Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/briefing/fed-rate-increase-ukraine-energy.html

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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.

1. The Fed is barreling toward a big rate increase.

The central bank’s officials have coalesced around a plan to raise interest rates by three-quarters of a point next month as policymakers grow alarmed by the staying power of inflation. It appears all but certain the Fed will continue quickly increasing rates for the remainder of the year — and possibly even longer than that.

For now, data appears to support the policymakers’ aggressive action: A report last week showed that consumer prices climbed by 6.6 percent in the year through September even after stripping out food and fuel prices — a new 40-year high for the closely watched core index.

In other financial news, China’s economy has become increasingly difficult to assess. China’s refusal this week to provide statistics suggested that either part of the bureaucracy was in disarray or that China’s economy was in worse shape than most people had realized.

2. President Biden pledged to codify abortion rights if Democrats expand their majorities.

Biden said that legislation ensuring nationwide abortion access would be the first bill he would send to Congress next year if his party manages to retain control of the House and expand its Senate majority. He framed November’s midterm elections as a choice between Republicans, who have called for a national abortion ban, and Democrats who are seeking to re-establish the protections once guaranteed by Roe v. Wade.

With abortion at the forefront of political debate, the definition of the procedure is disputed. Medical groups argue that abortions encompass all terminations of pregnancy regardless of reason, but anti-abortion activists disagree.

In other politics news, a New York Times/Siena College poll found that voters believe American democracy is in peril but are apathetic about the danger.

3. Russian strikes target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Ukrainians are facing shortages of electricity, water and heat, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned, saying that Russian attacks over the past eight days had destroyed 30 percent of Ukraine’s power stations and caused “massive blackouts across the country.”

Zelensky urged residents to reduce their electricity use during peak hours. If Ukrainians have to do without basic services such as heat and water during the upcoming winter, the W.H.O. has warned of the potential for a humanitarian crisis.

In Europe, the Danish authorities said that “powerful explosions” caused the Nord Stream pipelines to rupture last month, but declined to say who might have caused them. Also, the E.U. has been severing economic ties with Russia to support Ukraine, but some goods, like diamonds, remain conspicuously exempted.

4. The Justice Department reached a plea deal with a French cement company that admitted to paying off ISIS.

Lafarge S.A., which operates extensively in the U.S., will pay $778 million after pleading guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The U.S. authorities found that the construction company had paid off the Islamic State to protect its Syria operations in 2013 and 2014.

Lafarge entered into what was effectively a revenue-sharing agreement with the Islamic State, structuring its payments to the terrorist group based on cement sales. The company also faces criminal charges in France, where it is the first corporation to be indicted on a charge of complicity with crimes against humanity.

In other legal news, the analyst behind the so-called Steele dossier was acquitted, dealing another blow to the Trump-era prosecutor John Durham.

5. Workers at an Amazon warehouse near Albany, N.Y., decisively rejected unionization.

By a 2-to-1 ratio, employees at a facility in Castleton-on-Hudson voted against being represented by the upstart Amazon Labor Union, denting efforts to expand unionization across the e-commerce giant. It was the group’s second defeat since a surprise victory in April on Staten Island.

However, even before the ballots were tallied, the union expressed concern that Amazon improperly interfered with the vote, potentially laying the groundwork for a legal objection to the results.

In other labor news, railway workers, teachers and even high school students across France joined a snowballing strike to protest the rising cost of living, putting pressure on the president, Emmanuel Macron.

In other business news, retailers are worried that U.S. consumers will be less inclined to spend on holiday gifts this winter.

6. A New Jersey child said her teacher tried to pull off her hijab, and the story went viral. Now the matter has landed in court.

The teacher, Tamar Herman, filed a defamation suit this month against Ibtihaj Muhammad, an Olympic medalist who fences in a hijab and denounced the reported interaction as abuse.

Herman claimed in the lawsuit that she “brushed” back a hooded garment that was blocking the student’s eyes, thinking the hijab was underneath, then quickly replaced it. The lawsuit also claimed that Muhammad and a local rights organization were “motivated by a combination of greed and a fierce desire to burnish their brands as fighters against Islamophobia.”

In related news, a star Iranian climber competed in an international tournament without her hijab, breaching the Islamic Republic’s rules for women athletes. As she flew home afterward, concerns about her safety arose.

7. A landmark 1979 study found that depressed people had a more accurate reading of their ability to affect outcomes. New research calls that into question.

The original study’s conclusion, sometimes summarized as “sadder but wiser,” has been taught to decades of students and cited more than 2,000 times by other scholars. But research published this month in the journal Collabra: Psychology failed to recreate those findings, potentially undermining long-held beliefs in “depressive realism.”

Mimicking the original experiment, in which subjects assessed whether their button-pushing affected a flashing light, the new research team found no association between depressive symptoms and outcome bias.

In other science news, research shows that our assumptions about eating disorders are often wrong — and that many larger-bodied people are starving themselves.

8. The carcass of the biggest bony fish ever recorded was found floating off the coast of Portugal.

Weighing just over 6,000 pounds — roughly the heft of a Chevrolet Suburban — the southern sunfish was the largest scientists had ever seen, they said this month. Bony fish are smaller than some cartilaginous fish, like whale sharks, but no other bony fish’s weight has been measured even close to that of the sunfish, which was found in December.

Fish of its size are rare because of overfishing and habitat degradation. But José Nuno Gomes-Pereira, a marine biologist, said that its size was not abnormal. “There are more of these monsters out there,” he said.

9. When is the best time to book holiday travel? Right about now.

The travel industry is expecting a busy holiday season. Its recovery after the bust of the pandemic, coupled with runaway inflation, means that reservations and rates will most likely be higher than last year’s. To lessen the financial stress, experts say, make plans sooner than later.

“The best time to have booked those Thanksgiving and Christmas flights was June and July, and the second best is basically now,” said Scott Keyes, who runs a discount airfare service.

For bargains, holiday-season travelers should look abroad, particularly in late November, when domestic travel is expensive. Perhaps surprisingly, trips to Lisbon, Athens or Dublin can be noticeably cheaper than vacationing in New York City, Orlando and Las Vegas.

10. And finally, the secrets to winning a game of Jenga.

For decades, the popular block-balancing game has mystified players who wonder why some wobbly towers remain standing while others topple without warning. But as our crossword columnist explains, Jenga is all about physics.

With a basic understanding of gravity, normal forces and frictional forces, players can get an edge up on their opponents. One tip: The blocks that happen to be slightly thinner are typically easier to remove because friction will have a smaller effect on them.

Have a steady night.

Brent Lewis compiled photos for this briefing.

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