Impeachment, Cleveland Browns, Narwhal
Your Friday Evening Briefing |
Good evening. Here’s the latest. |
 | | Doug Mills/The New York Times |
|
1. The second day of impeachment hearings ramped up the drama as the former ambassador to Ukraine painted a striking account of her ouster and offered a damning indictment of foreign policy in the Trump era. |
Marie Yovanovitch told impeachment investigators she was “shocked, appalled, devastated” that President Trump insulted her in a call with another foreign leader. She described how she had been the target of a smear campaign orchestrated by Rudolph Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, that would push her out of her job. |
Mr. Trump reinforced Ms. Yovanovitch’s narrative by attacking her on Twitter at the very moment she was testifying about his veiled threat that she would “go through some things.” |
Representative Adam Schiff interrupted the hearing to read the tweet: “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Mr. Trump wrote in part, blaming her presence as a junior diplomat in Somalia for instability in that country. |
Democrats said the president’s comments were clear attempts by Mr. Trump to intimidate a crucial witness in the impeachment inquiry. |
“Some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously,” Mr. Schiff said. |
 | | Doug Mills/The New York Times |
|
2. Not far from the impeachment hearing on Capitol Hill, a verdict was reached in the Roger Stone trial. The former aide and longtime friend of President Trump was found guilty in a case that revived the saga of Russia’s efforts to help Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. |
Mr. Stone, 67, was charged with lying to the House Intelligence Committee, trying to block the testimony of another potential witness and concealing reams of evidence from investigators. |
Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 6. |
 | | Sarah Rice for The New York Times |
|
If elected, she would significantly expand public health insurance coverage as a first step, and promised to pass a “Medicare for all” system by the end of her third year in office that would cover all Americans. |
And what will become of the Democratic Party’s moderate wing with the late entry of Deval Patrick and Michael Bloomberg? Though they face long odds, Mr. Patrick and Mr. Bloomberg have already unnerved the other candidates. |
 | | David Walter Banks for The New York Times |
|
4. It wasn’t a lockdown drill. |
“Parents told me that the school’s alert systems worked properly and that they were regularly updated about the incident by text,” our correspondent Jill Cowan said. “Students said that they knew from drills to barricade themselves inside their classrooms, and that their teachers were capable leaders.” |
The police have not identified a motive for the shooting and have declined to name the 16-year-old suspect because he is a minor. Here’s the latest. |
 | | Cleveland.Com Joshua Gunter/Cleveland.com, via Associated Press |
|
5. The Cleveland Browns star Myles Garrett was suspended indefinitely for pulling off the helmet of a rival quarterback and bashing it on his head. |
The suspension is the longest for any player for a single on-field episode. The N.F.L. said Garrett must reapply for reinstatement next year. |
“I lost my cool and what I did was selfish and unacceptable,” Garrett said afterward. “I know that we are all responsible for our actions and I can only prove my true character through my actions moving forward.” |
On Saturday, Colin Kaepernick will audition for the N.F.L. for the first time in three years. But he has arguably more power off the field than when he was as a player. So why go back? |
 | | Nick Wagner/Austin American-Statesman, via Associated Press |
|
Mr. Reed, 51, was scheduled for execution on Wednesday for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites. The case has received intense attention in recent weeks as celebrities and lawmakers have called on Gov. Greg Abbott to intervene. |
Mr. Reed’s lawyers have argued previously that the state’s forensic investigators made critical errors regarding the timeline of the killing, which some investigators later admitted in affidavits. |
 | | Dave Sanders for The New York Times |
|
On Mechanical Turk, scores of thousands of people earn pennies doing tasks that computers cannot yet easily do: transcribing an invoice, taking part in a study or labeling photographs to train an artificial intelligence program. |
The weird, wild and low-wage world of MTurk, as it is known, “is a sloppy, shoddy free-for-all,” Andy Newman writes. One paper published last year found that the median turker’s hourly wage was $1.77. Amazon has ignored turkers’ pleas to mandate higher wages, and even finds ways to recoup some of the pennies turkers earn. |
 | | Clockwise from top left: Andrew Cooper/Sony Pictures; Casi Moss/A24; Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.; 20th Century Fox; Wilson Webb/Columbia Pictures; Wilson Webb/Netflix |
|
8. And the nominees might be… |
Mr. Scorsese’s “The Irishman” is playing in theaters for just three weeks before taking up permanent residence on Netflix. Is it a sign of things to come? Will streaming kill the art of cinema or grant it new life? One of our film critics debates…himself on the subject. |
 | | Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. |
|
9. We’re back with more Thanksgiving content and ideas. |
 | | Tyler Graef/The Southeast Missourian, via Associated Press |
|
The rescue mutt, named for a marine mammal with a single tusk that sticks out of its face, gained viral fame this week with his miniature tail flopping between his eyes (no, it doesn’t wag on its own). Narwhal is very cute. But the likeliest explanation of how the extra tail came to be — not so cute. |
The tail is probably Narwhal’s parasitic twin, one expert said. Identical twins are very rare in dogs, so a dog with a parasitic twin is “really super, super rare,” one veterinary said. Another expert called it a development gone awry, but added, “I’ve seen a lot weirder.” |
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. |
And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing. Sign up here to get it by email in the Australian, Asian, European, African or American morning. |
