Your Monday Evening Briefing

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

Your Monday Evening Briefing

Good evening. Here's the latest.

Carlo Allegri/Reuters

1. "You all come to us young people for hope? How dare you!"

At the United Nations climate summit, dozens of presidents, prime ministers and corporate executives sought to highlight their efforts to reduce planet-warming emissions.

The teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg wasn't having it. "The eyes of all future generations are upon you," she said, visibly angry. "If you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you." Watch the video.

Protesters trying to drive home the urgency for change disrupted Washington's morning commute.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

2. President Trump unexpectedly dropped into the climate summit at the U.N., but made no address there and didn't stay long.

Mr. Trump did lead a session on religious freedom, but otherwise his remarks to reporters and his tweets focused on a July phone call he had with Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, that has raised questions of abuse of power.

Mr. Trump acknowledged urging Mr. Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, whose son Hunter Biden had business interests in Ukraine.

But he denied that withholding U.S. aid to Ukraine was part of the pressure — while arguing, "Why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?"

Orlin Wagner/Associated Press

3. A 24-year-old U.S. soldier who the authorities said had shared detailed instructions about building explosives in online chats was charged in federal court in Kansas.

We're still reporting, but here's what we know so far: An F.B.I. affidavit said the soldier, Specialist Jarrett William Smith of Fort Riley, had recently discussed plans to kill antifa members and to attack an unnamed news network. Before enlisting, it said, he expressed a desire to travel to Ukraine to fight with a far-right paramilitary group.

And the affidavit said that on Friday, the day before was arrested, he had suggested that Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic presidential candidate, could be a potential target.

Watchdog groups have warned that the armed forces can serve as a training ground for extremists, and that some encourage members to enlist to get weapons training.

Seth Wenig/Associated Press

4. A new scandal. Just what Boris Johnson needed.

An article in The Sunday Times of London reported that, while serving as London's mayor, he directed government money to Jennifer Arcuri, an American entrepreneur and former model he often visited during working hours.

Mr. Johnson arrived in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, above. On the plane, he repeatedly refused to answer reporters' questions about the article, which also said that he gave Ms. Arcuri coveted spots on his trade missions to Tel Aviv, New York, Singapore and Malaysia.

Costas Metaxakis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

5. A very, very big travel disaster.

An estimated 600,000 people around the world are trying to make their way home after Thomas Cook, the world's oldest travel company, collapsed under billions of dollars in debt and canceled all of its flights and vacations.

A big block of the stranded are from Britain. The country has chartered dozens of planes for its largest peacetime repatriation effort.

The ripples will be extensive. In Crete, above, where the company accounted for 400,000 visitors last year, a tourism-union official called it a "7-magnitude earthquake."

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

6. Russia is in trouble. With the World Anti-Doping Agency.

And the stakes are high. Russia could be banned from next year's Olympic Games in Tokyo, as well as soccer's World Cup, track and field's world championships and dozens of other competitions in sports whose governing bodies have signed WADA's doping code.

The fight is over a database of thousands of athlete records that Russia turned over in January, which appears to have been monkeyed with. WADA officials have given the country three weeks to explain.

Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

7. In October, the grand parade in Beijing for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic will run near the home of our correspondent Javier Hernandez.

The police have already told him he'll have to leave it — officers will be stationed inside.

"Even in quiet times, Beijing can feel stifling: the police, the propaganda, the smog," he writes. But now, amid the celebratory decorations, he's seeing bomb-sniffing dogs at shopping malls, police and military officers on guard at street corners and other extraordinary measures.

One possible cause: the unrest in Hong Kong. Our video team documented how the police there have gone undercover as protesters, hitting demonstrators in the face with batons and arresting them.

Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

8. The anti-vaccine movement was decades in the making.

These are the roots: In the 1980s, an NBC documentary raised questions about vaccines. Fears were fanned by a now-discredited 1998 British study that linked the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine with autism, and then exploded as the internet gave an unfiltered platform to rumors and misinformation.

Now, falling immunization rates have put the U.S. at risk of losing its status as a country that has eliminated measles.

Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

9. People love watching the Emmys — but mostly web clips and the red carpet.

Despite an era of "peak TV," the show itself is struggling to find viewers in real time. A record-low 6.9 million people tuned in, down 32 percent from last year's previous low mark, and reviews of the gimmick-laden show were unkind.

HBO won big. The AT&T-owned network scooped up 10 awards on Sunday night, including a record-tying fourth best-drama statue for "Game of Thrones."

But with competition mounting from Netflix, Disney and Apple, some doubt whether HBO can maintain its hegemony.

Peter Prato for The New York Times

10. And finally, the best way to boil an egg ... is to not.

For his new column on cooking and science, the chef J. Kenji López-Alt set out to find the definitive method. He enlisted 96 volunteers (including the one above) and cooked 700 eggs for what he calls "the largest-ever double-blind egg-boiling-and-peeling experiment in the history of the universe."

His findings, in short: Steaming is better than boiling, the Instant Pot is not your friend, and skip the ice bath. Here's the recipe.

Have a perfect evening.

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