--:-- Traci Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Traci Mumford. Today's Friday, August 22nd.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Here's what we're covering. This morning, a group of international experts have declared that a major portion of Gaza is officially suffering from famine, with at least half a million people facing starvation, acute malnutrition and death.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The group, the IPC, is who the United Nations and other aid agencies rely on to monitor hunger crises around the world. And an official famine declaration like this is rare. In the past two decades, the IPC has only confirmed three other famines, in Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan.
--:-- Traci Mumford: To reach that threshold in Gaza, the IPC said it had to verify a number of criteria, including how many children are acutely malnourished, and that there have been a rising number of deaths from starvation.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The group says that a number of factors tipped the situation in Gaza from a hunger crisis to a full-on famine, including Israel's intensifying attacks on the territory and its tight control over food getting in.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Israel has said it has been letting aid in, but humanitarian groups say it's still too hard to get supplies to the people who need them. They say that just a few miles away, right across the border in Israel, they have enough supplies stockpiled to feed Gaza's entire population for months.
--:-- Ben Castleman: What's missing is not the ability to respond, but the political will to allow it. Failure to do so will cost countless additional lives.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The United States has long had a reputation as being the safest place in the world for investors to put their money and for entrepreneurs to build their businesses. And that has given the U.S. a nearly incalculable economic advantage.
--:-- Ben Castleman: It's let the government borrow more cheaply. It's let the economy grow more quickly, emerge from downturns more successfully than most of its peer countries around the world.
--:-- Ben Castleman: And now President Trump may be chipping away at that advantage. Economists are increasingly concerned that some of President Trump's recent moves are building into a more troubling pattern.
--:-- Ben Castleman: They've watched this summer as he's tried to force out officials at the Federal Reserve when they refused his demand to cut interest rates, fired the commissioner in charge of labor statistics after her agency reported weak job growth, and leveraged the power of the federal government to pressure companies over their own business decisions.
--:-- Ben Castleman: When economists look at all of that together, they see the Trump administration trying to expand its influence into areas that used to be more insulated from political meddling.
--:-- Ben Castleman: And they're worried that he's attacking the institutions and norms that made investors trust the U.S. in the first place.
--:-- Ben Castleman: Economists are warning that over time that could undermine the country's reputation as a stable rules place to do business. Companies and investors could take their money elsewhere.
--:-- Ben Castleman: The concern here is both for the possibility of gradual erosion of norms, gradual impacts on the economy more broadly, but also about the possibility of a crisis down the road.
--:-- Ben Castleman: And the problem with a financial crisis, a budget crisis, is that you rarely know that you're in one until it's too late.
--:-- Traci Mumford: One thing to watch today? A speech from the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. He's speaking at a meeting of the world's leading economic policymakers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And people are waiting to see if he'll give any indication of the Fed's plans for interest rates, given Trump's intense pressure campaign to lower them.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Now, three more updates on the Trump administration. A new study has found that for the first time in decades, more immigrants are leaving the U.S. than arriving.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The analysis from Pew shows that the foreign-born population of the U.S. declined by almost 1.5 million people between January and June of this year.
--:-- Traci Mumford: That includes people who've left the country by choice or by deportation, a tactic the Trump administration has aggressively ramped up.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Advocates who want to curb immigration say the shift is a good thing, that it'll lead to a tighter labor market, which will benefit American workers.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Though some immigration experts say the U.S. actually needs an influx of people to offset the country's falling birth rate and aging population.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Meanwhile, a federal judge has hit pause on one of the most high-profile pieces of Trump's immigration crackdown, the detention center in Florida known as Alligator Alcatraz.
--:-- Traci Mumford: We're surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland, and the only way out is really deportation.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The judge ruled yesterday that the state and federal governments broke the law when they failed to do an environmental review before they set up the center on an old airstrip in the middle of the Everglades, which are protected wetlands.
--:-- Traci Mumford: She ordered officials to stop all construction on the site and gave them 60 days to take down the tents and fencing and move out all of the detainees.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The state of Florida has said it will appeal the decision.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And a New York appeals court handed President Trump a major victory yesterday, saying he does not have to pay the half-a-billion-dollar fine that he faced for conspiring to commit fraud.
--:-- Traci Mumford: While the court upheld the original ruling that Trump did inflate the value of his assets, it said the enormous penalty wasn't justified since Trump's false claims hadn't caused, quote, cataclysmic harm.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Trump is now expected to appeal the entire case and try to get the fraud ruling thrown out altogether.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And finally, in California this week, a grisly murder case that became a national obsession is back in the spotlight as Eric and Lyle Menendez have come up for parole.
--:-- Traci Mumford: In 1989, the brothers burst into their family's mansion with shotguns and killed their parents.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And their trial, which was one of the first ever to be televised, helped basically kick off the phenomenon of true crime as entertainment.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The brothers accused of the murder of their wealthy parents in Beverly Hills. It was like an incredible soap opera.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Recently a new wave of docudramas, podcasts, and YouTube deep dives have fueled new interest in their case.
--:-- Traci Mumford: You guys, Eric and Lyle Menendez. That's a hot topic today.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It's also earned them a younger generation of loyal followers who came to believe that they were mistreated by the criminal justice system and deserved sympathy for abuse they'd faced from their father.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Earlier this year, testimony from some of their family members saying that they'd turned their lives around in prison helped them get resentenced from life in prison to having a chance at parole.
--:-- Traci Mumford: But yesterday, a California State Parole Commission ruled that Eric should stay in prison for at least three more years, in part because he'd used drugs while incarcerated and had a contraband cell phone.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Lyle's hearing is today. If the board recommends that he is released on parole, California's governor, Gavin Newsom, will have the final say on the matter.
--:-- Traci Mumford: On Thursday, Newsom told reporters that he has held back from watching any of the documentaries or TV shows about the brothers, saying he wanted the facts to speak for themselves and not be swayed by, quote, what's on TikTok or what's on YouTube.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Those are the headlines. But stick around, we've got the Friday news quiz for you after the credits.
--:-- Traci Mumford: This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, Katie O'Brien, Adam Rasgon, and Paula Schumann.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Now for the quiz. We've got questions about a few stories The Times has covered this week.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Can you answer them all?
--:-- Traci Mumford: First up. Well, thank you very much. It's a great honor to have you here. This week, President Trump hosted talks at the White House focused on ending the war in Ukraine.
--:-- Traci Mumford: He later gave an interview to Fox News where he talked about one particular reason that he's so motivated to stop the fighting.
--:-- Traci Mumford: He's made it extremely clear that he wants a Nobel Peace Prize. But it's not that. He actually revealed he has set his sights even higher.
--:-- Traci Mumford: We'll play a clip of it for you here with the key word missing. What did Trump say he's angling for?
--:-- Traci Mumford: The answer? He said he wants to get through those pearly gates. The president said on Fox News this morning that he's partially seeking peace in order to get to heaven.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Was he joking or is there spiritual motivation behind his peace deals here?
--:-- Traci Mumford: I think the president was serious. I think the president wants to get to heaven, as I hope we all do in this room as well.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It's unclear who he can call to make that happen for him. But he did reportedly make a call about the Nobel situation to Norway's finance minister when they were supposed to be discussing tariffs.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Norway every December.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Next question. We have breaking news as it pertains to our network.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The cable news network MSNBC announced this week it's changing its name to MSNOW.
--:-- Traci Mumford: It's all part of a big media reorg. Its parent company, Comcast, is separating the left-leaning network from its NBC brand, so it's got to drop those last few letters.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Your question, what did the first part of MSNBC originally stand for?
--:-- Traci Mumford: I'll give you a hint. It started as a collaboration in the 1990s with a major American tech company.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The answer? MSNBC was at one point a partnership between NBC and Microsoft with its MSN internet portal.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The network's new name, MSNOW, apparently stands for My Source News Opinion World.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The new acronym has triggered some snarky backlash, people calling it word salad.
--:-- Traci Mumford: But look, corporate name changes are hard. You kind of have to just hope everyone will forget and move on.
--:-- Traci Mumford: That tactic has worked for some big brands. eBay used to be Auction Web.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Pepsi Cola started out as Brad's Drink, named after the founder.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And the brains behind Google first named their search engine after the way links point back to other websites.
--:-- Traci Mumford: They called it, and I am not kidding, Backrub.
--:-- Traci Mumford: And last question. Recently, a group of countries got together to speak up about what they say is a big issue.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Their continent looks bad. Too little on the map that most of the world uses.
--:-- Traci Mumford: They've got a problem with what's known as the Mercator Map, which dates back to the 16th century, when it was first drawn to help sailors navigate at sea.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The map enlarges areas at the poles to create straight lines of constant bearing or geographic direction.
--:-- Traci Mumford: But it distorts the relative size of nations and continents.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Are you saying the map is wrong?
--:-- Traci Mumford: This is not a new grievance. The TV show The West Wing was talking about the flaws of the Mercator Map all the way back in the early 2000s.
--:-- Traci Mumford: But your question is, now, countries on which continent are formally pushing for the United Nations and other organizations to use a different map?
--:-- Traci Mumford: The answer? Africa.
--:-- Traci Mumford: If you look at a Mercator map, probably the one you had in school, you will see what the countries are talking about.
--:-- Traci Mumford: On that, the continent of Africa looks really not that much bigger than Europe.
--:-- Traci Mumford: When in fact it's several times larger.
--:-- Traci Mumford: The 55 countries that make up the African Union say they want people to adopt what's known as the Equal Earth Map instead, which shows every part of the globe in its actual proportion.
--:-- Traci Mumford: I'm just going to say that if the change is made, people will finally see the true size of Greenland.
--:-- Traci Mumford: Sorry, Greenland.
--:-- Traci Mumford: All right, that is it for the news quiz. If you want to tell us how you did or what you think about the quiz, you can always email us at theheadlines at nytimes.com.
--:-- Traci Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. The Headlines will be back on Monday.
