Good morning. We’re covering global summits about Ukraine, a North Korean missile test and a change in Australia’s refugee policy.
Biden’s tough diplomatic moves After a day of intense global diplomacy in Brussels, President Biden said Russia should be removed from the Group of 20 nations. If the other member countries do not agree to the expulsion, he said, then Ukraine should be allowed to participate. Here are live updates.
Between back-to-back summits with NATO, the Group of 7 and the European Union, Biden also pledged to take in 100,000 refugees from Ukraine and donate $1 billion to help European nations handle the surge of displaced Ukrainians.
More than three million people have left Ukraine, and a U.N. agency estimates that the war has driven more than half the country’s children from their homes.
Economy: The U.S. hit Russia with more sanctions, targeting more than 300 members of its Parliament and dozens of defense companies, in conjunction with new sanctions from Britain. Russia partly reopened its stock market after nearly a month.
State of the war:
The Times’s Visual Investigations team analyzed dozens of battlefield radio transmissions between Russian forces, revealing logistical problems and communication failures.
Russia has all but obliterated everyday civilian life in Ukraine.
Ukrainians claimed to have destroyed a Russian landing ship that was supplying forces at a port in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
NATO has been rapidly building its military presence in Eastern Europe and agreed on Thursday to provide Ukraine with equipment and training to deal with the possible fallout if Russia turns to unconventional weapons.
Other updates:
The U.S. overestimated Afghan resistance and underestimated Ukraine. Why can’t its spy agencies predict a country’s will to fight?
Russian crew members aboard a superyacht — possibly linked to Vladimir Putin — abruptly left their jobs on Thursday.
Afghans are watching the U.S.’s welcoming stance toward Ukrainian refugees with frustration and confusion, wondering what it may mean for them.
Denys Karachevtsev, a cellist, played Bach in the ruined streets of Kharkiv, his hometown in Ukraine.
World War II killed more than five million Ukrainians, and Russia’s invasion has stirred frightening memories for survivors.
North Korea tests an ICBM North Korea carried out its boldest weapons test in years and its first intercontinental ballistic missile firing since 2017. The missile on Thursday appeared to be the North’s most powerful ICBM to date, South Korean officials said.
Coming just before a NATO meeting over the war in Ukraine, the test drastically escalated tensions with the Biden administration. The U.S., Japan and South Korea quickly condemned the launch, which spurred tit-for-tat missile launches by South Korea.
Launch: The missile flew at an extremely steep angle, reaching an altitude of 6,000 kilometers — far higher than in past tests — and covering 1,099 kilometers before it crashed into waters west of Japan 71 minutes after liftoff, Japanese officials said. Questions remain about whether the North could hit another continent.
Background: Here’s a look inside the country’s arsenal.
Politics: The test comes less than three weeks after the South elected a president who promised a tougher stance on the North.
New Zealand resettles offshore refugees After refusing for years, Australia will allow some refugees currently or previously held in its widely criticized offshore detention centers to resettle in New Zealand.
Australia’s government has long suggested that the arrangement could encourage more people to make dangerous sea crossings to try to eventually enter Australia — perhaps through New Zealand, where all refugees are put on a path to citizenship.
Live Updates: Russia-Ukraine War Updated March 24, 2022, 5:49 p.m. ET
NATO has activated a task force to respond if Russia uses weapons of mass destruction. Here’s what that means. Ukraine’s troops begin counteroffensive that alters shape of the battle with Russia. The U.N. General Assembly adopts a strong resolution blaming Russia for Ukraine’s humanitarian crisis.
It was not immediately clear why Australia changed its mind. One refugee coordinator suggested that the length and cost of the detentions had become burdensome.
Background: New Zealand first offered the arrangement in 2013, after Australia began holding those arriving by boat on islands, pledging to prevent them from ever settling in the country.
Details: New Zealand will take in 150 refugees a year for three years, as part of its total annual refugee quota of 1,500 people.
Centers: Australia has detained more than 3,000 refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, a Pacific island nation, where about 112 people remain. Human rights groups have deemed the detentions a violation of international law, citing the cruel conditions in which the refugees live.
THE LATEST NEWS Asia and the Pacific
The pilots of the China Eastern flight were highly experienced, adding to the mystery surrounding the plane’s crash.
Australians were largely left to rescue one another in catastrophic floods, showing the struggle of the authorities to respond to climate-fueled calamities.
A new report says the U.S. must counter Chinese efforts to isolate Taiwan from U.N. agencies and other international organizations.
Ashleigh Barty’s retirement from tennis is probably permanent, our columnist writes. She “has long seemed like someone whose gift took her farther than she wanted to go.”
Coronavirus
The W.H.O. said that BA.2, the Omicron subvariant, was driving most global cases.
Singapore will lift many of its restrictions, a move the prime minister described as “a decisive step forward toward living with Covid-19.”
World News The Biden administration will overhaul the asylum process, removing a burden from the backlogged immigration courts to streamline the process.
New census data show that 2021 was the slowest year of population growth in U.S. history, as some of the country’s largest cities lost population.
Ethiopia’s government announced a “humanitarian truce” in the Tigray region, where millions are hungry and food aid has not been delivered since December.
The E.U. is expected to finalize a sweeping law aimed at Big Tech’s power that would affect app stores, ads, messaging and other everyday tools.
A Morning Read
Along a lonely stretch of what was once the most dangerous road in Afghanistan, everyone slows down when they reach Hafiz Qadim’s mud-brick shop. It’s not the food. Or the gas. It’s the bomb crater in the middle of the road, which makes for a convenient pit stop.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Developments Card 1 of 4 A new diplomatic push. President Biden, in Brussels for a day of three summits, announced that the United States will accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees and donate $1 billion to help Europe take in people fleeing the war. He also raised the possibility of Russia’s removal from the Group of 20.
NATO deployment. NATO’s chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said that the alliance would double the number of battlegroups in its eastern flank by deploying four new battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, a significant bolstering of NATO’s presence in the region.
Russia’s shrinking force. Western intelligence reports and analyses indicate that Russian forces remain stalled across much of the Ukrainian battlefield. The Pentagon previously said that Russia’s “combat power” in Ukraine is now below 90 percent of its original force.
On the ground. The Ukrainian forces, which are several days into a counteroffensive, claimed to have destroyed a Russian landing ship at a southern Ukrainian port city in Russian-occupied territory.
ARTS AND IDEAS A film for boy band fans “Turning Red,” Pixar’s latest coming-of-age film, follows Meilin Lee, a Chinese Canadian teenager who transforms into a giant red panda whenever she feels an intense emotion — a metaphor for the growing pains of puberty.
The red panda signifies Mei’s journey from a dutiful daughter of Asian immigrants to a young woman bursting with messy feelings and challenging her family’s expectations. The biggest trigger of Mei’s panda, to her mother’s dismay, is her passion for 4*Town, a boy band that resembles *NSYNC and BTS. “It’s a side of teen girls that you never get to see,” the film’s director, Domee Shi, told The Times. “We are just as awkward and sweaty and lusty and excited as any boy.”
Former and current boy-band fans will see themselves in scenes like the one in which Mei introduces each 4*Town member with a specific fact (“Tae Young fosters injured doves!”) or when Mei and her friends record videos of themselves dancing to the band’s hits (including “Nobody Like U,” written by Billie Eilish and Finneas).
With her friends’ help, Mei learns to control her red panda, even harnessing it to raise money to see 4*Town perform. They will walk into that concert as girls, Mei says, and come out as women.
— Ashley Wu, graphics editor
PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook
These simple salmon croquettes are crispy and tender.
What to Watch Michelle Yeoh stars in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a martial-arts adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman dragged into cosmic battle. A.O. Scott calls it “a metaphysical multiverse galaxy-brain head trip.”
Wellness Squats are the one exercise most of us should be doing, but there’s a trick to doing them right.
Now Time to Play Play today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: One of the seven deadly sins (four letters).
Here’s today’s Wordle and Spelling Bee.
You can find all our puzzles here.
That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Amelia
P.S. David Wallace-Wells will be joining The Times Magazine and Times Opinion, where he will write a weekly newsletter covering climate change, technology and the future of the planet.
The latest episode of “The Daily” is on Russia’s approach in Ukraine.
You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.