Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Thursday.
Trump sought to minimize expectations for Putin talksPresident Trump said this afternoon that the goal of his meeting tomorrow with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was simply to set the table for more discussions down the line. His aides have also described the summit, which is to be held at a U.S. military base in Alaska, as little more than a “listening exercise.” The Kremlin, too, suggested today that the meeting would focus on more than just ending the war in Ukraine. Russian officials said they were interested in discussing other subjects with Trump, such as trade and nuclear arms. However, those statements belie the enormous stakes of the first meeting between Trump and Putin since the Russian invasion, particularly for Ukraine, which was shut out of the discussions. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, spent the last week frantically working to rally European allies behind a plan to encourage Trump not to give up ground to the Russian leader. Here’s what happened behind the scenes. In Ukraine, the conflict has morphed into a battle of attrition favoring Russia after Putin re-engineered his country to serve the war. In Alaska, 1,000 Ukrainian refugees are watching with trepidation as the man who led the attack on their homeland arrives in the state where they found refuge.
Troops are fully deployed in D.C., but still mostly unseenAll 800 National Guard troops whom Trump has ordered into the streets of Washington to fight crime have mobilized for duty, the Pentagon announced today. Still, as our reporters traveled around the city, the troops were hardly a visible presence. In round-the-clock shifts of 100 to 200 unarmed soldiers, the Guard will support the city’s police by protecting monuments and federal buildings, conducting “community safety patrols” and carrying out “area beautification.” They are not authorized to make arrests. Federal agents have made a larger show of force. Last night, a sobriety checkpoint operated by local and federal police agencies on a busy street near downtown drew a crowd of jeering protesters. For more: Can the federal government “take back” a city it already largely controls? In other Trump administration news:
Settler attacks hit a record high in the West BankWith the world’s attention on Gaza, Israeli extremists in the West Bank carried out more than 750 attacks on Palestinians in the first half of this year, the highest monthly average since the U.N. began keeping records. Israel’s military, which is the sovereign power in the occupied territory, says it tries to prevent the attacks, but a Times investigation last year found that the Israeli authorities have for decades failed to impose meaningful restraints on criminal settlers. In related news:
An experimental treatment for chronic pain showed promiseRoughly 50 million Americans experience chronic pain. For about a third of those people, the pain substantially limits their daily activities. Medication works for some, but that comes with its own downsides. This week, however, a promising treatment emerged. Researchers found that personalized deep brain stimulation reduced average daily pain by about 60 percent. Patients reported that they could walk more, that their mood was improved and that pain interfered less with daily life. More top news
A eulogy for the ‘Sex and the City’ rebootTonight is the final episode of “And Just Like That…,” the HBO Max series that brought us back into the lives of Carrie Bradshaw and her fashionable friends two decades after the hit show “Sex and the City” went off the air. The new show, which is ending after three seasons, was often chided as being too “cringe" and too “woke.” But our critic Wesley Morris loved it, and so did the writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner. On the latest episode of Wesley’s podcast, “Cannonball,” they discussed what made it special. Even the show’s skeptics might miss the apartments and houses that Carrie Bradshaw called home. We revisited them here.
Simply being in nature can boost your attention spanResearchers have repeatedly found that spending time in the natural world provides a noticeable boost for our brains. In one study, participants scored 20 percent better on a memory test after taking a walk in the woods. Experts are still trying to figure out why that’s the case. One theory suggests that our attention improves because nature is “softly fascinating,” meaning it grabs our interest without depleting our minds.
Dinner table topics
Mix: Put a tomato in your martini, or your spritz, or your sherry cobbler. Watch: Our critic described the documentary “My Undesirable Friends” as brilliant, riveting, vital and devastating. Read: The author of the Red Rising series recommends nine great science fiction books. |
