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 Wednesday.Military trucks and personnel carriers were loaded to the train car outside Taganrog, Russia, today.The New York Times1. Russian troops are in place for an attack on Ukraine, the Pentagon said in its most dire assessment yet. Of the 190,000 Russian troops and separatist forces in or near Ukraine, the Pentagon said that 80 percent of them are in combat-ready positions and that a full-scale attack was most likely imminent.“They have uncoiled and are ready to go,” a senior Defense Department official said. He added that it was still up to President Vladimir Putin to give the final order.The leaders of the separatist regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, have appeared to give Putin cause for that military assault: The Kremlin said Putin received an appeal for “help in repelling the aggression of the armed forces and formations of Ukraine” though Ukrainian officials say there has been no such aggression, and none have been planned.Ukrainians braced for all-out war as officials declared a 30-day state of emergency and mobilized military reservists. Government websites, including that of the Foreign Ministry, were brought down by a hack. E.U. sanctions will target Putin’s inner circle and President Biden announced new sanctions against Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled company building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The Biden administration is also preparing a ban on American technology exports.Sanofi and GSK’s Covid vaccine received billions of dollars from Operation Warp Speed. Eric Piermont/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images2. A new, two-dose Covid vaccine showed 100 percent efficacy against severe disease, and may be an effective booster for other shots, its makers said. The vaccine, which was made by the European companies Sanofi and GSK, is a conventional inoculation and is not based on mRNA. It received billions of dollars for development from Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s vaccine accelerator. The companies said they would seek authorization for the vaccine from European and U.S. regulators.In other virus news:U.S. deaths during pregnancy or shortly after spiked in the pandemic’s first year, especially among Black and Hispanic women, a report said.The doctor expected to be Florida’s next surgeon general has helped bolster Gov. Ron DeSantis’s hands-off approach to the virus.Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last year after voting on election day in Harlem.Anna Watts for The New York Times3. The lawyers leading the Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry into Donald Trump abruptly resigned, throwing the future of the inquiry into doubt. The prosecutors, Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, submitted their resignations after the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter.Without Bragg’s commitment to move forward, the prosecutors essentially paused their investigation into whether Trump inflated the value of his assets to obtain favorable loan terms from banks. The pause coincides with an escalation of an inquiry by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, whose office is examining some of the same conduct by Trump.Separately, Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, is in talks with the Jan. 6 House committee about cooperating with the panel.Left to right: Justice Leondra R. Kruger, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Judge J. Michelle Childs.Cayce Clifford for The New York Times, Erin Schaff/The New York Times, David Walter Banks for The New York Times4. The White House said President Biden was on track to decide on a Supreme Court nominee by next week. Biden has interviewed at least three candidates to fill the seat vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer. He spoke with Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; Leondra Kruger of the California Supreme Court; and J. Michelle Childs, a Federal District Court judge in South Carolina.Biden is now under pressure to announce his pick, who he has promised will be a Black woman, somewhere between a rapidly devolving diplomatic effort in Ukraine and plans to deliver his first State of the Union address on Tuesday.Former police officer Brett Hankison is accused of recklessly endangering Breonna Taylor’s neighbors.Timothy D. Easley/Associated Press5. The only trial to emerge from the police raid that killed Breonna Taylor began today. The case centers not on an officer who shot her, but rather on Brett Hankison, a former police detective who is facing three charges of wanton endangerment after the authorities said he fired “blindly” into Taylor’s apartment in Louisville, Ky., endangering her neighbors. The state’s attorney general did not pursue charges against either of the two officers who shot and killed Taylor in March 2020.During opening statements, the state said it planned to show that Hankison acted with “extreme indifference to human life” that night. The defense described Hankison as a veteran police officer who responded appropriately to what he perceived as a threat. In Minnesota, jury deliberation began in the trial of three police officers who failed to intervene as their colleague, Derek Chauvin, slowly killed George Floyd.A woman was struck by a subway at the Times Square station in January.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times6. New York City will test platform barriers at three subway stations amid an outcry over safety. The move is a reversal for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which had long resisted calls for such barriers, describing them as impractical, expensive and incompatible with an 104-year-old subway system. It came more than a month after a woman was shoved to her death at the Times Square station, where one of the barriers will be installed.A spate of attacks across the subway system over the holiday weekend underscored the difficulty of rooting out random violence in the system. Yesterday was the first day of a plan to remove homeless people who shelter on the city’s subway. Some platforms and trains had fewer people sleeping there than normal, but there were still many people taking shelter on the subway.Foresters worked to contain a fire in a pine forest in India in 2018.Ashwini Bhatia/Associated Press7. “The heating of the planet is turning landscapes into tinderboxes,” a U.N. report on wildfires warned. As climate change intensifies, worsening heat and dryness will cause devastating wildfires to surge in the coming decades, climate scientists said. The scientific assessment is the first by the U.N. Environment Program to evaluate wildfire risks worldwide.The report, which was produced by more than 50 researchers from six continents, estimated that the risk worldwide of highly devastating fires could increase by up to 57 percent by the end of the century, primarily because of climate change. The risks will not be distributed equally: Some regions are more likely to see increased fire activity, while others may experience less.A wedding scene in “The Godfather” was intended to be overly bright in contrast with interior scenes.Paramount Pictures8. After 50 years, Francis Ford Coppola still isn’t finished with “The Godfather.” For the landmark anniversary, the director, Paramount and his colleagues at American Zoetrope have produced a restored version of the 1972 film. This edition was created with higher-quality sources of the film, improved digital technology and some 4,000 hours spent repairing stains, tears and other flaws. The updated film aims to be as vivid — and shadowy — as it was in 1972.Reflecting on “The Godfather” brings back the pain of its fraught production and the pride of its runaway success. “As a filmmaker, I didn’t really know how to make ‘The Godfather,’” Coppola, now 82, said. “I learned how to make ‘The Godfather’ making it.”Beanie Feldstein takes on the role of Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl”.OK McCausland for The New York Times9. “It’s so in my bones.” After nearly six decades and many false starts, the musical “Funny Girl” is returning to Broadway, with Beanie Feldstein taking on the role that made Barbra Streisand a star. Feldstein is determined to honor Streisand while shaping her own version of Fanny Brice, the comic pioneer. The show opens on March 26.Looking ahead to other spring premieres on Broadway, these five revivals of American plays offer glimpses into the world in which they first emerged — and into ours. And there is plenty of Shakespeare to go around. For opera lovers, here’s a look at the Met’s new offerings.Clay Hickson10. And finally, one game, five letters, six tries. Wordle is more than a game or a craze — it’s become a daily ritual for millions. Each guess is precious in the deceptively straightforward game, which The Times acquired last month. (No, we did not make it harder.) The challenge has set off much debate about strategy, and a cottage industry of sites has even popped up to offer tips. One popular strategy is to start with a vowel-heavy word, like ARISE, SUAVE or ATONE. But not everyone is convinced that vowels are the way to go. We talked to the actress J. Smith-Cameron, who plays Gerri Kellman on “Succession,” Monica Lewinsky, an English teacher and others about how they approach the game. ADIEU! Eve Edelheit