Your Wednesday Briefing

A path to dangerous warming

Ahead of a major U.N. climate summit in Glasgow next week, several governments have updated their pledges under the Paris climate agreement to do more to curb their planet-warming emissions by 2030. The plans fall far short of what’s needed to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures, a new U.N. report said.

Even were those promises met, the world would be on track to warm roughly 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100 compared with preindustrial levels, the report found. That broadly aligns with what outside analyses have found. That much warming would drastically increase the risk of heat waves, droughts, flooding and wildfires across the globe in years to come, scientists have warned.

It is also unclear whether every country will live up to its pledges — the report found that many governments still haven’t put in place policies or laws to achieve their goals. The E.U. for instance, has proposed sweeping new climate legislation, some of which has yet to be approved by all 27 member states.

Quotable: “The world has to wake up to the imminent peril we face as a species,” said Inger Andersen, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.

A looming threat of a Polish exit from the E.U.

The conservative Polish government in Warsaw is wrestling with tensions between nationalist instincts suffused with religious faith and the reality of economic and political self-interest. The country is locked in a tumultuous struggle with the E.U. over the rule of law that has raised the possibility of the country being forced to leave the bloc.

At the heart of the tension is a ruling this month by Poland’s constitutional tribunal that challenged the primacy of European law. Senior officials in Brussels and European politicians have denounced the ruling as an intolerable threat to the foundations of the union that cannot stand if Poland wants to stay a member.

Unlike Britain, where hostility to the E.U. was long a powerful force in domestic politics, Poland has never had a significant lobby pushing for it to withdraw. Since the country joined the union in 2004, it has received more than $225 billion from other members. Public support for staying in the union is at nearly 90 percent, according to opinion polls.

Consequences: Warnings that Poland is jeopardizing its E.U. membership have created problems for the government as it looks ahead to the 2023 elections. “There is no other option for us except Europe,” said one voter. “The only alternative to Brussels is Moscow. And we already know what this is like.”

Pfizer vaccine recommended for children in the U.S.

A key U.S. advisory committee voted to recommend that a pediatric dose of the Pfizer vaccine be offered to 5- to 11-year-olds. Shots could be offered as early as next week.

Since the pandemic began, nearly two million children between the ages of 5 and 11 in the U.S. have been infected with Covid-19 and 8,300 have been hospitalized, a third of whom have needed intensive care. Nearly 100 have died. Covid-19 is now one of the top 10 causes of death among children in that age bracket in the U.S.

Officials hope that the pediatric dose can help close a major gap in the U.S. vaccine campaign. If the Food and Drug Administration grants authorization, about 28 million children will become eligible. Only the youngest, children under 5, would remain uncovered. Here’s what happens next.

Equity matters: Covid hospitalization rates in the 5-to-11 age group are three times as high for Black, Hispanic or Native American children as for white children, a viral diseases specialist said.

Opinion: You’ll want to vaccinate your children against Covid-19 for the same reasons you use seatbelts and car seats, writes Lee Savio Beers, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

In other developments:

• Hong Kong will stop granting most exemptions from its requirement that people arriving from “high-risk” nations — including the U.S. and much of Europe — spend 21 days in quarantine.

THE LATEST NEWS

Around the World

• After seizing power in a coup, Sudan’s top general said that he had detained the civilian prime minister in his own home. Around the country, large crowds of protesters flooded the streets to resist the military takeover.

• More than eight months after a coup by the military in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in a courtroom specially built for her in Naypyidaw, the capital, to defend herself during a closed-door hearing.

• Princess Mako, an older sister of Japan’s likely future sovereign, married her longtime partner yesterday at a registry office in Tokyo.

• The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan creates a host of problems for Tehran, with no easy solutions.

News From Europe

• Queen Elizabeth II will not attend next week’s global climate summit in Glasgow after the palace said she was accepting doctors’ advice to rest for a few days.

• Three children and a woman drowned while trying to cross the Aegean Sea to Greece from Turkey, a sobering reminder of the desperate situation still faced by many migrants.

• Two men went on trial in Paris yesterday, accused of killing an 85-year-old grandmother who survived the Holocaust in 2018 — a crime that shook France’s Jewish community.

What Else Is Happening

• Executives of the social media platforms Snap, TikTok and YouTube were grilled by U.S. lawmakers over concerns about data privacy, harmful posts and transparency.

• Senate Democrats rushed to nail down the details of a tax on billionaires’ wealth. It is among the tax increases intended to finance a scaled-back bill with $1.5 trillion for social policy and climate spending.

A Morning Read

A legal battle is raging in France over manuscripts by the writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline that recently re-emerged after almost eight decades. The papers had been squirreled away to prevent an “antisemitic family” from profiting from the trove, their finder said, prompting a lawsuit from the writers’ heirs.

The discovery and accusations of theft have set off a new reckoning in France about Céline, an incontestably great novelist who also embraced the collaborationist government that sent many French Jews to Nazi death camps.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The case against Winston Churchill

In his new book, “Churchill’s Shadow,” the journalist and historian Geoffrey Wheatcroft attempts to recast the many memorials and books devoted to Britain’s iconic World War II leader.

“Churchill, in this telling, was not just a racist but a hypocrite, a dissembler, a narcissist, an opportunist, an imperialist, a drunk, a strategic bungler, a tax dodger, a neglectful father, a credit-hogging author, a terrible judge of character and, most of all, a masterful mythmaker,” writes Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The Times, in this review.

Though Wheatcroft insists the book is not a “hostile account,” it gives a withering assessment of the former prime minister’s life, his efforts to airbrush his legacy and the so-called Churchill cult that emerged after his death.

“If I make much of Churchill’s failures and follies,” he writes, “that’s partly because others have made too little of them since his rise to heroic status.”

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

Try this sheet-pan meal of roasted chicken and pears.

Ask Well

What’s the best way to help to prepare a child who is afraid of needles for a Covid-19 vaccination?

What to Read

Kwon Yeo-sun’s “Lemon,” the tale of a murder told from three perspectives, is “a bright, intense, refreshing” story you can finish in one sitting, our reviewer writes.

Now Time to Play

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: “To be,” in Latin (four letters).

And here is the Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. — Natasha

P.S. Our international president, Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, spoke to The Glasgow Times about The Times’s Climate Hub at COP26.

The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the Biden administration’s efforts to expand the U.S. social safety net.

You can reach Natasha and the team at [email protected].