Your Monday Evening Briefing

December 16, 2019

Your Monday Evening Briefing

By victoria shannon and hiroko masuike

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

1. Boeing will stop 737 Max production.

The temporary suspension is the latest fallout from the two crashes that killed 346 people. The 737 Max has been grounded for nine months, unable to win approval to fly from global regulators.

Boeing said it would redeploy the workers building the Max to other projects, avoiding layoffs for the time being. But the decision “will have enormous ripple effects,” said an employment analyst. Above, Boeing’s assembly line in Renton, Wash.

The Max is Boeing’s most important product, representing tens of billions of dollars in annual sales. The shutdown is likely to send shocks through the economy, affecting suppliers around the country and plunging the company deeper into crisis.

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Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

2. President Trump “betrayed the nation by abusing his high office,” the House Judiciary Committee said.

It published a 658-page report that presents its case for impeaching the president, a document that echoes those produced for the impeachments of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Above, Mr. Trump today at the White House.

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Included in the report is a scathing 20-page dissent from Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, the committee’s top Republican. He accuses the panel’s Democrats of conducting an unfair process out of dislike for the president and his policies.

The House is expected to vote on the impeachment on Wednesday, setting in motion a trial in the Senate early next year that few expect will result in the removal of Mr. Trump from office.

Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

3. Moderate Democrats face blowback, no matter how they vote.

After word this weekend that Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat representing a conservative New Jersey district, had decided to become a Republican, nearly all of his Washington staff resigned in protest.

A Republican running for his seat called him a weasel who was not to be trusted, while a Democratic foe labeled him a traitor. He’s pictured above in October.

After Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan, said she would vote to impeach President Trump, dozens of people bearing “Impeach Slotkin, Keep Trump” signs shouted down the first-term congresswoman at a packed town hall-style meeting.

Reuters

4. Deadly protests spread across India.

Demonstrations against a citizenship bill that would give special treatment to non-Muslim migrants have become a serious challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party, which espouses a Hindu-centric worldview.

Mr. Modi’s government has responded to days of protests with troops, internet shutdowns and curfews. Several people have been killed as the police cracked down.

Most of the demonstrators, like those being confronted at a university above, fear that the government intends to marginalize the country’s 200 million Muslims. But some in the country’s vast Hindu majority also fear that a flood of migrants could dilute their culture and compete for resources.

Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press

5. Free on bail, after six murder trials on the same charge.

Curtis Flowers, above center today, will have a taste of freedom for the first time in 23 years while Mississippi prosecutors decide whether to try him a seventh time in the killings of four people in a furniture store he had been fired from.

So far, he’s gotten no verdict or verdicts that were overturned. With his most recent conviction thrown out by the Supreme Court because black jurors were kept off the panel, a judge set bail today at $250,000. An anonymous donor is covering the percentage required for Mr. Flowers’s release.

The case is familiar to those who’ve been listening to American Public Media’s podcast “In the Dark,” which chipped away at key elements of the prosecution’s case.

Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

6. Boris Johnson’s battle with the BBC is getting more serious.

The BBC has long been one of Britain’s most revered institutions, but the prime minister has found much to criticize, even referring to it as “the Brexit Bashing Corporation.”

Now his Conservative government, emboldened by last week’s electoral victory, is boycotting one of its tough radio programs and ordering a review of its main source of revenue: the license fee charged to the country’s television owners.

And our Interpreter column examines how the British electoral system led to the Conservatives’ triumph at the polls. Like the U.S., it doesn’t use a proportional voting system, often to the detriment of smaller political parties.

Ohio State Highway Patrol

7. A little-known gas-well blowout in Ohio last year was one of the largest U.S. methane leaks ever recorded — releasing as much methane as the entire oil and gas industries of many nations do in a year.

A Dutch-American team of scientists said its findings, confirmed by a satellite designed to hunt such leaks, reinforce the view that methane releases could be far more widespread than previously thought.

It also marks a step forward in using space technology to detect methane — a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming — from oil and gas sites worldwide.

NOAA

8. Weather advisories are blanketing more than 60 million Americans.

A wide-ranging storm system is sweeping east from Montana and Nebraska. It’s forecast to bring severe winter weather to Colorado, the Midwest, Pennsylvania and up through Boston, as well as possible tornadoes to Louisiana and central Mississippi.

Some areas around Indianapolis and St. Louis are already reeling under several inches of snow from the weekend.

Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press

9. The most destructive invasive species in the U.S.?

That would be feral pigs, many experts say. Wild porkers can do remarkable damage — upward of $1.5 billion annually — wrecking crops and hunting birds and amphibians to near extinction, and very occasionally killing humans.

Their range is expanding from 17 mainly Southern states to 38 states, often, apparently, with the help of sport hunters. And there are populations in Canada that appear ready to move south. (They survive in snow by burrowing out “pigloos.”)

Should the hogs cross the border, wildlife officials plan to hunt them by plane with night-vision goggles and thermal-imaging scopes.

Kamran Jebreili/Associated Press

10. And finally, a 1994 hit just made No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart.

Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” completed the longest ever trip to the top.

It’s the first Christmas track to take the spot since “The Chipmunk Song” 60 years ago, and the singer’s first No. 1 since 2008. Above, she performed in Dubai in October.

“Every year we focus a campaign around new ways to market ‘All I Want for Christmas,’” said Rob Stringer, the chairman of Sony Music Group, “because the opportunities for people to hear this perennial classic just seem to grow and grow.”

Have a holly jolly evening.

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