Your Monday Evening Briefing

Russian Meddling, Markets, Opioids | View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Monday, December 17, 2018 [NYTimes.com »]( [Your Monday Evening Briefing]( By JEAN RUTTER AND HIROKO MASUIKE Good evening. Here’s the latest. Pool photo by Alexei Druzhinin 1. Russian efforts to sway the 2016 U.S. election included an [extraordinary effort to target black Americans]( and suppress turnout among Democratic voters, according to a new report commissioned by the Senate. The report also argued that the Russian presence on Instagram had been underestimated and might have been as effective or more effective than its Facebook efforts. Above, the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, center, with Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was indicted by American prosecutors for his involvement in interfering in the 2016 presidential election. “Very real racial tensions and feelings of alienation exist in America, and have for decades,” one researcher said. “The I.R.A. didn’t create them. It exploits them,” she added. Separately, now that The National Enquirer has admitted to prosecutors that it did political dirty work for Donald Trump, our media columnist[takes a look at the tabloid’s unlikely power](. _____ Drew Angerer/Getty Images 2. The S&P 500-stock index [sank to its lowest level of the year]( as investors anticipated a Federal Reserve decision on interest rates later this week. The benchmark index has now lost almost 5 percent for the year; if it were to end the year down that much, it would be its worst performance since 2008. and blue chip “Every part of the market has been acting like things are a lot slower,” one expert said. In other business news, CBS announced that its former chief executive, [Les]( who was forced out[in]( after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct[,]( not receive his exit payout[.]( _____ John Tully for The New York Times 3. Some prosecutors are treating fentanyl as a deadly weapon. Fear over exposure to powdered opioids is growing, and has led to at least a dozen people being [charged with endangering or assaulting emergency responders]( — even if all they did was call 911. Above, a New Hampshire man who was charged with a felony. Police officers say exposure to opioids during emergencies can put them in mortal danger. But medical professionals say risks from accidental exposure are very low. Generally the drugs must be deliberately ingested, not accidentally touched or inhaled, to cause a reaction, they say. Prescribed: A doctor shares a list of [essential reading on the opioid crisis](. _____ Ruth Fremson/The New York Times 4. Homelessness in the U.S. rose slightly for the second year in a row, [with spikes in high-rent cities like New York and Seattle]( according to a new federal report. Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, attributed some of the increase to about 4,000 people temporarily displaced by natural disasters and other causes. But he also blamed higher housing costs. King County, Wash., which includes Seattle, above, had the biggest increase; homelessness rates there rose by 4 percent. Homelessness increased by 2.8 percent in New York City. _____ Tyler Hicks/The New York Times 5. Six boats, dozens of fishermen dead. The deadly war in Yemen is also taking place at sea — with even less accountability than on land, our reporter found. [Dozens of civilians have died off the coast]( since the Saudi-led offensive began in 2015, many of them fishermen possibly mistaken for rebel smugglers or spotters. At least six Yemeni fishing trawlers were hit over six weeks this summer. After attacks by warships, helicopters and a fighter jet, only one made it back — and 50 of the 86 fishermen were killed. Above, in the seaside village of Kudah. _____ Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock 6. Google’s New York footprint is growing. The tech giant said it would expand with a [$1 billion campus in Greenwich Village]( allowing it to double its 7,000-employee work force there over the next decade. It’s Google’s second big move this year [in Manhattan](. In March, the company spent $2.4 billion to buy the Chelsea Market building, above, where it already had offices. “New York City continues to be a great source of diverse, world-class talent,” Google’s chief financial officer said in a statement. Separately, we took a campus tour of [Cornell Tech]( one of the most visible symbols of New York City’s booming technology sector — and a major selling point in the bid to lure Amazon to Queens. _____ Brian Flaherty for The New York Times 7. The renowned computer scientist Donald Knuth has argued that the best algorithms are comparable to literature and worthy of Pulitzer Prizes. The Stanford professor, above, is known for introducing the notion of “literate programming,” emphasizing the importance of writing code that is readable by humans as well as computers. His life’s work, the four-volume “The Art of Computer Programming,” is the bible of its field — with more than one million copies in print. [In a conversation with our writer,]( he became philosophical about mathematics. “I’ll never know everything,” he said. “My life would be a lot worse if there was nothing I knew the answers about, and if there was nothing I didn’t know the answers about.” _____ Bobby Doherty for The New York Times 8. When House Democrats return to Washington next month holding the majority, they will have new authority to investigate the White House. [What will they do with it?]( Rep. Elijah Cummings, right, the chairman-designate of the Oversight Committee, shared some likely targets: children separated from their families at the border; the use of private email for government business; trips on government-owned aircraft; payments to the Trump Organization from foreign governments since the 2016 election. With him: Representatives Jerrold Nadler of New York and Adam Schiff of California. “I’m not trying to do anything extraordinary,” Mr. Cummings told our writer. “I’m trying to do what the Constitution says I’m supposed to do.” _____ Warner Brothers Pictures 9. “Their humanity just jumped out at you.” The director Peter Jackson has restored century-old World War I combat footage from the archives of Britain’s Imperial War Museum and culled veterans’ stories from hundreds of hours of BBC interviews to create the documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old.” The resulting film provides a [stunning “you are there” sense of World War I]( from a British infantryman’s perspective. Above, before and after restoration. We spoke to Mr. Jackson, the director of elaborate fantasy epics like the “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” trilogies, about how he and his team used old footage in new ways. _____ Rick Loomis for The New York Times 10. Finally, holiday relief is at hand. For years, commuters in New York have grumbled about the [placement of Christmas decorations]( over the Holland Tunnel entrance, above — particularly the location of a tree, nestled in the N of “Holland” instead of over the tree-shape A. An online poll prompted by a [viral petition]( urged the Port Authority to re-deck the Holland, and now the tree will be moved. (More than 80 percent voted for change.) Have a spontaneous evening. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing. [Sign up here]( to get it by email in the Australian, Asian, European or American morning. Want to catch up on past briefings? [You can browse them here](. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at [briefing@nytimes.com](mailto:briefing@nytimes.com?subject=Evening%20Briefing%20Feedback). LIKE THIS EMAIL? Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up [here](. 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