Stocks, Migrants, Yemen: Your Wednesday Briefing

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Good morning,

Today is Boxing Day in Britain and some Commonwealth countries, but it’s back to work in the U.S. We’re watching the markets as they reopen, the death of a second migrant child at the southwestern border, and new details about Donald Trump’s draft deferment during the Vietnam War.


Trading resumes on Wall Street today after a Christmas break and, before that, a four-day sell-off that threatens to end the longest bull market on record. Losses of more than 20 percent are the official marker of a bear market, and the S&P 500 is down 19.7 percent from its high on Sept. 20.

President Trump’s repeated criticism of the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, and an attempt last weekend by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to reassure markets have contributed to the volatility.

Trading in Asia was mostly flat today, and futures markets suggest a mixed day in the U.S.

Explainer: “The real risk is not that insurmountable challenges knock the economy off course,” our senior economics correspondent writes. “It is that poor leadership converts moderate economic shocks into a crisis.”

From Opinion: The columnist Paul Krugman asks whether White House policies “matter for the economy, or for the stock market (which isn’t at all the same thing).”


On Tuesday, an 8-year-old boy from Guatemala became the second child to die in detention at the southwest border in less than three weeks. It is unclear if his death was the result of the care he received in the U.S., of an arduous journey or of some combination of the two.

The response: A White House spokesman said the boy’s death was “very sad” and that the administration was seeking more information.

Yesterday: President Trump reiterated his call for $5 billion to fund a border wall, a demand at the center of a partial government shutdown. No legislative action to address the shutdown is expected before Thursday.

The details: Mr. Trump has said his wall is already under construction. We mapped the current fencing and what the administration has done so far.


For decades, the U.S. has sold tens of billions of dollars in arms to Saudi Arabia on the unspoken premise that they would rarely be used.

But American weapons and support have figured prominently in the Saudi-led air war in Yemen, where strikes have killed more than 4,600 civilians.

That toll has contributed to a debate in Washington about the pitfalls of the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Catch up: Saudi Arabia entered the war in 2015, allying with the United Arab Emirates and a group of Yemeni factions trying to oust Houthi rebels from northern Yemen. At least 60,000 Yemenis have died.

Go deeper: The conflict has pushed millions to the brink of starvation. In October, Times journalists documented the crisis.


In 1968, a podiatrist in Queens who rented an office from Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, diagnosed the future president with bone spurs in his heels, leading to his medical exemption from the military during the Vietnam War.

The podiatrist, Dr. Larry Braunstein, died in 2007, but his daughters told The Times that he often talked of coming to the younger Mr. Trump’s aid as a favor to the father. Donald Trump, who had earlier been declared available for service, was 22 at the time.

How we know: No paper evidence has been found to corroborate the version of events described by the Braunstein family, who also suggested there was some involvement by a second podiatrist, Dr. Manny Weinstein. The Times began looking into the president’s draft record again when an anonymous tipster suggested that a podiatrist who rented from Fred Trump had provided the medical documentation for a deferment.

Background: An investigation by The Times in October showed the extent to which Fred Trump assisted his son over the years, including by giving him the equivalent today of at least $413 million.

Intensive parenting has been the norm in the upper middle class since the 1990s. And people across class divides appear to have adopted it as an ideal, even if they don’t have the means to carry it out.

Social scientists say the change has a powerful driver: economic anxiety.

A still-vulnerable Indonesia: Despite progress in detecting tsunamis early, at least 429 people were killed and nearly 1,500 were injured in last weekend’s disaster.

Japan defies whaling ban: The country said today that it would withdraw from an international agreement and resume annual whale hunts in the Antarctic. An international moratorium on whaling took effect in 1986.

A message from the pope: During his Christmas Day address, Pope Francis said that all humans are part of an extended holy family that has lost its sense of fraternity.

Protests in Sudan: Widespread demonstrations called for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to step down. Mr. Bashir has been in power since a military coup in 1989.

Kevin Spacey case advances: The actor will be charged with a felony after an accusation of sexual assault that was made public last year, the authorities said.

Snapshot: Above, the annual Hyde Park Christmas Day Swim in the icy waters of the Serpentine lake in London. It’s called the Peter Pan Cup because J.M. Barrie, who wrote “Peter Pan,” swam the 100-yard course in 1903.

The artists we lost: We offer a tribute to notable actors, musicians, writers and dancers who died this year, using their own words.

Late-night comedy: Our columnist looked back at a year in which the occasional nonpolitical joke felt like water in the desert.

What we’re reading: This examination of the Internal Revenue Service by ProPublica and The Atlantic. Albert Sun, an assistant editor, calls it “an eye-opening look at how the once-feared tax agency has been so strangled by budget cuts from Congress that it no longer has the capacity to make even blatant tax dodgers pay their share.”

Read: Here are books that didn’t make it onto our editors’ year-end lists, but that are still worth a look.


Smarter Living: What can we learn about addressing online privacy from the issue of climate change? One essential lesson: Your voice can carry weight. There’s an old saying that “just because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do anything.”

Also, be sure to read company privacy policies, or check out Terms of Service, Didn’t Read or TOSBack to see if they have a plain-language version you can look at. Information is your most powerful weapon online.

Potato chips first showed up in The Times 120 years ago today, in a rather ethnocentric article reprinted from The Baltimore Sun listing typical breakfast menus for upper-class families in Puerto Rico.

If chips before lunch seem slightly unorthodox, a later mention was even more startling. In 1912, The Times reported that a French scientist had concluded that a jolt of electricity — 1,000 volts — was equal in food value to a porterhouse steak and potato chips.

Just four months before, an article detailing the theory began with a quotation from the scientist that was shocking on any number of levels: “If a man is hungry, give him electricity. If he asks for bread or beefsteak, put him in the electric chair and turn on the current.”

The 1,000-volt diet never caught on — given a choice between the electric chair and potato chips, the hungry invariably go for the chips.


That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Chris


Thank you
To Aisha Harris for fueling our cultural coverage and Kenneth R. Rosen for powering Smarter Living. Mark Bulik wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Today’s episode revisits a family divided by the Korean War.
• Here’s today’s mini crossword puzzle, and a clue: The second “O” of OTOH (5 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• The Times is published by The New York Times Company, which has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 1967 under the symbol NYT.



Source : Nytimes