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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Thursday.
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The bitterly cold air is derived from the polar vortex: a large, rotating expanse of cold air that generally circles the Arctic, but occasionally shifts south from the pole. Scientists aren’t sure whether climate change plays a role.
For those awaiting delivery of Christmas gifts, the storm may further delay packages.
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2. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s U.S. trip lifted spirits during a cold winter for Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader is traveling back home after a high-profile visit to Washington that was greeted there with pride and hope that his impassioned, in-person appeal would keep American weapons and financial support flowing.
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3. Donald Trump’s audits show the depths of the I.R.S.’s funding woes.
While Trump was president, and in the years before he took office, the federal tax agency assigned just one agent to examine his exceedingly complex and voluminous tax returns. The I.R.S. acknowledged that it was overwhelmed by the former president’s finances.
Documents released this week by a House committee, including data from six years of Trump’s tax returns, show how the agency has become increasingly unable to crack down on wealthy taxpayers who push the legal limits to lower their tax bills and have the means to fend off audits.
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4. The Senate passed a mammoth spending bill ahead of Friday’s deadline.
The $1.7 trillion measure, which would fully fund the government until September and send another round of financial assistance to Ukraine, advanced with bipartisan support. The House is also expected to pass the bill before midnight tomorrow, when the government would otherwise shut down.
The package includes an overhaul of the 135-year-old election law that Donald Trump and his allies sought to exploit, about $40 billion in emergency aid for communities recovering from disasters, a ban on the Chinese-owned app TikTok on government devices and a collection of new rules intended to help Americans save and pay for retirement.
Passage of the legislation was held up yesterday when a Republican demanded that the Senate vote on extending pandemic-era border restrictions. But that amendment failed to pass.
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5. Sam Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bond.
A federal judge imposed highly restrictive bail conditions on the disgraced cryptocurrency executive, who was arrested and charged with fraud this month. He will be monitored under house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California.
The $250 million bond — a written promise to appear in court — will be secured by his parents’ interest in their home. Bankman-Fried was also required to surrender his passport and to receive mental health and substance abuse treatment.
Two other top executives of Bankman-Fried’s companies pleaded guilty to fraud charges and were cooperating with prosecutors.
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6. “Major trustee, please prioritize.”
For years, New York University’s busy Manhattan emergency department has secretly given priority to donors, trustees, politicians, celebrities and their friends and family, according to 45 medical workers and documents reviewed by The Times.
Many hospitals offer exclusive concierge services to the rich. But emergency rooms are typically built around the premise of medical triage: that the sickest patients, regardless of their ability to pay, are treated first.
In other health news, R.S.V. has probably peaked, but flu is still surging and Covid-19 cases are rising. Scientists are hopeful next winter will be better.
Current front-runners include Cate Blanchett for her role as a conniving conductor in “Tár”; Michelle Yeoh as the multiverse’s last hope in “Everything Everywhere All at Once”; and Michelle Williams, who plays a character based on Steven Spielberg’s mother in “The Fabelmans.” Even a dark-horse candidate like Mia Goth in “Pearl” may deserve a look.
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8. Sunday N.F.L. football is heading to YouTube.
The streaming service reached a deal with the league to bring the N.F.L.’s Sunday Ticket package, which exclusively broadcasts all weekend games outside of the viewer’s local area, to its customers next season. The deal is said to be worth as much as $2.5 billion annually — about $1 billion a year more than the deal with the previous rights holder, DirecTV.
The agreement is a watershed moment for the live sports industry, which has been tilting toward streaming for years. As some viewers abandoned cable for services like Netflix, football games had kept sports fans glued to traditional television.
Looking back, we collected 21 sports highlights from this year that are worth watching again.
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9. Latin music thrived in 2022 by refusing to compromise.
The genre — a purposely loose category that encompasses countless national, regional and local styles — has always pointed toward joyful innovation. And in recent years, forward-looking pop stars like Rosalía have used their distinctive sound to explode onto the global scene, writes our chief pop music critic.
Ideas from Latin music have repeatedly catalyzed musical evolution in jazz, rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop and other genres. And no one embodies 2022 pop more than Bad Bunny, who helped popularize the reggaeton beat that dominates the modern pop sound — an eternal, syncopated pulse.
If you prefer classical music, we picked out this year’s best tracks, including fresh takes on Mozart, Dvorak and Debussy.
Also, of all the music heard around Christmas, few passages rival the awe and mystery of this chord.
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10. And finally, to save a ruin, send in the sheep.
Officials at the vast archaeological park of Pompeii, a city buried alive by a volcanic eruption in A.D. 79, were concerned that invasive thorns and hedges and destructive roots could rebury the site. Pompeii is now preserved with a variety of high-tech tools, including drones and A.I. software, but custodians found an appropriately ancient solution to the overgrowth: bringing back the sheep.
“If they didn’t do it, we’d have to,” said one of the site’s maintenance workers. Another member of the crew spoke about an additional upside of the sheep, especially “with roasted potatoes.”