Russia Steps Up Ukraine Attacks, and America’s Drinking Drops to Record Low

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From the New York Times, it's the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Thursday, August 14th.

Here's what we're covering.

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are preparing to sit down for peace talks tomorrow in Alaska.

But Ukrainian President Vlodymir Zelensky is warning that on the battlefield, it doesn't seem like Russia's preparing for peace at all.

Instead, he said that Russia is, quote, redeploying their troops and forces in ways that suggest preparations for new offensive operations.

This week, the Russian forces have pushed through a section of the front line, and that has threatened the Ukrainian units in the area because the Russians can now outflank them and force the Ukrainian forces to withdraw.

My colleague Konstantin Mayeus, based in Kyiv, he says the Russian military has picked up the pace of its attacks in the east of Ukraine, a region Putin has made clear he wants ownership of in any potential deal.

The strategy here is basically to send a warning to America that Moscow's forces remain capable of making big gains on the battlefield.

Putin is likely to argue to President Trump that it would be essentially easier, perhaps faster, to reach a deal where Ukraine forces withdraw instead of continuing the fight and losing many lives and equipment.

Constant says that Russia may also be making another play to sway the talks.

The country has pulled back on drone strikes.

For much of the year, Russia was hitting Ukraine with hundreds of drone attacks every night.

But in the past few weeks, that number has dropped by more than half.

Some analysts see this as a way for Putin to appease Trump, who has repeatedly criticized those strikes and the civilian casualties that they've caused.

One analyst told the Times, quote, the Russians know very well how to read Trump's mind.

In Texas, a federal jury has convicted a couple who owns a small bakery near the U.S.-Mexico border of harboring and conspiring to transport illegal workers.

They now face up to 10 years in prison.

The husband and wife are among the first employers to be prosecuted under President Trump's crackdown on immigration.

Back in February, a bystander pulled out her phone to film as immigration authorities raided the bakery and put people in handcuffs.

The authorities found eight undocumented workers there, and they say the couple admitted they knew the staff didn't have the legal right to work in the U.S., but gave them jobs anyway and a place to stay in a property nearby.

Federal officials say they were exploiting vulnerable people for profit.

Prosecutors called it an open-and-shut case, though one immigration expert the Times talked to called the trial unsettling.

She said the government chose to target a small minority-owned business.

The couple immigrated from Mexico.

And she called out the contrast between this case and other workplace immigration crackdowns, where large corporations using undocumented workers have been fined rather than threatened with jail time.

A new poll from Gallup suggests that the number of Americans who drink alcohol has reached a record low.

The data released yesterday shows that just 54% of Americans say they drink, the lowest percentage in the almost 100 years that Gallup has been collecting data.

For decades, at least 60% of Americans said they drank.

Notably, the poll specifically suggests that middle-aged adults are cutting back.

A reversal after drinking among that group ticked up during the pandemic.

The poll also showed that for the first time, the majority of Americans said they believe that even one or two drinks a day could be bad for their health.

Experts say that's a big change from what was conventional wisdom for decades, that a little alcohol, a glass of red wine at dinner, could be good for you.

In recent years, there's been growing evidence that even moderate amounts of alcohol can be harmful.

For example, a recent Surgeon General's report found that for men who have one drink a day, about 10% will develop in alcohol-related cancer.

Experts think that reality has sunk in with the younger generation, too.

The poll showed youth drinking rates are continuing to go down, potentially driven in part by increasing awareness of the risks, as well as other factors like a shift toward marijuana use.

Back in 2011, 2011, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, bought a home in the Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto.

It's a leafy, quiet part of the California city that's at the heart of Silicon Valley.

But a new investigation from the Times has traced how, over the next decade, Zuckerberg went on to buy 10 other houses there, angering neighbors and leading some of them to accuse the city of looking the other way as the billionaire transformed the neighborhood.

A few of the things my colleagues found.

For one, the city quashed an early plan Zuckerberg had to demolish four of the homes to create a giant compound.

But it didn't stop him when he skirted the city's review process by just moving forward incrementally with the massive project, which permits now show includes 7,000 square feet of underground space.

Also, they found that starting in the pandemic, Zuckerberg and his wife ran a private school in one of the homes for two of their daughters and 12 other children.

That violated city code because Zuckerberg never obtained the necessary permit, but the city didn't shut it down.

And neighbors say that Zuckerberg brought intense levels of surveillance to the neighborhood, including a team of private security guards who questioned people on public sidewalks and sometimes filmed them.

One neighbor said, quote, Billionaires everywhere are used to just making their own rules.

A spokesman for Zuckerberg said he tries to do right by his neighbors, for example, giving them a heads up when they're going to be hosting a large gathering, or even sending them noise-canceling headphones when there have been disruptive events.

He also said that Zuckerberg and his wife were unaware that the school violated city regulations.

It's since been relocated.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Palo Alto said all the construction followed city code.

You can see the full Times investigation, along with a map of how the compound has grown, at nytimes.com.

And finally, for over 30 years, a mysterious statue made of copper and petrified wood has stood in the courtyard of CIA headquarters, stumping everyone.

Called cryptos from the Greek for hidden, the statue features four panels of encrypted text.

The artist, Jim Sanborn, designed it as an ode to the agency, a house of secrets.

And ever since it went up, people have been trying to crack it.

Over the years, code breakers in the government and outside it have tackled the first three panels.

There was a reference to King Tut's tomb and the coordinates of the CIA.

But nobody's been able to figure out the fourth panel, which Sanborn says is key to solving another overarching riddle.

He knows people are trying.

He's gotten tens of thousands of emails from people working on it.

It got to the point where there were so many messages, he started charging $50 if you want to reply.

But now Sanborn has announced he's going to put the secret for decoding the statue up for auction.

He's nearly 80 years old and he's worried about what might happen if he dies suddenly, leaving the mystery without a guardian.

The company that will be handling the auction, which will happen in November, estimates it could bring in as much as half a million dollars.

Sanborn says his ideal winner is someone who will still keep it a secret.

Without the secret, you have no power, he told the Times.

But quote, if someone buys it and does happen to give it up, that's the risk I'm taking.

Those are the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

We'll be back tomorrow with the latest news and the Friday News quiz.