Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.
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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.
1. President Biden said that Germany and the U.S. would take a “united” approach to rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
Despite concerns that Germany has not been a forceful enough partner in confronting Russia, Biden said that the Germans supported a “strong package” of sanctions but did not detail what those would be.
Biden also said that the Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline being built between Germany and Russia, would not go forward should Russia invade. Scholz has been vague about whether he would agree to terminate the pipeline project, but he repeated what he has said frequently: “We are absolutely united.”
In Moscow, President Emmanuel Macron of France sat down with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader. The French president has positioned himself at the center of Europe’s furious diplomatic maneuvering and has urged a more conciliatory approach toward his Russian counterpart than the U.S. and Britain have taken.
2. New Jersey will end its school mask mandate, signaling a shift toward treating the coronavirus as a part of daily life.
Gov. Philip Murphy said the policy would take effect the second week of March, two years after the state became an early epicenter of the coronavirus.
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said last week that officials were “striving” to remove mask requirements in schools but that vaccinations for young children needed to rise first. Last month, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania rescinded his state’s school mask mandate.
Separately, health experts said that white-tailed deer could become a reservoir for the virus, putting people and animals at risk.
3. After 11 days of trucker protests in the Canadian capital against vaccine mandates, Ottawa declared a state of emergency.
Some protesters have desecrated national memorials and threatened local residents. “Someone is going to get killed or seriously injured because of the irresponsible behavior of some of these people,” Jim Watson, Ottawa’s mayor, warned on Sunday.
The demonstrations were set off by a decision from Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, to require Covid vaccinations for truckers returning from the U.S. But they have evolved into a more general protest against pandemic rules. Here are the latest updates.
4. President Biden’s plan for free community college is off the table, Jill Biden, the first lady, said.
She acknowledged that her signature legislative initiative was “no longer” in the Democrats’ spending bill.
It is unusual for first ladies to weigh in on the defeat of a West Wing policy issue, but Dr. Biden, a community college English professor, was personally invested in the issue.
The $2.2 trillion version of President Biden’s social-spending plan that the House passed contains aid for community colleges and grant programs but not the free-tuition provision.
5. The Israeli government said it would investigate claims that the police used spyware to hack the phones of citizens.
The allegations have caused a brief delay in the corruption trial of Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, amid claims that the police illegally hacked the phone of a key trial witness.
It comes as concerns have grown about the use of spyware products from the NSO Group within Israel, where the company — blacklisted in the U.S. — was for years spared significant domestic scrutiny because it was not widely seen as a threat to Israeli citizens.
6. More than one million residents in Austin, Texas, have been forced to boil their water.
Officials at a treatment plant said “errors from our operating staff” resulted in potentially unsafe water flowing into homes and businesses. The boil-water notice issued on Saturday is likely to stay in place until tomorrow afternoon.
In other water news, towns in the Pacific Northwest are planning tsunami evacuation towers in the event of an offshore earthquake, expected sooner or later, that could otherwise kill thousands.
Separately, a new study found that the world’s glaciers may contain less water than previously believed, suggesting that freshwater supplies could peak sooner than anticipated for millions of people who depend on glacier melt.
7. Computer networks are straining computer chips past their limit.
The chips that power the world’s data centers are becoming smaller, and the tasks they have to handle are growing larger. As a result, engineers are finding “silent errors”: rare defects in the chips that are being exposed by bigger and bigger computing problems.
There is growing evidence that the problem is worsening with each generation of chips. A team of Google researchers, tasked with explaining why maddening errors had begun to crop up several years ago, concluded that the problem was smaller transistors that were nearing physical limits, and inadequate testing.
In other tech news, Peter Thiel is stepping down from the board of Meta to focus on the midterm elections and the Trump-supporting candidates that he is backing.
8. Two U.S. Olympic favorites suffered a disappointing day.
The figure skating hopeful Vincent Zhou tested positive for the coronavirus, taking him out of the men’s singles competition, which begins tomorrow. Zhou will also miss the medal ceremony for the team competition, in which the U.S. won a silver.
Mikaela Shiffrin, the defending champion in the giant slalom, fell in her Beijing debut and was disqualified from the event. She still has four races left to become the first American skier to win three Alpine Olympic gold medals.
Separately, Ireen Wüst of the Netherlands became the first person to win individual golds at five Olympics and, at 35, is the oldest speedskating gold medalist ever.
Here are the latest updates, the medal count and how to watch.
9. Who inherits the rights to a reclusive artist’s genius?
When Henry Darger, a janitor turned artist, died in Chicago at 81 in 1973, he left a single room crammed with his colorful illustrations, a 15,000-page book and no immediate surviving relatives.
Darger’s landlords — a photographer and a classical pianist — assumed the rights to the work and began showing, sharing and selling it.
Recently, a collector of vintage photography tracked down relatives of Darger. Most are first cousins twice or three times removed, and they are challenging the landlords’ claim to the immense legacy left by Darger, now considered one of America’s greatest outsider artists.
10. And finally, rescuing Jewish women’s stories.
Yiddish fiction by women, unlike translated works by men like Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer, has long been dismissed by publishers as insignificant or unmarketable.
But in the past seven years, there have been eight Yiddish titles by women published or under contract, more than the number of translations in the past two decades. It’s painstaking historical work, combing through microfilms of long-extinct newspapers and yellowed card catalogs, but it resurrects characters who are still resonant today.
For the translators, it’s exciting. As one put it, “like a combination of sleuth, explorer, archaeologist and obsessive.”
Have a resurgent evening.
Eve Edelheit compiled photos for this briefing.
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