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Good evening. Here’s the latest.
1. This week began with Memorial Day. Tonight, we start by honoring another kind of national sacrifice.
The Memorial Glade at the 9/11 Memorial acknowledges the unsung heroes, largely rescue and recovery workers, whose illnesses and deaths have come years after the towers collapsed.
A pathway is flanked by six monoliths, inlaid with steel from the towers. The dedication comes 17 years to the day after the cleanup of ground zero officially concluded.
“We might have stopped the recovery efforts on that day,” a former New York City firefighter said, “but for a lot of us, it never stopped.”
2. The drumbeat for impeachment is getting louder.
House members like Dwight Evans, Democrat of Pennsylvania, above, are feeling increasing pressure from their African-American constituents to act. Others, mindful of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call for caution, are pushing back. The Congressional Black Caucus has taken no official position on impeachment.
Here’s what you need to know about how impeachment inquiries work.
A day after the special counsel, Robert Mueller, made his first public statement since the Russia investigation, President Trump tweeted, and then retracted, that Russia helped him get elected in 2016.
3. The White House asked the Navy to hide the U.S.S. John McCain during President Trump’s visit to Japan this week. The president said he knew nothing about it.
“Now, somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him, O.K.?” Mr. Trump said today of Senator John McCain, who died in August. “They were well-meaning, I will say. I didn’t know anything about it. I would never have done that.”
At minimum, the request appeared to be an attempt to keep the McCain name out of photographs while Mr. Trump was visiting. The destroyer is named after the senator, as well as his grandfather and father, both admirals.
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4. A Republican strategist played a crucial role in the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, new evidence shows.
Hard drives belonging to the strategist, discovered by his daughter after he died, are the most explicit evidence to date to show that the Trump administration added the question to advance Republican Party interests. The findings were disclosed in Federal District Court on Wednesday.
The disclosures come just weeks before the Supreme Court is set to rule on the legality of the question, which critics say will deter many Hispanic and Asian voters from being counted and shift political power to Republican areas.
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5. Israel is in uncharted territory.
Recriminations are flowing over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stunning failure to form a coalition, foreshadowing a contentious campaign for new elections set for Sept. 17. Analysts described the chaos as unprecedented, even by the rough standards of Israeli politics.
The issue that broke Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition was a law that would have allowed some ultra-Orthodox Jews to be conscripted — which ultranationalists on the right supported. Here’s what happens next.
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6. In business news:
J. P. Morgan Chase announced a tentative settlement in a class-action case initiated by a father that would require the bank to make its parental leave policy gender-neutral. The company would also create a fund to compensate about 5,000 fathers who were shortchanged in the past. Above, Derek Rotondo, the lead plaintiff.
And Uber’s first earnings report as a public company is out. The ride-hailing giant reported slowing growth and a steep loss of more than $1 billion for the first three months of the year.
7. It’s been a deadly season on Mount Everest.
Yesterday we told you that Nepalese officials are considering limiting the number of climbers on the mountain after traffic jams contributed to the deaths of at least 11 people this spring.
But over the years hundreds of climbers have died, and perhaps a third of their bodies were left behind. Global warming means they’re beginning to emerge. The big question is whether to bring them down.
“On the mountain, everything is weighed against the risk of death,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, the former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
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8. The Golden State Warriors are on the hunt for their third consecutive basketball championship.
This season has been treated as a foregone conclusion, our sports desk writes, but Golden State will not want to get too comfortable against Kawhi Leonard, above, and his loaded Toronto Raptors. Here’s our preview of the matchup.
9. Make sure your sound is on for the rest of tonight’s briefing.
For The New York Times Magazine’s annual New York issue, 12 performers show what it takes to light up a city stage. We chronicled the gritty life of a working midcareer female comic, a professional sword swallower, a subway dancer and the Broadway star Kelli O’Hara’s two-hour precurtain regimen.
And if you’re looking for something to do in New York City, our “Summer in the City” newsletter writers suggest an evening at Dreamland Roller Disco in Brooklyn for a groovy dance party on wheels.
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10. And finally, the language of birds.
Long before cellphones, whistling allowed Turkish farmers to converse across long distances in the Pontic Mountains. Kuş dili, or “bird language,” transforms the full Turkish vocabulary into melodic tones with varied-pitch frequencies that can travel for miles.
Listen for yourself, as a girl whistles, “Mom! Is the dinner ready?” and her mother answers, “Yes, it’s ready, dear.” Others whistle their names and more complicated thoughts. Above, Organ Civelek, who teaches the bird language, with his son.
Today, there are about 10,000 people in the region that can communicate by whistling, and an app is being used to try to preserve the language.
Chirp, chirp.
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Source : Nytimes
