Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Wednesday. |
 | | The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building in Washington.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times |
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1. The Federal Reserve moved toward an all-out effort against inflation. |
The central bank said it would reduce its stimulus at a moment of rapid inflation and strong economic growth by cutting back on its bond-buying faster and suggested as many as three interest rate increases in 2022 as the economy heals. |
Officials are slashing their bond purchases by twice as much as they had announced last month, a pace that would put them on track to end the program altogether in March. Ending the bond-buying program sooner will position the central bank to more quickly raise its policy interest rate — the Fed's more traditional and more powerful tool. |
"Economic developments and changes in the outlook warrant this evolution," the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said. Stocks rose after the Fed's announcement. |
 | | "Our booster vaccine regimens work against Omicron," Dr. Anthony Fauci said.Doug Mills/The New York Times |
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2. Booster doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are likely to offer substantial protection from the Omicron variant, Dr. Anthony Fauci said. |
Dr. Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the U.S., said that "there is no need for a very specific booster" designed to fight the highly transmissible coronavirus variant. Fauci shared preliminary government data showing that protection shot up after a third vaccine dose, suggesting there would be breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated people who have not had their boosters. New studies also showed that vaccines protected against severe disease from Omicron. |
 | | President Biden toured tornado damage in Mayfield, Ky., on Wednesday.Doug Mills/The New York Times |
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3. President Biden visited Kentucky to survey the damage from a series of tornadoes and to highlight the federal government's response. |
The morning after one Kentucky man's house was destroyed, he turned to his Yamaha piano. It was a moment of calm that his sister recorded on video. |
 | | George Floyd's family members outside a courthouse in St. Paul, Minn.Kerem Yucel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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4. Derek Chauvin pleaded guilty to violating George Floyd's constitutional rights. |
In April, a jury found him guilty of murdering Floyd, and he has been held in solitary confinement since. Under a plea deal, a federal prosecutor said he would ask a judge to sentence Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, to 25 years in prison. |
The hiring process for New York City's new police commissioner included a mock news conference about the killing of an unarmed Black man by a white officer. Keechant Sewell, the Nassau County chief of detectives, was chosen to become the city's first female police commissioner, taking over the nation's largest police force at a critical moment. |
 | | President Xi Jinping of China and President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Beijing in 2018. Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press |
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5. President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China showed they still had each other. |
During a video summit, the leaders called each other "old friend," "dear friend" and "esteemed friend," in a show of solidarity between two autocrats resisting Western pressure. |
Putin said that he would attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in February. That makes him the first leader to confirm that he will go to the event, which officials from the U.S., Australia, Britain, Canada and other countries have boycotted. |
Meanwhile, China is not living up to its end of a Trump-era trade deal. Now the White House must decide whether to enforce it. |
 | | Mohammad bin Rahimi and his family are staying in an 1850s-era log cabin in Owensboro, Ky.Luke Sharrett for The New York Times |
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6. The Afghan refugee crisis is running into the U.S. housing crisis. |
Thousands of Afghan refugees who were evacuated after the fall of Kabul are being released from military bases to U.S. cities to rebuild their lives. But settling them into homes amid a rental shortage is proving to be a challenge. Resettlement agencies are scrambling to find even temporary situations. In Owensboro, Ky., two Afghan families are living in a 147-year-old convent 15 miles from town. |
In case you missed it: A Times reporter and photographer witnessed the days leading up to the Taliban's takeover of Kabul and what came after. They chronicled it all. |
 | | Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia won acclaim for his promise to unify the country.Alex Welsh for The New York Times |
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Abiy won the Nobel in 2019 for his surprise peace deal with Isaias Afwerki, the authoritarian leader of Eritrea. That pact ended two decades of conflict between the rivals — and also emboldened Abiy and Isaias to secretly plot a course for war against their mutual foes in the northern Tigray region, according to officials. |
Abiy insists that war was foisted upon him. But new evidence shows he was planning a military campaign for months before the first shot was fired. Analysts say that Abiy's journey from peacemaker to battlefield commander is a cautionary tale of how the West, desperate to find a new hero in Africa, got this leader spectacularly wrong. |
 | | It was a remarkably rich year for nonfiction, and well-established names delivered strong fiction.Jessica White/The New York Times |
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8. The history of Black artists in the film industry. An account of an American woman who joined the Nazi resistance. A collection of poems about history and mortality. |
These are among our critics' top books of 2021, in both fiction and nonfiction. In a roundtable discussion, our critics discussed the year's hits and misses, their reading plans for 2022 and which writers to watch. Our two newest critics, Alexandra Jacobs and Molly Young, also recommended their all-time favorites: John Updike's "Hugging the Shore" and "Odd Jobs" and Martin Amis's collection "The War Against Cliché." |
In other book news, bell hooks, whose incisive, wide-ranging writing on gender and race helped push feminism to include the voices of Black and working-class women, has died. She was 69. |
 | | Mexican buñuelos are rolled thin and puff up when they're deep-fried. Kelly Marshall for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Roscoe Betsill. Prop Stylist: Getteline Rene. |
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9. Christmas is coming. Celebrate with something sweet. |
Across Latin America, the holidays mean it's time for buñuelos, a sweet fried dough sometimes served with a syrup. Many versions are flavored with anise, a spice that indicates the dish has Spanish origins, but each country has its own take: In Mexico, the flour-based dough is rolled out until it's paper-thin; in Cuba and Nicaragua, the dish is made with yuca; and in Colombia, buñuelos are typically made with cheese. |
 | | The officer Eugene Goodman prevented rioters from entering the Senate chamber on Jan. 6.Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times |
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10. And finally, 2021 in pictures. |
While many people stayed close to home again this year, Times photographers did not have that option: Photographers must be there to do their work, to bear witness firsthand. This year, that meant being at the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, inside hospital Covid wards, near fires in California, alongside floods in Germany and in Kabul as the Taliban took power. |
But there were plenty of buoyant moments, too, like the reopening of nursing homes to visitors, a victory at the Scripps National Spelling Bee or the return of Broadway. As Michelle Agins, a Times photographer, puts it: "I call myself a moment thief" when it comes to capturing the right shot. "You've got to wait and grab it." |
| Eve Edelheit compiled photos for this briefing. |
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. |
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