January 19, 2020

Your Weekend Briefing

By remy tumin and stephen reiss

Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead.

Hilary Swift for The New York Times

1. The third impeachment trial of an American president is set to begin this week.

The House impeachment managers, appointed this past week by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, above, will argue that the Senate should convict President Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to a pressure campaign on Ukraine.

And Mr. Trump’s defense team, including the high-profile litigators Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz, will make its legal cases as to why those actions do not rise to the impeachment standard of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Oral arguments are likely to begin on Wednesday. Here’s a step-by-step guide to the process.

Mr. Trump, for his part, will be attending the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos when the trial begins.

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Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

2. A question from the not-so-distant political past took center stage again this week: Can a woman beat President Trump?

As a dispute between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren about sexism and experience burst into public view, we spoke to nearly two dozen female voters in Iowa this week about breaking the ultimate glass ceiling. Some voters say the power of a symbolic first is overshadowed by anxiety about defeating Mr. Trump.

Here’s what else happened in the race this week.

On Saturday, thousands around the country took to the streets for the fourth Women’s March. The gatherings were filled with colorful signs, slogans for various presidential candidates — and the trademark knitted hats.

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Joe Mahoney/Richmond Times-Dispatch, via Associated Press

3. Thousands of gun rights activists from across the country are expected to descend on the Virginia State Capitol on Monday.

But the rally in Richmond — against sweeping new gun control proposals supported by state Democrats — has quickly set off fears of potential violence and chaos. The governor declared a state of emergency and the F.B.I. arrested several men with ties to right-wing militias who had planned to attend the rally. President Trump weighed in on the matter.

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Officials are trying to avoid a repeat of the deadly clash in Charlottesville in 2017, and as a result, guns, torches and baseball bats are banned from the rally.

Adam Ferriss

4. A groundbreaking facial recognition app could end anonymity as we know it.

Clearview AI, a little-known start-up, has been used by more than 600 law enforcement agencies to match photos of unknown people to their online images (yes, most likely including yours).

The system relies on a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites. Its facial recognition tool “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.

Chris Jackson/Chris Jackson Collection, via Chris Jackson/Getty Images

5. Prince Harry and Meghan have a deal: They’ll stop using their British royal titles, forgo some state funding and repay at least $3 million in taxpayer money that was used to refurbish their residence at Windsor Castle.

The unusual agreement, negotiated by representatives of Queen Elizabeth II, Harry and other senior members of the royal family, above in July, would allow them to step back from their royal duties and to spend a majority of their time in North America. The arrangement takes effect later in the spring and will be reviewed by Buckingham Palace after a year.

Harry and Meghan would be allowed to earn money in the private sector, though officials said the couple had agreed that whatever work they pursued would “uphold the values of Her Majesty.” Read the full statement from the palace here.

Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

6. Women in eastern Aleppo, Syria, once rarely left home without a man. After eight years of civil war, many are alone and working for the first time — and discovering a newfound independence.

“Before, women were afraid of everything,” said Fatima Rawass, 32, above, who opened a beauty salon for veiled women in May, three years after her husband died in the war. “But now, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the conflict in oil-rich Libya has become one of the region’s most intractable proxy wars. Most of the international powers with an interest in the country will gather in Berlin on Sunday to find a way out of what has become a multinational free-for-all.

Joseph Rimkus/Reuters

7. SpaceX is slated to deliberately destroy a rocket in flight to test whether a safety system for astronauts works.

The company called off a test scheduled for Saturday because of rough seas in the Atlantic; the test is now scheduled for Sunday between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. Eastern time.

It will be a final major milestone before SpaceX is ready to start taking NASA astronauts to the station. There may even be an explosion. “Probably a fireball of some kind,” an official said.

Jerritt Clark/Getty Images

8. The Houston Astros climbed from the bottom of baseball to its pinnacle in a few short years. Now they’re at the heart of a stunning cheating scandal that has left the sport reeling.

Three managers and one general manager have lost their jobs, all implicated in a brazen scheme to illegally use electronics to steal opposing catchers’ signs and tip off their own batters to what pitch was coming. Our baseball reporter details how it all unraveled.

And another championship title is in sight: A trip to the Super Bowl is on the line today. The Chiefs host the Titans (kickoff is at 3:05 p.m. Eastern time) and the 49ers host the Packers (kickoff is at 6:40 p.m. Eastern time). Here are our predictions for the conference championship games.

Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

9. Move over, Dry January — the latest resolution trend is Veganuary.

The campaign to ditch meat and its related products was started in Britain in 2014 by a husband-and-wife team who met on a vegan dating site. Now an estimated 750,000 people from 192 countries have joined the pledge.

“Bacon is no longer my only benchmark of happiness,” one participant said.

Here are 21 of our editors’ favorite vegan recipes, like vegan Thai curry vegetables, above.

Amy Dickerson for The New York Times

10. And finally, dig into our Best Weekend Reads.

This week our journalists talked to the actress Awkwafina about her new TV series and Jean-Georges Vongerichten on how he went from being a “no good” kid to a globally prolific chef. We also looked at an unexpected savior for a Maine paper mill.

May we also suggest these 11 new books our editors liked, a glance at the latest small-screen recommendations from Watching and our music critics’ latest playlist.

Have you been keeping up with the headlines? Test your knowledge with our news quiz. And here’s the front page of our Sunday paper, the Sunday Review from Opinion and our crossword puzzles.

We asked readers to pick a book that changed their life. Here’s what they said.

Have a page-turning week.

Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6 a.m. Eastern.

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