Good morning. We’re covering U.S. efforts to avoid a banking crisis and the I.C.C.’s plans to charge Russians with war crimes. |
| Clients waited to enter Silicon Valley Bank yesterday in Santa Clara, Calif.Jim Wilson/The New York Times |
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“Americans can rest assured that our banking system is safe,” Biden said in a brief televised statement. “Your deposits will be there when you need them.” The Federal Reserve also set up a broader emergency lending program to ensure that other U.S. banks could weather the storm. |
The rush to reassure bank customers spoke to a core truth of financial markets: Bank runs can feed on themselves and become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as my colleague David Leonhardt noted in The Morning. In the DealBook newsletter, Andrew Ross Sorkin called the new Fed program “the most sweeping backstop for the U.S. banking system since the 2008 crisis.” |
Context: Biden sought to distinguish his intervention from the taxpayer-financed bailout in 2008 and 2009, when the U.S. steered hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue the bank industry. “No losses will be borne by the taxpayers,” Biden insisted. |
| A photograph released by Russian state media showed President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights.Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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Russians to face war crimes charges |
The International Criminal Court intends to open two war crimes cases tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and will seek arrest warrants for several people, according to officials. They would be the first international charges to be brought forward since the war started. |
The cases would accuse Russia of abducting Ukrainian children and sending them to Russian re-education camps, and of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure. |
Experts said it was possible that Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, could be charged. The likelihood of a trial remains slim as the court cannot hear cases in absentia and Russia is unlikely to surrender its own officials. |
Even if the cases do not make it to trial, legal experts say an arrest warrant issued by the I.C.C. is symbolically important because it can make someone a pariah, as these charges do not go away. Ukraine’s government is separately holding its own war crimes trials, and a host of other international bodies are investigating atrocities during the war. |
Other updates from the war: |
| Li Qiang took office on Saturday.Lintao Zhang/Getty Images |
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China’s new No. 2 urges confidence |
Li, who has a business-friendly reputation, promised “fair competition” in commerce. He delivered the most forceful statement by a Chinese leader in years on the need to preserve the vitality of the private sector, coming after a decade in which the party has played a growing role in private companies. |
It showed that he is poised to take point on the economy, while Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has positioned himself to play the role of a removed, paternalistic leader who provides security. The direction of the country’s economy, the second largest in the world, now depends on how these tensions play out. |
Background: Weak investor confidence has hurt China’s economy. Even after the end of Covid restrictions, many are still wary. Li cautioned that China’s modest goal of 5 percent growth would not be easy to achieve. |
| North Korea indicated that the missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads.Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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| Todd Heisler/The New York Times |
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| Russian restaurants and nightclubs dominate part of Dubai.Andrea DiCenzo for The New York Times |
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Dubai is becoming “Russia outside Russia,” at least for the rich. It’s business-minded, expat-oriented and apolitical — protests in the authoritarian monarchy of the United Arab Emirates are effectively illegal. There are no Ukrainian flags displayed in public, and the war feels far away. |
Lives Lived: Kenzaburo Oe was a Nobel laureate who used his powerful novels and essays to criticize postwar Japan. He died at 88. |
| Both of these towers now house hundreds of apartments — through very different transformations.Larry Buchanan |
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Cities are eager to turn office buildings into housing as remote work rises. The premise suggests cities could solve two problems — an office glut and a housing shortage — at once. |
Prewar buildings are often easier conversions. The same logic that shaped how they were designed as offices determines how apartments are planned today: Both share a rule of thumb that no interior space be more than 25 to 30 feet from a window that opens. Architects often just need to add a bathroom, move around some walls and voilà: A new apartment is born. |
Modern offices can be hard to adapt. Air conditioning and fluorescent lighting allowed them to have big footprints, and there’s a lot of space that’s far from the windows — which don’t open — and largely useless for apartment living. Solutions have to be bolder, like cutting a hole through a high-rise to make a courtyard. |
| David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. |
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“Birnam Wood,” by the Booker Prize winner Eleanor Catton, is an ardent, funny ecological novel that follows guerrilla gardeners in New Zealand. |
In “Chang Can Dunk,” a warmhearted comedy, a short teen channels his inner Kobe Bryant. |
That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Amelia |
P.S. Today is Pi Day, if you write the date in the American way: 3.14. The famous mathematical ratio is the perfect symbol for our species’ long effort to tame infinity. |
“The Daily” asks: What is E.S.G., and why are Republicans so mad about it? |
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