Your Thursday Evening Briefing

December 12, 2019

Your Thursday Evening Briefing

By remy tumin and marcus payadue

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Pete Marovich for The New York Times

1. The House Judiciary Committee is preparing to take the historic step of approving articles of impeachment that charge President Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The vote, expected later tonight, will be the culmination of two days of raucous debate during which Republicans denounced the process and repeatedly tried to kill the articles. The matter then heads to the full House for approval next week, the final step before a Senate trial.

Leading up to the vote, The Times was granted rare access to photograph their impeachment preparations, takeout food included.

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Hannah Mckay/Reuters

2. Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party appear set to win a large majority in Parliament, a usually reliable exit poll shows, clearing the way for Brexit by January.

The voting is over, and final results are expected within hours in an election consequential for the country, the E.U. and the world. We have live updates here.

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A victory would cement Mr. Johnson’s claim to 10 Downing Street and push forward his plan for an aggressive exit from the bloc by the end of January. According to the exit poll, the Conservatives are projected to win 368 seats in the House of Commons, versus 191 for the Labour Party.

Jorge Silva/Reuters

3. Members of New Zealand’s military recovered the bodies of six people killed in a volcanic eruption this week.

The team needed to work fast: The volcano, New Zealand’s most active, could have erupted again at any time. The police said the operation took longer than expected because of the team’s heavy safety gear. Here’s the latest.

Health officials, for their part, are dealing with a different kind of crisis: a shortage of skin for emergency grafts. At least 26 of the 31 victims suffered burns to more than 30 percent of their bodies, doctors said.

Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

4. The New Jersey kosher market rampage is being investigated as domestic terrorism “with a hate crime bias.”

New Jersey’s attorney general confirmed that investigators believe the assailants, David Anderson and Francine Graham, held views that “reflected hatred of the Jewish people, as well as a hatred of law enforcement.” Both were killed in a long firefight on Tuesday.

A rambling religious manifesto was found inside their rental van. Mr. Anderson, a follower of the fringe Black Hebrew Israelite movement, had published anti-Semitic posts online.

Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

5. The U.S. and China settled on terms of an initial trade deal, according to four people with knowledge of the developments.

The first phase would include Chinese commitments to purchase U.S. agricultural products and other concessions. Neither China nor President Trump has confirmed the deal, but Mr. Trump is expected to delay or cancel new tariffs scheduled to go into effect on $160 billion of consumer goods on Sunday. Above, outside an Apple store in Beijing this week.

Our reporters also took a look at how the Fed lost its faith in “full employment.” Officials at the central bank believed the labor market was about as good as it could get. This chart explains how wrong they were.

Jonah M. Kessel and Hiroko Tabuchi, both/The New York Times

6. Methane is a vast, invisible climate menace. We made it visible.

A Times visual investigation exposes “super emitters” of methane, a major contributor to global warming, as some of the same companies try to weaken restrictions.

Two of our journalists boarded a tiny plane crammed with scientific instruments and circled above the oil and gas sites that dot the Permian Basin in Texas, an oil field bigger than Kansas. In just a few hours, they identified six sites with unusually high methane emissions.

Images of the clouds of methane were then captured using a powerful infrared camera, like above at DCP Pegasus gas processing plant in West Texas.

Anastasiia Sapon for The New York Times

7. Football’s latest rivalry is in the lab.

A Stanford engineering professor is trying to build a helmet that will prevent trauma-related brain disease, known as C.T.E. It’s filled with water and oil (really). “Think of this as a hydraulic shock absorber,” he said.

But neuroscientists at Boston University say he doesn’t understand the human brain. “My fear is that a better helmet will give false reassurance,” a psychiatrist and C.T.E. researcher said.

Separately, 10 former N.F.L. players, including Clinton Portis of the Redskins, were accused of reaping $3.4 million in a fraud scheme involving phony medical claims.

Clockwise from left: Alex Welsh for The New York Times; Matthew Stockman via Getty Images; Nina Westervelt for The New York Times

8. Young women blurring genres, global artists pushing boundaries and a rapper playing with a meme: These are among the most exciting tracks of the year.

Two of our music critics rounded up their 54 favorite tracks. At the top is Lizzo’s “Cuz I Love You,” whose “wholehearted take on an old-fashioned, orchestral soul ballad tosses around profanities as she belts it to the rafters,” they write (and include a Spotify playlist).

In other music news, ASAP Rocky returned to Stockholm for the first time since he was convicted over his part in a street brawl. The raucous arena show featured a fake jail and court case-themed merchandise.

NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

9. Today in space:

A NASA spacecraft has spent a year mapping an asteroid named Bennu that is as wide as the Empire State Building is tall. Now, the controllers say they’ve finally found a place to land.

In July, they’ll try setting the craft down to collect surface samples, which scientists hope will add to their understanding of the early days of our solar system and how life sprang up on Earth.

Back on terra firma, a world-class meteorite collection — boasting the five largest samples brought back from the moon — is among the highlights of the new Maine Mineral & Gem Museum, which opened today to honor the state’s mining history. There’s also an igneous rock that’s over 4.5 billion years old. Billion.

Disney Plus, via Associated Press

10. And finally, TV’s person of the year is Baby Yoda.

That’s according to our TV critic, James Poniewozik. The addition of the irresistible young “Star Wars” character in Disney Plus’s “The Mandalorian” got him thinking: What if the future of TV were delightful, meme-able versions of intellectual property you already loved … forever?

“The show invites you to return to that state when stories were new to you,” he writes, “when you hadn’t seen it all, when you hadn’t seen any of it, when you didn’t try to solve or defeat stories but just let them wash over you and amaze you.”

Adorable evening, may you have.

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