Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Tuesday. |
 | | Pfizer's experimental Covid-19 antiviral pill, Paxlovid, at a laboratory in Freiburg, Germany.AFP / Pfizer via Getty Images |
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1. A new Covid pill shows promise as a treatment while the country braces for a new wave of cases. |
A highly anticipated study of Pfizer's Covid pill confirmed that it helps stave off severe disease, the company said. The pill also performed well against the highly mutated Omicron variant. Pfizer said that Paxlovid reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by 88 percent within five days of the onset of symptoms. |
Last month, Pfizer asked U.S. regulators to authorize Paxlovid based on preliminary data. The new results will strengthen the application, which means that Americans could have access to the pill within weeks. |
 | | Mark Meadows outside the White House last October.Al Drago for The New York Times |
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2. The House is poised to recommend holding Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, in contempt for refusing to cooperate with the Jan. 6 investigation. |
Meadows had previously given the committee thousands of pages of documents. Among them were texts from three Fox News hosts, who urged Meadows to persuade President Trump to stop the Capitol rioters. |
Separately, the Proud Boys, a far-right nationalist group, are showing up at school board meetings and other local events to influence the 2022 midterms. |
 | | The New York Times |
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3. As inflation persists, the Federal Reserve is pivoting from bolstering the economic recovery. |
Policymakers are widely expected to outline a faster end to their bond-buying campaign tomorrow afternoon and will telegraph how aggressively they expect to raise rates from rock-bottom next year. The potential for major policy signals at the Fed's meeting this week will make it one of the most closely watched of the pandemic era. |
In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has only doubled down on his unorthodox policies despite a disastrous economy and a 21 percent inflation rate. |
 | | Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo at his daily Covid briefing last year.Cindy Schultz for The New York Times |
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4. Andrew Cuomo was ordered to turn over about $5.1 million from his memoir to the state attorney general by a New York ethics board. |
The ex-governor ran afoul of ethics laws in writing a book focused on his leadership during the pandemic, a state panel had previously found. The Joint Commission on Public Ethics directed Cuomo to relinquish the money within 30 days, and authorized the attorney general's office to enforce the collection. Cuomo vowed to fight the order in court. |
Cuomo has already donated $500,000 of the book's proceeds to charity, and placed another $1 million in a trust for his daughters. |
5. A crop of new social media personalities is painting cheery portraits of life as a foreigner in China. |
These influencers are also hitting back at criticisms of Beijing's authoritarianism, its policies toward ethnic minorities and its handling of the coronavirus. State news and local governments have funded the influencers' travels, and China generates lucrative traffic for them by sharing their videos with millions of followers on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. |
"It's totally normal here," said an Israeli YouTube star who posted a video after visiting cotton fields in Xinjiang, where there are allegations of forced labor. "People are nice, doing their job, living their life." |
 | | A 33-year-old mother of three before getting an abortion in Shreveport, La., last year.Rebecca Blackwell/The Associated Press |
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6. Who gets abortions in America? |
The typical patient is already a mother; she is poor, unmarried and in her late 20s; she has some college education; and she is very early in pregnancy. Nearly half of abortions happen in the first six weeks of pregnancy, and nearly all in the first trimester. One research group found that 25 percent of women will have an abortion by the end of their childbearing years. |
Americans are having half as many abortions as 30 years ago, for reasons such as better contraceptive use and less sex among teenagers. The data offers a broad outline of who may be most affected if Roe v. Wade is diminished or overturned by the Supreme Court. |
 | | The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the largest current in the world.The New York Times |
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7. The Antarctic is signaling big trouble ahead for fighting climate change. |
Around Antarctica, a vast current acts as the word's climate engine. As the world warms, the unceasing winds that drive the upwelling of ancient waters are getting stronger. That could have the effect of releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, by bringing to the surface more of the deep water that has held this carbon locked away for centuries. |
 | | The James Webb Space Telescope underwent tests in Redondo Beach, Calif., last year.Chris Gunn/NASA |
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8. The James Webb Space Telescope is ready for takeoff, after two decades, $10 billion and years of delay. |
If the telescope survives the launch, it still has to unfurl its big golden mirror and prevent itself from melting, with no prospect of human or robotic intervention should something go wrong. But what astronomers see through that telescope could change everything by bringing into focus the earliest stars and galaxies in the universe. |
"The next decade of astronomy and astrophysics is predicated on J.W. being successful," one cosmologist said. |
 | | A panoply of dishes at CheLi on St. Marks Place.Evan Sung for The New York Times |
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9. After a year that began with indoor dining banned in New York City, Pete Wells, our restaurant critic, made up for lost time. |
The places Wells cherished most were the ones that celebrate sharing. "To eat every meal as if it's your last could just as easily mean choosing food and drink and company that make you feel alive," he writes. These are his picks for New York's top new restaurants of 2021. |
While eating out, Wells was often drawn to superlative versions of classic dishes, like fish and chips and chicken soup. These were his favorites. |
 | | Some homeowners are flocking to cities where it's "Christmas all the time."William Widmer for The New York Times |
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10. And finally, hot ho-ho-home markets. |
Partly because of the pandemic, partly because of the small-town appeal (and prices) and partly because of the vibe, real estate in Santa-centric towns is booming. By mid-November, only a handful of houses were left in the Christmas Lake Village in Santa Claus, Ind., and the similarly Christmas-themed Frankenmuth, Mich., has seen an influx of new residents. |
"We looked at other towns near here that had equal value in terms of real estate, but they didn't have that extra Santa thing," said one new resident of Santa Claus, Ind. |
| Bryan Denton compiled photos for this briefing. |
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. |
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