December 8, 2019

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Your Weekend Briefing

By remy tumin and judith levitt

Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

1. Democrats are spending the weekend preparing articles of impeachment against President Trump.

Two to four articles are expected on presidential abuse of power, obstruction of justice and obstruction of Congress, as is an accompanying impeachment report that could stretch to hundreds of pages. Here’s what it looks like behind the scenes.

The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Monday to allow its lawyers and those for the Intelligence Committee to formally present the evidence they have collected. By the end of the week, the committee will likely vote on the articles of impeachment, with a final vote on the floor of the House expected shortly before Christmas.

The White House signaled that it did not intend to mount a defense of Mr. Trump or otherwise participate in the House impeachment proceedings, saying in a sharply worded letter that Democrats “wasted enough of America’s time with this charade.”

Have you been keeping up with the headlines? Test your knowledge with our news quiz. And here’s the front page of our Sunday paper, the Sunday Review from Opinion and our crossword puzzles.

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2. The F.B.I. is investigating the motive behind a shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida that killed three people and injured eight others on Friday.

The authorities said the gunman, a member of the Saudi Air Force, had watched videos of mass shootings at a dinner party the night before the attack. One senior American official said the gunman did not have any apparent ties to international terrorist groups.

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The gunman reported for a training program at the Florida naval air station about three days before the shooting. Here’s the latest.

The shooting was the second attack on a Navy base in a week (the first was at Pearl Harbor, above). Officials are now confronting how persistent such incidents have become.

Jordan Gale for The New York Times

3. With less than two months until the Iowa caucuses and no clear front-runner, the Democratic Party could face a marathon nominating contest.

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Pete Buttigieg’s surge, Bernie Sanders’s revival, Elizabeth Warren’s struggles and the exit of Kamala Harris have upended the primary, and increased the possibility of a split decision after the early nominating states. That could be a worrisome prospect for a party already unsure of whether it has a candidate strong enough to defeat President Trump.

In other 2020 news, Mr. Buttigieg is facing criticism for not disclosing his role at McKinsey & Company. Here’s what else happened in the race this week.

Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

4. As Britain heads for an election that could determine the fate of its relationship to the E.U., a Times reporter spent two weeks driving from London to Glasgow. He found a country united only by its disunity.

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Again and again, people came back to the politics of nationalism, austerity and economic alienation. And the frustrations were rooted in Brexit. Belfast, Northern Ireland, above, has become a sticking point in a final Brexit deal.

On Thursday, voters will have their say as Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a pro-Brexit Conservative, faces off against Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party’s leader. One celebrity has been hitting the pavement particularly hard before the vote: Hugh Grant.

Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times

5. Call it a crime of pasta.

The famous pasta-making women of Bari, Italy, sell baggies of orecchiette out of ground-floor kitchens. But the nonnas are worried that a recent a crackdown on contraband orecchiette, the city’s renowned ear-shaped pasta, could threaten their way of life.

“They should help us pass this tradition down, not exterminate it,” one pasta maker said.

Danna Singer for The New York Times

6. David Wisnia and Helen Spitzer met as Jewish inmates at Auschwitz in 1943. They both survived, but went their separate ways after the war. When they reunited 72 years later, he had one question.

Was she the reason he was alive today?

We traced their story from their improbable love affair in the concentration camp to their dangerous escapes to safety and settlement in the U.S., and the sobering answer Mr. Wisnia was looking for.

Vincent Carchietta/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

7. Many New York sports fans are used to disappointment. This week, two teams tried to do something about it. Kind of.

The Wilpon family announced it was negotiating to sell a controlling interest in the Mets to the hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, who was once ensnared in an insider trading case. A closer look at the team’s dysfunction under the Wilpons’ ownership was mirrored by the family discord that ultimately forced a sale.

And the Knicks fired Coach David Fizdale. With a 4-18 start, the team is on course for one of its worst seasons in franchise history. Our columnist writes that true change will come only when “the querulous and glowering Knicks owner interrogates his two decades of failure and shows himself the door.”

8. “When we become aware of life’s beauty, that’s when we are most alive.”

That’s what the actress Constance Wu had to say when the Opinion section asked a group of artists, scientists, writers and thinkers to explain the indispensability of beauty in our everyday lives.

And André Aciman, the author of “Call Me by Your Name” and “Find Me,” said this on the subject: “Under the spell of beauty, we experience a rare condition called plenitude, where we want for nothing.”

NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory/NSF/AURA/Gemini Observatory

9. The interstellar comet has arrived in time for the holidays.

2I/Borisov, an ice cube from beyond our solar system, will make its closest approach to the sun this weekend, trailing mystery and dust. It is only the second known interstellar object to enter our solar system.

The comet will make a wide turn around the sun on Sunday and begin heading back out of the solar system. On Dec. 28 the comet will pass 180 million miles from Earth, its closest approach to our planet. You can track it here.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

10. And finally, dig into one of our Best Weekend Reads.

Stories this week include a look at how one high school Class of 2000 fell into deep opioid addiction, the not-so-glamorous life of working at Equinox, hand-clapping games from around the world, above, and more.

For more ideas on what to read, watch and listen to, may we suggest these 11 new books our editors liked, the latest small-screen recommendations from Watching and a playlist compiled by our music critics.

And if you’re looking for something to cook this week, here are our 50 best recipes of 2019.

Hope you have some fun this week.

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