Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.
(Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Friday. 1. Russia has deployed enough troops for a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon said. Russia has assembled more than 100,000 troops at Ukraine’s borders, officials said, enough to move throughout the country, far beyond an incursion into the border regions. The forces include combined arms formations, artillery and rockets. “I think you’d have to go back quite a while to the Cold War days to see something of this magnitude,” said Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. has put 8,500 U.S. troops on high alert for possible deployment to Eastern Europe, where most of them would join a NATO rapid response team of 30,000 to 40,000 troops. If Russia invades, the Biden administration plans to hit Russian banks harder than ever before. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that while the situation was dangerous, war was not necessarily imminent or unavoidable. 2. Prices rose rapidly, wages grew and consumer spending fell at the end of 2021. These latest indicators, released today, showed that despite plummeting unemployment and a strong rebound in growth, the economy has yet to break free of the pandemic’s grip. The Personal Consumption Expenditures index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, rose 5.8 percent in the year ending in December, up from 5.7 percent the prior month. Overall compensation climbed 4 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the prior year, the data showed, and wages and salaries picked up 4.5 percent. On Wall Street, stocks rebounded after a day of rocky trading. 3. The East Coast is bracing for blizzard conditions. A powerful nor’easter was forecast to dump snow from North Carolina to New England over the weekend, prompting officials to prepare for treacherous travel conditions and possible mass power outages. The worst of the storm was forecast to hit Eastern Long Island and coastal New England, which could see up to two feet of snow. Follow here for live updates. How much snow should you expect? Look up your forecast. (This will be updated regularly.) 4. Ten billion Covid shots have been administered globally, but gaps persist in who gets the vaccine. The milestone has not been arrived at equitably, even though 10 billion doses could theoretically have meant at least one shot for all of the world’s 7.9 billion people.
