her household has drawn outrage on social media.

6. How do you flip a 68,000-person social networking large right into a metaverse firm?

Fb’s determination to rebrand as Meta, an organization that will introduce individuals to shared digital worlds and experiences, has led to some of the most drastic changes at the Silicon Valley company in a decade. The outcome has been inner disruption and uncertainty, in accordance with former Meta staff.

Some staff questioned whether or not the corporate was hurtling into a brand new product with out fixing points corresponding to misinformation and extremism on its social platforms.

In different tech information, Spotify has confronted calls to take motion after the podcast host Joe Rogan was accused of selling Covid-19 misinformation on his present. However that is completely different from most different clashes between creators and tech platforms, our tech columnist writes.

7. An inheritor to a Texas oil fortune was fascinated with one of many biggest puzzles within the historical past of arithmetic. His personal assist for analysis may have helped solve it.

Fermat’s final theorem, penned by the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat, has baffled specialists for greater than 300 years. Then a genius toiled in secret for seven years to resolve it, making his feat public within the early Nineteen Nineties. (The method used for end-to-end encryption helped crack the code.)

Now, James Vaughn, a rich Texas philanthropist, is recounting how his monetary assist created a group of Fermat innovators that over many years made Andrew Wiles’s breakthrough potential.

8. Two quarterbacks who had been No. 1 draft picks are set to face off within the final sport of the N.F.L. season.

Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow and Los Angeles’s Matthew Stafford both survived close calls on Sunday to get to the Tremendous Bowl on Feb. 13. Burrow led the Bengals to a second-half comeback in opposition to Kansas Metropolis, ending a 31-year-old playoff drought. The Rams superior to their second Tremendous Bowl since 2018 after getting previous San Francisco.

The Tremendous Bowl might be performed on the Rams’ stadium, SoFi Stadium, in Inglewood, Calif. The halftime present — with performances from Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar — will feature 115 professional paid dancers. However some skilled dancers had been requested to work unpaid, prompting outrage over how business dancers who work with main artists are undervalued.

9. It’s Lunar New 12 months. Prepare for some fruit.

Eating and giving fruit is a customized that many Asian households follow for the Lunar New 12 months. Oranges and pomelos are mentioned to deliver wealth and prosperity; for good luck, dragon fruit or star fruit is favored. A present of fruit reveals “they’re desirous about you and look after you and love you,” mentioned Randy Su, 22, of Toronto.

This 12 months, the vacation will fall on Tuesday, because the moon enters a brand new section and ushers within the 12 months of the Tiger. For a lot of, the inaugural feast commences tonight. Here are eight recipes for a better year ahead.

10. And at last, Los Angeles’s city fishermen.

Centuries in the past, within the areas that are actually the again sides of strip malls and housing developments, the Tongva individuals lived alongside the Los Angeles River and relied on fishing for meals. After Spanish colonists arrived in 1781, the river additionally served as the first water supply for the Pueblo de los Ángeles.

At the moment, it’s extra harking back to an oversize storm drain than a river. Which makes the act of fishing in Los Angeles appear nearly defiant: a tranquil exercise in opposition to a backdrop of concrete, litter and overpasses. The photographer Madeline Tolle spent quite a lot of time there final winter and got here throughout many fishermen searching for a little bit of respite. Take a look.

Have a calming evening.

Angela Jimenez compiled photographs for this briefing.

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