The Morning: Our best visual journalism

Plus, Biden's commutations, migrant shelters and the annual Faces quiz.

View in browser|nytimes.com December 23, 2024 Good morning. Today, we kick off a week of year-end newsletters with the best Times graphics of the year. We're also covering Biden's commutations, migrant shelters and the annual Faces quiz. —David Leonhardt The New York Times Our best visual journalism By Elena Shao I'm a reporter in the Graphics department. Noah Lyles doesn't run like other sprinters. When he won gold for the United States in the 100-meter race at the Olympics this summer, he got off to a slow start. During the first 40 meters, he trailed the pack. Only in the final stride did he pull ahead, winning by a fraction of a second. The margin of his victory was imperceptible to the human eye. So journalists at The New York Times took photographs at 100-millisecond intervals and calculated his speed using a computational technology known as computer vision. You can see the results here. At The Times, visual journalists are always on the prowl for innovative ways to tell big news stories. Our teams broke down major events by the second (and by the fraction of a second) and mapped data at the neighborhood level. We produced interactive features that helped readers personalize, explore and investigate patterns in the news for themselves. Here are some standout moments from the year: The New York Times In June, New York's governor nixed a plan to toll cars entering certain parts of Manhattan. "Congestion pricing," as the proposal is called, would have paid for subway upgrades. (A more modest version is now set to begin in January.) To see how much money the original plan might have collected from drivers, we sent 27 colleagues to the edges of tolling zones to count vehicles during the morning rush hour. Here's what we found. In March, a container ship struck the Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing its collapse. We used shipping traffic data, satellite imagery and a federal inventory of bridges to identify over 190 vulnerable bridges across the country that also lack the protections they need. Fatal shootings surged during the pandemic, and they spread into new places. To find out where, we plotted every gun homicide that took place during the pandemic years on a map alongside demographic data. Click here to explore gun violence in your own neighborhood. The New York Times A.I.-generated content is becoming harder to detect. As A.I. companies trawl the web for new data to train their upgrades, it is more likely that they will ingest A.I.-generated content. What would it look like if a model is trained on its own output? To find out, we showed handwritten numbers to an A.I. and asked it to mimic those digits. Then we fed the result back into the system, over and over again. Click here to see what happened after 20 and 30 generations. We used drone photography, satellite imagery and measurements collected on the ground to build a 3-D model of the scene in Butler, Pa., where a gunman shot Donald Trump. That model allowed us to recreate the lines of sight for the would-be assassin and several Secret Service teams — and to see for ourselves the lapses in security The government of China has been erecting villages along contested borderlands — and paying people to move there. We worked with an A.I. company to scan satellite images for these new settlements, and then verified the results by looking at historical photos, state media, public records and social media posts. You can see here what they look like and where they are. The New York Times After the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in 2022, more than a dozen states banned the practice. Suddenly, women seeking an abortion often had to travel out of state. We mapped where 171,000 of those women went — for an abortion procedure or to obtain pills — in 2023. When Americans relocate, they increasingly choose homes in the country's South and West. Those regions are also more prone to extreme weather events — fires, hurricanes, floods. Here you can see where they're moving and what dangers they face. See more of this year's strongest graphics, along with an under-the-hood look at their creation. THE LATEST NEWS Biden Administration President Biden  Michael A. McCoy for The New York Times President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 men, almost all of the prisoners on federal death row, ahead of Donald Trump's plan to restart federal executions. The prisoners are still subject to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. See the list of those granted commutations. As reports spread about drones in the skies above New Jersey, Biden called the Pentagon four times seeking information, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Biden administration is investigating China's production of older-style computer chips that power a variety of appliances. Trump Transition Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to ban pharmaceutical ads on TV. Previous efforts have failed, often on First Amendment grounds. Trump named his picks for top roles at the Pentagon, including a billionaire ally and a former Uber executive. Trump plans to nominate Callista Gingrich as ambassador to Switzerland. She served as Trump's ambassador to the Vatican in his first term. International In the Democratic Republic of Congo. Victoire Douniama for The New York Times Mpox is spreading through Kinshasa, Congo's crowded capital, outpacing efforts to control the disease. Armed gangs in parts of southern Gaza are looting desperately needed aid. Iran is in the midst of an energy crisis. Schools and government offices have been closed, and manufacturing has been brought to a near halt. North Korea, not the Kremlin, first suggested sending North Korean troops to help Russia in the war with Ukraine, U.S. officials said. New York In New York. Todd Heisler/The New York Times Fear, joy and hope: More than 225,000 migrants have entered New York City since 2022. Over eight months, The Times documented life within the shelter system. The police detained a man suspected of fatally setting a woman on fire in a subway car. The head of the N.Y.P.D., in a crackdown on overtime abuses, has reassigned at least 29 officers. Sixteen had earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in the last fiscal year. Other Big Stories Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan formally announced the beginning of merger talks. Telegram, the lightly moderated social media app, is set to be profitable this year even as it faces legal scrutiny and grapples with billions in debt. Opinions Free trade economists have been wrong for decades, allowing the U.S. to fall behind China in industry. Now they're doubling down, Oren Cass writes. Keren Munder was a former Israeli hostage in Gaza. Trump's top priority in his transition to office should be to free the remaining hostages, she writes. Here is a column by David French on why so many Christians are cruel. Ends soon: Our best rate on unlimited access for Morning readers. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year. MORNING READS Ashok Sinha Googie: The car-centric architectural style, characterized by neon signs and dramatic rooflines, is endangered. Robochefs: Restaurants are experimenting with automation. But in the kitchen, human labor is hard to replace. The new climate gold rush: Scrubbing carbon from the sky. Surviving: The Times spoke to four men who suffered abuse at schools in Ireland run by religious orders. Metropolitan Diary: That's not the way we do it here. Lives Lived: Lee Edwards became a historian of the modern conservative movement with books about Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and others. One observer called him "a keeper of the flame and spreader of the gospel." Edwards died at 92. SPORTS N.F.L.: Dallas spoiled Tampa Bay's playoff positioning with a wacky 26-24 win, a fitting end to a consequential weekend of football. Golf: Tiger Woods and his son, Charlie, finished second in the PNC Championship, with Charlie recording a hole-in-one. See the shot and Tiger's reaction. College volleyball: Penn State won its eighth national title, crowning Katie Schumacher-Cawley as the first woman to coach a team to the national championship in NCAA volleyball. ARTS AND IDEAS By The New York Times It's time for a Morning holiday tradition: the annual Faces Quiz. Our newsletter team has put together a collection of some of the biggest newsmakers from the past year. Can you tell us who they are? (Don't worry, there are hints if you get stumped.) We've also added a feature this year that we're calling Hard Mode — three extra quizzes covering the worlds of politics, sports and entertainment. You can take the 2024 Faces Quiz here. And if you think we missed someone important, let us know at the end of the quiz; we'll talk about your nominations in a newsletter soon. Good luck! More on culture At a fan event.  Apu Gomes/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Netflix's "Squid Game" is back for a second season. The success of the show's first outing surprised executives and reaffirmed the company's global strategy. Private messages detail an alleged campaign to tarnish Blake Lively after she accused Justin Baldoni, her co-star in and director of "It Ends With Us," of misconduct on set. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Ghazalle Badiozamani for The New York Times Brighten this Presbyterian cocktail with fresh citrus. Sleep with earplugs. Make dinner easier with a meal kit delivery service. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangrams were bulletin and ebullient. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for the Morning newsletter from The New York Times, or as part of your New York Times account. To stop receiving The Morning, unsubscribe. To opt out of other promotional emails from The Times, including those regarding The Athletic, manage your email settings. 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