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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.
1. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met face-to-face for the first time in more than two weeks.
In Istanbul both sides put forward concessions that could be the first steps toward a draft peace agreement. Russia said it would “drastically” reduce its military activity around the capital, Kyiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv. The West greeted the pledge with skepticism.
Ukraine for the first time proposed negotiations on the status of Crimea, which would take place over a period of 15 years. Ukrainian officials also outlined potential concessions over territory that Ukraine is all but certain to have lost to Russia, and a willingness to adopt a neutral status — including not joining NATO or hosting Western troops — in exchange for international “security guarantees.”
2. There is growing evidence that a tweet from former President Donald Trump served as a crucial call to action for groups storming the capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
On Dec. 19, 2020, the president publicly urged supporters to come to Washington on the day Congress was scheduled to certify the Electoral College results. His message — which concluded with, “Be there, will be wild!” — was a powerful catalyst for action, particularly for far-right militants, according to federal prosecutors and congressional investigators.
After the tweet, court filings show, extremists began to set up encrypted communications channels, acquire protective gear and, in one case, prepare heavily armed “quick reaction forces” to be staged outside Washington.
3. Federal regulators authorized second booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines for everyone 50 and older and some immunocompromised people.
The move came after the Biden administration decided that it would seek to bolster waning immunity among older Americans in case the virus sweeps the nation again in the coming months.
The F.D.A. said that those who are eligible can get the additional shot at least four months after their first booster. The C.D.C. said it would update its vaccine guidance to reflect the F.D.A.’s actions.
4. For decades, the U.S. real estate and insurance industries have helped prolong an epidemic of lead poisoning.
An investigation by The New York Times found that insurance companies across the country excluded lead from their policies — declining to pay out when children were poisoned on properties they covered. At the same time, property owners have found ways to legally distance themselves from problematic rentals, increasingly using L.L.C.s to hide assets and identities.
The cost for millions of children is incalculable. Currently, about 500,000 children under the age of 6 in the U.S. have elevated lead levels in their blood, which can cause irreversible damage to the brain and nervous system.
5. Hillsong, a global church that was the leading edge of cool Christianity, is losing its footing in America.
It was one the world’s largest and most influential evangelical churches, with a quickly expanding network whose stylish preachers and upbeat atmosphere appealed to young people and city dwellers. Celebrities like Justin Bieber and Kevin Durant attended services, and one of the church’s worship bands won a Grammy Award.
But amid a series of crises — including the resignation of its leader after an internal investigation found that he behaved inappropriately toward two women — the evangelical powerhouse has lost nine of its 16 American church campuses in just a few weeks.
6. Moderate drinking may not be as good for your heart as once thought.
A new study from Britain has found that there is no level of drinking that does not confer heart disease risk. The risk is small if people consume an average of seven drinks a week, compared with none. But it increases quickly as alcohol consumption rises.
Some researchers have reported that drinking modestly protects the heart because moderate drinkers, as a group, have less heart disease than those who drink heavily or those who abstain. But the reason, according to the new research, is that moderate drinkers tend to have other characteristics that decrease their risk, like smoking less, exercising more and weighing less than heavy drinkers or nondrinkers.
7. Hundreds of entrepreneurs who live in public housing in New York City are in urgent need of support, according to a new report.
The analysis, by the nonprofit Center for an Urban Future, said that the economic fallout of the pandemic had spurred a turn to entrepreneurship. The new entrepreneurs included a cadre of New York City Housing Authority residents. But the city’s small-business assistance programs have been unsuccessful at reaching many of these residents, the report revealed
Nationally, job openings remained near record levels, and the number of workers voluntarily leaving their positions increased last month, the Labor Department said today.
8. “I don’t think that it’s overdoing it to identify that blemish as a tragic drama,” Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris writes of the Oscars slap.
Will Smith, Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith are part of a cultural family, Morris writes: It hurt to watch them feud; hurt to witness someone experience a private episode that we should never have seen; hurt to watch a recognition of Black achievement marred by tastelessness and pique.
And there was still an hour left. “That was shocking, too,” Morris writes. “The show just … went on.”
Smith apologized to Rock on Monday for slapping him. “I was out of line and I was wrong,” he wrote on Instagram.
The community college programs cater to students who want to secure steady jobs in restaurants for a fraction of the cost of elite culinary institutions. They can be a critical resource for restaurants in desperate need of line cooks and other skilled workers, as well as for students seeking to start a career without running up big debts.
“They are learning how to work in the real kitchens that most restaurants in the U.S. are, rather than being trained to just work at the top echelon of restaurants,” said Mina Park, an owner of the Korean restaurant Shiku in Los Angeles.
10. And finally, the ice volcanoes of Pluto.
A careful analysis of data from the New Horizons spacecraft found evidence of cryovolcanoes, or frigid mountains that could spew ice lava instead of molten rock. (An icy lava eruption has never been witnessed, but it may extrude from the cryovolcano as a mucilaginous, Silly Putty-like mass.)
Possible cryovolcanic features have been spotted throughout the solar system, but they are difficult to explain on Pluto. If the team that published the study is correct, their findings give credence to the hypothesis that present-day Pluto is an ocean world, however improbable that may seem for a tiny, icy orb so far from the sun.
Have a chill evening.
Angela Jimenez compiled photos for this briefing.