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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.
2. The West is worried that President Vladimir Putin will announce an expanded conflict in Ukraine on May 9, Russia’s Victory Day.
Victory Day celebrates Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, and Putin usually presides over the festivities. But this year, some officials fear he’ll use the occasion to turn what he has called a “special military operation” into an all-out war. The Kremlin denied that was Putin’s agenda.
On the ground, 21 people died in strikes in eastern Ukraine and the western city of Lviv braced for new attacks after Russia hit power stations there. Russia said it would allow more civilian evacuations from the besieged steel plant in Mariupol.
The E.U. announced plans to embargo Russian oil. The measure, which is expected to be quickly approved, would halt Russian crude oil imports to most E.U. countries in six months, and refined oil products by year’s end. The bloc also pledged more military support to Moldova, which fears it might be next on Russia’s takeover list, and said it would put the head of the Russian Orthodox Church on its sanctions list.
3. A come-from-behind primary victory in Ohio suggests the Trump brand still matters.
J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” decisively won the Republican nomination for a Senate seat yesterday. After trailing other candidates, he was endorsed last month by former President Donald Trump. In November, Vance will face Representative Tim Ryan.
Other winners included the Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican who fought off a right-wing challenge. In the Indiana primaries, Greg Pence — the brother of former vice president Mike Pence — captured the Republican nomination for a House seat. U.S. primary races are now set to go into an almost once-a-week schedule.
In other midterm news, the leaked Supreme Court opinion on Roe may give many candidates a new, white-hot focus on abortion.
4. In its largest hike since 2000, the Fed raised interest rates.
The half-percentage-point increase, along with a plan to lower bond holdings, is a strategy to halt the country’s fastest inflation rate in four decades while avoiding a recession.
The rate hike and the plan to shrink its nearly $9 trillion balance sheet signaled a new resolve on the Fed’s part. Previously, officials there labeled inflation “transitory.”
At a news conference after the announcement, Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted that the larger-than-normal rate increases might continue. But stocks jumped 3 percent on Powell’s guarantee that increases would never be above half a percentage point.
5. The audacity of Michoacán’s criminal organizations is growing.
Some of the cartels in the Mexican state have muscled into lucrative economic sectors like the $3.2 billion avocado industry. As rival cartels battle, they’ve burned down trees, harassed U.S. produce inspectors, blocked food supplies and ransacked towns.
In 2018, Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, rode to power on a promise to tackle the cartels by increasing spending on social programs. But halfway through his term, the strategy has not worked. In 2021, there was a nearly fivefold increase from the previous year of internally displaced Mexicans — 44,905 people — who fled cartel violence.
6. Ukraine had a booming surrogacy business. Then came war.
Ukraine is among the few countries allowing legal, international surrogacy, at relatively low rates of about $40,000 to $50,000. (In the U.S., surrogacy costs between $100,000 and $200,000.) One Ukrainian embryologist estimated some 3,200 implantations were done yearly before the war — creating a thriving economic sector.
My colleague Susan Dominus, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, looked closely at one agency and its clients and surrogates, all caught off guard by Russia’s invasion. Everyone had to make fast decisions regarding life-and-death matters, while navigating the power dynamics that occur when women sign over their physical selves.
7. Transgender children are unlikely to revert to their former gender, even after five years.
Those are the findings of a first-of-its-kind study, which tracked 317 children in the U.S. and Canada who made a so-called social transition — taking on new names, pronouns, haircuts and clothing — between ages 3 and 12. After five years, only 2.5 percent had reverted to identifying with the gender they were assigned at birth.
When the study ended, about 60 percent of the children had started puberty-blocking drugs or hormones. But because the work began in 2013, it may not reflect current patterns, as more children are transitioning nowadays. The researchers will track the cohort for 20 years after each participant’s social transition.
8. Stanford University will receive a billion dollars for the establishment of a school centered on climate change.
John Doerr, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capitalists, and his wife, Ann, are giving Stanford $1.1 billion. It’s the second-largest gift ever made to an academic institution.
He was inspired to tackle climate change after watching Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” and being told by his daughter that his generation had to do something. Of the new project, Doerr said, “Climate and sustainability is going to be the new computer science. This is what the young people want to work on with their lives.”
9. If your closet is bursting with old slides and negatives, why not digitize?
Photography started moving to digital about 30 years ago, leaving countless heaps of film-based formats piling up in garages and attics. Our Tech Tip columnist offers some solutions.
Starting at around $150, you can buy a compact or flatbed film scanner. Or your smartphone and a low-priced kit or app — about $40 — will allow you to convert film at a little lower quality. Companies will also digitize old transparencies beginning at about 21 cents per image.
Another tech tip: One of our Wirecutter writers described the iPhone’s Live Text feature, which recognizes and copies text from almost any image to your phone, as “life-changing.” Android users can try Google Lens for something similar.
10. And finally, Dolly Parton gets a “fair promotion.”
When it was announced that Parton was a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominee, she asked to “respectfully bow out” of contention, feeling that she hadn’t earned the right to be considered a rock musician.
But the hall pointed out that rock had deep roots in country (and that the ballots had been printed). She chose to accept and will join the new class with Eminem, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon and the Eurythmics. A ceremony will be held in Los Angeles on Nov. 5.
Have a rockin’ evening.
Bryan Denton compiled photos for this briefing.
