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--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. Today's Thursday, April 24th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I think we have a deal with Russia. We have to get a deal with Zelensky. And I hope that Zelensky, I thought it might be easier to deal with Zelensky. So far, it's been harder.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump is turning up the pressure on Ukraine to agree to a plan his administration drew up to end the war with Russia. Under the proposal, Russia would essentially get all of the land that it's taken since invading Ukraine. In exchange, Ukraine would only get vague security assurances.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The plan would also explicitly block Ukraine from ever joining NATO, a concession Russia has long called for. But Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky, quickly rejected the Trump administration's proposal, saying, quote, this is our territory.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Zelensky's reaction and his rejection, his total rejection of the idea, is not surprising given the fact that the American proposal is so positive for Russia.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Michael Scheer has been reporting on the Trump administration's role in negotiations to stop the fighting.
--:-- Michael Scheer: The motivation for the Trump administration behind pushing this peace plan is a little bit unclear. One possibility is that they really are trying to push President Zelensky into a deal that Ukrainians don't really approve of.
--:-- Michael Scheer: But the other possibility is that this is mostly a pretext. President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President Pence, they've all been talking in recent weeks about just walking away from the peace process, saying that it's too difficult to get these parties back together.
--:-- Michael Scheer: And so it's just possible that proposing a plan that is this bad from the perspective of the Ukrainians means that it's basically dead in the water, that it's not really about moving forward with the peace plan, but it's really about setting the stage for the U.S. to wash its hands of the crisis and just walk away from the war.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, in Ukraine. People scrambled for shelter overnight as Russian forces launched a major missile and drone attack on the country capital city.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The strikes were the deadliest attack on Kiev in almost a year. At least nine people were killed. More than 60 were injured.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Yesterday, a flashy announcement went up online promising what it called the most exclusive invitation in the world. The pitch? Buy enough of President Trump's meme coin, a form of cryptocurrency, and you'll get a private dinner with the president and a tour of the White House.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The offer may be the Trump family's most explicit effort yet to profit from crypto. The president launched the coin just before Inauguration Day and holds a large number of them.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He and his business partners personally make money every time it's traded. That earned them nearly $100 million in just the first few weeks of his presidency.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When news of the offer spread yesterday, the meme coins price surged more than 60% as people rushed to buy enough to win their spot.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The top 220 coin holders will get the invite for the dinner next month. There's even a leaderboard now up on the coins website.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Trump family's embrace of cryptocurrency has come as the president's moved to scale back enforcement of regulations on the industry.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And it's also amplified major ethical concerns that Trump is essentially asking people to pay for access to the White House and is directly profiting from his presidency.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One former official who oversaw crypto policy under President Biden said, quote, they are making the pay to play deal explicit.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Department of the Interior says it will fast-track new projects involving coal, oil, gas, and minerals on public lands, and that it will radically reduce the review periods required by law.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Environmental reviews that normally take a year to complete and give the public a chance to weigh in, will now be finished in just two weeks.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's a move that developers and builders have long called for, saying that the existing review process is too long and too expensive.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Interior Department says it has the authority to make this drastic change because President Trump declared a national energy emergency saying the country resources are insufficient.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But dozens of energy experts say there is no emergency. They point out that the U.S. already produces more energy than it consumes.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's both the world's largest producer of oil and the largest exporter of natural gas.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And in one last Trump update for today, a new Times analysis of national opinion polls gives a snapshot of how Americans feel about the president three months in.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Overall, Trump's approval rating has dropped to about 44 percent, down from 52 percent in his first week.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Much of that drop appears to have been driven by independent voters. Among Republicans, there's been little drop in support for the president, though experts say it's still too soon to measure how voters feel about some of Trump's most disruptive policies, like his aggressive new tariffs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The full polling tracker, which is updated daily, is at nytimes.com.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This week, India and Pakistan are on edge after a terrorist attack killed more than two dozen Indian tourists.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The attack happened in Kashmir, a disputed territory that both countries, who are longtime adversaries, control parts of.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Gunmen opened fire at a vacation area there that people have dubbed mini-Switzerland, with its picturesque mountains and valleys.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: While India hasn't officially blamed any group for the massacre, it's retaliated against Pakistan, claiming the country harbors and supports terrorists.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It shut a key border crossing between the two countries, among other measures, and India's defense minister hinted at the possibility of military strikes.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Pakistan, meanwhile, expressed condolences for the victims' families and has said it does not support any form of terrorism.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A few years ago, another militant attack in Kashmir sparked an air battle between India and Pakistan that stopped just short of all-out war.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally this sound will make you fall asleep in six seconds.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: If you search for sleep advice on TikTok Instagram YouTube, there actually a military proven technique.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You'll find an endless scroll of various obscure sleep hacks.
--:-- Caroline Hopkins Legaspe: When it comes to sleep, obviously it's very personal. But the experts I talked with did nix a few ideas that are all over social media right now, like mouth tape.
--:-- Caroline Hopkins Legaspe: Yes, this is a real thing people are doing. They are taping their mouths shut to try and stop snoring.
--:-- Caroline Hopkins Legaspe: But there are also a number of trending sleep suggestions that do get the experts' seal of approval.
--:-- Caroline Hopkins Legaspe: Many of these were sort of mental exercises that you can do to get your mind off of, you know, the worries from your day.
--:-- Caroline Hopkins Legaspe: One of these is a hack called cognitive shuffling, where you think of a word, can be any random word, and then you think of the first letter of that word and as many words as you can think of that start with that first letter.
--:-- Caroline Hopkins Legaspe: And when you run out of words, you move on to the next one.
--:-- Caroline Hopkins Legaspe: So, for example, say you choose the word apple. You would start with A and think of as many A words as you can. You know, art, air, atrium, then move on to P and think of as many P words as you can, and so on and so forth until you fall asleep.
--:-- Caroline Hopkins Legaspe: Another one that I found kind of fun is this idea of the house tour.
--:-- Caroline Hopkins Legaspe: You imagine a house you know really well. It's not your own house, though. Somebody's house that you've been in enough times to sort of close your eyes and picture every detail of slowly walking up to the door, opening the door, noticing the art on the walls, noticing, you know, the furniture.
--:-- Caroline Hopkins Legaspe: And people on TikTok say they never make it upstairs because they're asleep by the time they get through the first few rooms of the house.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Caroline's full list of sleep tips that experts say are worth trying is at NYTimes.com.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, a soybean farmer in Iowa explains the toll President Trump's tariffs are taking on her farm and her industry.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in the New York Times audio app, where you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. The headlines will be back tomorrow with Katherine Porter.
