Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.
Trump zigzags on his plans for IranPresident Trump threatened today to significantly escalate the U.S. assault on Iran by destroying the country’s energy facilities if Tehran’s negotiators did not quickly agree to a deal. At the same time, the president also said that talks between the two sides were making “great progress.” Similar mixed messages have become commonplace as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran enters its fifth week. In just the last couple of days, Trump has argued that his goal of “regime change” in Iran has already been achieved, while also sending thousands more U.S. troops to the region and raising the prospect of seizing Iran’s largest oil facility. Commodity traders have been left guessing about how much longer the war will last and what kind of lasting effect it will have on energy supplies. Asia, which buys about 90 percent of the liquefied natural gas that the Middle East produces, could see a shortfall until 2028. Trump claimed that Iran had agreed to allow 20 oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but while two Chinese-owned container ships had passed the strait by this afternoon, there were no reports that oil tankers were going through. For more:
T.S.A. workers are paid and lines are getting shorter, for nowThe hourslong waits at airports appeared to ease today after T.S.A. employees said they had begun to receive paychecks that covered work they had done during the partial government shutdown. The president ordered that the airport workers be paid even though Congress has yet to fund the T.S.A.’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. More than 500 T.S.A. employees have quit during the shutdown, and thousands called out sick last week. We’re tracking airport wait times here. Related: Congress did not move any closer to approving funds for D.H.S. Most lawmakers are on a two-week break.
Russian tanker nears delivery of badly needed fuel to CubaA monthslong U.S. oil blockade has plunged Cuba into crisis, but the Trump administration said it would allow a Russian tanker to deliver fuel. Experts said the tanker’s estimated 730,000 barrels of oil would last a few weeks. Trump has suggested that allowing the shipment is a humanitarian gesture. But analysts saw the move as a sign that the U.S. pressure campaign against Cuba had most likely been sidelined by the war in Iran. For more: Under pressure, the Castro dynasty is making a comeback.
NASA is preparing its first crewed lunar mission in decadesJust over 48 hours after this newsletter hits your inbox, NASA is scheduled to send four astronauts on the first trip to the moon and back since 1972. The crew will not land on the lunar surface — that’s a few years down the line — but they are set to swoop around the moon and observe parts of it never seen by humans. See their plan here. “Things are certainly starting to feel real,” Christina Koch, one of the astronauts, said from a prelaunch quarantine. She will be the first woman on a lunar mission; it also includes the first Black person and the first Canadian ever to launch to the moon. Here’s how to watch the launch.
Russia weaponized Ukraine’s exceptionally cold winterAmid Ukraine’s coldest winter in close to 20 years, Russia attacked centralized energy plants in Kyiv, wiping out power and heat in thousands of apartment buildings. Inside homes, residents’ breath frosted the air. At a prominent church, the holy water froze in its basins. My colleague C.J. Chivers was there. He wrote about one neighborhood as it braved the harshest conditions since World War II. More top news
Health: Voices told Cohen Miles-Rath to kill his father. He almost did. Now they’re both fine — and both burdened. Ellen Barry writes about the years that followed.
A mistake helped make this alien a breakout star“Project Hail Mary,” starring Ryan Gosling as a scientist on an Earth-saving mission, has been a huge box office success. But the real breakout star is Gosling’s extraterrestrial counterpart, Rocky. It’s hard not to be charmed by Rocky’s adorably high-strung behavior, which came about by accident. The lead puppeteer and voice actor, James Ortiz, played him that way because he mistakenly thought that time moved faster on Rocky’s home planet. Well into filming, he realized that the opposite was true. But the alien’s anxiety proved captivating.
Doctors said he wouldn’t process language. He now has a book.Woody Brown was diagnosed with severe autism. Doctors concluded he would never be able to process language, but his mother believed he was listening. Eventually, Woody and his mother discovered that he could communicate by tapping letters on a board, spelling out words. “I thought I would be caged my whole life, and then the door was open,” he said. Now 28, Woody has a master's degree in creative writing and is set to publish his debut novel, “Upward Bound,” tomorrow.
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