Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/19/briefing/heat-wave-putin-iran.html

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1. Temperatures in the U.K. reached a record high — and kept going.

The thermometer in Surrey this morning recorded a provisional reading of 39.1 degrees Celsius (102.4 degrees Fahrenheit), breaking the previous record. Two hours later, the provisional temperature at Heathrow Airport hit 40.2 Celsius (104.4 Fahrenheit). If confirmed, it would be the first time that the temperature in Britain had exceeded 40 degrees Celsius.

Homes burned in London. More than 2,000 firefighters faced off against blazes in the southwest of France that forced 37,000 people from their homes this week.

These maps show the soaring temperatures across the continent. Scientists say heat waves in Europe are increasing in frequency and intensity at a faster rate than in almost any other part of the world, including the Western U.S.

2. President Biden and his advisers are debating whether he should declare a national climate emergency.

The extraordinary step would give Biden the ability to halt new oil drilling on federal lands and waters and to spend federal funds on wind, solar and other clean energy projects. His administration spent the past year and a half trying to pass robust climate change legislation, only to see it collapse last week because it failed to win support from Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the swing Democratic vote in the evenly divided Senate.

The debate came as more than 100 million Americans were under heat advisories or warnings today. Temperatures were expected to reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit in some states and cities.

3. President Vladimir Putin of Russia arrived in Iran today for a rare international visit.

After landing in Tehran, Putin met with President Ebrahim Raisi. He also met with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader — a gesture considered an honor in Iran — who went even further than other Russian allies in backing Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and repeated Putin’s argument that the U.S. and its allies in Europe had left the Kremlin no choice.

The war in Ukraine and a deepening confrontation with the West are bringing Russia and Iran closer together. Officials in both countries have said that sanctions are helping to unite them, solidifying a long-fraught relationship that is now playing an increasingly central role as a counterweight to American-led efforts to push back against Western adversaries.

4. Kharkiv has tried to return to normal. But Russian shelling won’t let it.

Just 25 miles from the Russian border, Ukraine’s second biggest city has been one of the hardest hit in the war. Despite relentless bombardment, Ukrainian forces repelled Russian troops trying to capture the city and pushed them back into Russia.

But the attacks never stopped. Airstrikes have devastated the city’s infrastructure, and five months into the war, rockets and artillery slam into the city and its suburbs every night.

Analysts say the attacks are a way to force Ukraine to keep troops in the north, preventing them from joining the larger fight in the eastern Donbas region. But in June, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said Russia was gathering forces to attack Kharkiv again — and the city is bracing for it.

5. Thursday’s prime-time Jan. 6 hearing will focus on 187 minutes inside the West Wing.

During that time, President Trump watched the violence unfold without taking any substantial steps to call off his supporters, even as they threatened Vice President Mike Pence. Matthew Pottinger, who was the deputy national security adviser under Trump and the highest-ranking White House official to resign on Jan. 6, 2021, is expected to testify about what was unfolding during that period.

Related: “Stop the Steal” — the movement to reinstate Trump — has gone far beyond him, and now threatens the future of American elections.

6. Netflix averted disaster.

The streaming giant said in its earnings report that it lost nearly one million subscribers in the second quarter, the largest subscriber defection in company history. But it fell far short of the two million it had forecast during its dismal first quarter report in April. Hollywood had been watching for signs of a steep slowdown in the streaming business.

The company, which has 220.67 million subscribers, said that it would begin to crack down more forcefully on password sharing, and that it had launched two approaches to this in Latin America.

In other business news, Twitter and Elon Musk will go to trial in October over whether he must complete his $44 billion acquisition, a Delaware judge ruled.

7. Is anybody watching the interns?

Summer interns generally are aware of the awkward rites of passage that await them — first-day jitters, stilted happy hours, brown bag lunches. Now, though, working a summer job can mean commuting to an empty office, sitting unsupervised with other interns and trying desperately to impress managers over video calls. School is out for the summer — but in some cases, so are the bosses.

“There’s no one else there,” one 20-year-old said. “My boss isn’t going to see me put my best foot forward.”

Related: There’s magic to forming that first close friend at work. For young people entering the work force, the connections made over Zoom are shaky.

8. Lizzo’s signature spirit of uplift is all over her new album. That’s not always a good thing, our critic says.

As a self-described “big grrrl” preaching unapologetic self-love, Lizzo, 34, is a refreshing presence in pop culture, writes Lindsay Zoladz. But on “Special,” her second major-label album, Lizzo often sounds caught between the personal and the personal brand, gesturing toward complexities but retreating to her comfort zone.

We also visited the most storied studio in jazz, built in 1959 by Rudy Van Gelder, a former optometrist who developed ways to capture sound with renowned clarity and depth. Thousands of albums were made there by the likes of John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and Herbie Hancock. Van Gelder’s longtime assistant is trying to bring it back to its glory days.

9. Gray fish, blue fish, orange fish — neon green fish?

The lumpfish — a bumpy, bottom-dwelling fish found in the North Atlantic and in parts of the Arctic Ocean — comes in a variety of colors, which change as the fish ages. However, scientists recently discovered that lumpfish glow under UV light, revealing their true color: fluorescent green. Researchers believe these fish may use their biofluorescence to identify, and possibly to communicate with, one another.

In other glowing news: Last summer, satellites detected a New England-size bioluminescence bloom in the Java Sea. Researchers have now confirmed that a boat crew saw the rare, mysterious phenomenon. “The sea was lit, but the waves were black,” the sailboat’s captain recalled. “That made it really eerie. It gave the idea that the light was coming from a deeper level.”

10. And finally, the burger even J. Kenji López-Alt can’t improve.

Oklahoma onion burgers were invented during the Great Depression to maximize a small portion of beef without sacrificing flavor. The result, our columnist writes, is “a creation so perfect in its simplicity that it cannot be improved upon, only tweaked.” (That is saying a lot for López-Alt, who analyzes the science of recipes to create the perfect dishes.)

The volume of onions is part of the equation, he writes, but it’s also how they’re cooked. A small ball of ground beef is placed atop a griddle, topped with a haystack of very thinly sliced onions and aggressively smashed into the griddle. Let him walk you through his process.

Have a savory night.

Brent Lewis compiled photos for this briefing.

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