Here's what's in the two articles of impeachment against President #Trump: ”The first article is for abuse of power. It is an impeachable offense for the President to exercise the powers of public office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman @repjerrynadler said on Dec. 10. “That is exactly what President Trump did when he solicited and pressured #Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 Presidential election ... When the House investigated and opened an impeachment inquiry, President Trump engaged in unprecedented, categorical and indiscriminate defiance of the impeachment inquiry,” Nadler continued. “This gives rise to the second article of impeachment, for obstruction of Congress.” In this photograph, Trump speaks with reporters before leaving the White House for a campaign rally in Hershey, Pa. Read more at the link in bio. Photograph by @evanvucci—@apnews

Since the start of the public impeachment hearings in Congress, Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to the President of #Ukraine, has heard his name come up again and again in witness testimony. He took part in many of the events at the center of the #impeachment inquiry, and the 300-page report released last week by the inquiry mentions Yermak dozens of times. But in his first interview about those public hearings, Yermak has questioned the recollections of crucial witnesses in the impeachment inquiry into President #Trump’s alleged abuse of his office for political gain. “Listen, I want to tell you straight,” Yermak told TIME's Simon Shuster on Dec. 4, the first time he has openly discussed his views on the public impeachment hearings. “Of course, now, when I watch these shows on television, my name often comes up, and I see people there whom I recognize, whom I met and know,” he says, referring to the witness testimony. “That is their personal opinion, especially the positions they expressed while under oath. I have my own truth. I know what I know.” Read more at the link in bio. Photograph by @paoloverzone—@vu_photo for TIME

Smoke from bush fires in the Australian state of New South Wales has engulfed parts of #Sydney—including its famed Opera House, which was shrouded by haze on Dec. 10—as officials warned people to stay indoors as much as they could. Citing government data, @reuters reported that air-quality index readings in some parts of #Australia's largest city were 11 times what was considered hazardous. Eighty-seven bush and grass fires are burning, the NSW Rural Fire Service said in a tweet, and 42 are not contained. Fires in the east are reported to have burned at least 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) since at least early November. Photograph by Cameron Spencer (@cjspencois)—@gettyimages

House Democrats unveiled articles of #impeachment against President #Trump on Dec. 10, charging him with committing two acts of high crimes and misdemeanors: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. "No one, not even the President, is above the law,” @repjerrynadler, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said at the news conference. @speakerpelosi was accompanied by five of her committee chairs leading oversight probes: Nadler, House Intelligence Committee Chairman @repadamschiff, House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman @repmaxinewaters, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel and House Oversight Committee Chairwoman @carolynbmaloney. The Judiciary Committee is now expected to mark up the articles, which is essentially a debate on what should be included in the text that is sent to the House floor for a vote. Read more at the link in bio. Photograph by @gdemczuk for TIME

House Democrats will unveil articles of #impeachment against President Trump on Dec. 10, multiple sources familiar with the matter confirmed to TIME. The articles are expected to be announced at a news conference, one day after a nearly 10-hour hearing during which #Republicans and #Democrats made their case to the House Judiciary Committee about whether #Trump’s decision to withhold millions of dollars in aid to #Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into a top political rival amounted to an impeachable offense. During that hearing, Trump’s actions towards Ukraine were labeled a “clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security.” News of the announcement is the latest indication Democrats are moving at lightning speed in an attempt to hold a floor vote before Christmas break. In this photograph, a flag is illuminated in the Rotunda of the Capitol on Dec. 9. Read more at the link in bio. Photograph by @gdemczuk for TIME

Cases containing the remains of three people who were killed in a shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola in #Florida last week are seen during a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base, Del., on Dec. 8. The Associated Press reports the slain were identified as Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate; Airman Mohammed Sameh Haitham, 19; and Airman Apprentice Cameron Scott Walters, 21. Two days before a gunman opened fire in a Pensacola classroom, a shooting at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii left two people dead and a third wounded. The two fatal shootings in one week at American #military installations have led to questions regarding the security measures in place at bases across the country. Read more at the link in bio. Photograph by @cliffopix—@apnews

It is obvious to all that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is still trying—against all odds and with little prospect of success—to keep the impeachment of President #Trump off his agenda for as long as possible. “This whole issue, as far as I’m concerned, is a House issue,” McConnell told reporters last week, when asked about how he was preparing for impeachment’s arrival in his chamber. “If the House does in fact act, the Senate will be in business with an impeachment trial.” In normal times, McConnell’s to-do list in the Senate would be a challenge. The wily Kentuckian, photographed Oct. 22, has been tied up trying to push across the finish line a spending plan to keep the government’s doors open through September, a defense bill that would give the Pentagon a pay raise and, if the stars align perfectly, a rewrite of the NAFTA trade deal. Each is a weighty endeavor that requires intense attention from its disparate backers and at least a few Democratic votes. So in the era of #impeachment—the i-word looms over everything on Capitol Hill these days—it’s a high-wire act of the first order. Read more about McConnell’s reluctant preparation for impeachment at the link in bio. Photograph by @gdemczuk for TIME

Hundreds of thousands of protesters returned to the streets of #HongKong on Dec. 8. The massive march displayed ongoing support for the antigovernment demonstrations that have seized the Chinese-ruled territory for six months. While chanting “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong,” and singing the protest anthem, demonstrators young and old wound their way along the route from Victoria Park in the high-traffic shopping area of Causeway Bay to Chater Road in the center of the financial district. Police gave the advocacy group Civil Human Rights Front approval to hold the protest—a mostly peaceful assembly—marking the first time the organization has been granted an official green light for a march since August. Read more at the link in bio. Photograph by @anthony.kwan—@gettyimages

President Trump had barely been in #Afghanistan for a few hours on Nov. 28 when he made three bold declarations. In coming days, he said, the Taliban would stop their attacks and stalled peace talks would resume. But, he also told Afghan officials, the U.S. would keep a small number of troops there indefinitely. The combination of notions Trump floated is a deal breaker for the militants who have been waging #war against the Afghan government and foreign troops for nearly two decades. The Taliban aren’t laying down their weapons before brokering a full withdrawal of U.S. troops, writes Kimberly Dozier, and leaving any #American forces in the country is also likely to stymie talks. “The cease-fire will start only after the signing of the peace agreement,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen tells TIME. Any compromise must come from #Trump, Shaheen adds, since it was he who canceled a planned peace summit at Camp David, via Twitter on Sept. 7. “In our view, the ball is in the U.S. court.” In this photograph, a U.S. soldier rests on a flight from Kandahar to Kabul in August 2018. Read more at the link in bio. Photograph by @emanuelesatolli for TIME

A new artwork by @mauriziocattelan, in the form of a real banana taped to a wall and displayed at #ArtBasel in Miami, was sold for $120,000. In fact, at least two of three have sold. The piece, titled “Comedian,” is Cattelan’s first presentation at an #art fair in more than 15 years, according to @galerieperrotin, and comes with a certificate of authenticity. Emmanuel Perrotin, the gallery’s owner, told @artnet the price of the third and final edition (aside from two artist proofs) of the work would go for $150,000. To @cnn, Perrotin called the banana "a symbol of global trade, a double entendre, as well as a classic device for humor.” In an interview with Artnet, Cattelan said he worked on the concept for around a year, and would hang a banana on the wall when he traveled. After trying out versions with resin, bronze and painted bronze, he admitted being stumped on how to complete the piece. “In the end,” he told the outlet, “one day I woke up and I said ‘the banana is supposed to be a banana.’” #🍌 Photograph by @jtaggfoto—@nytimes/@reduxpictures

From the start of his tenure, the man Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky entrusted to deal with the Americans was Andriy Yermak, who had previously worked for years as a lawyer for the President’s comedy troupe. Yermak had to manage the stream of requests to investigate Donald #Trump’s political rivals. At first they came up this spring from Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and later from various U.S. officials and diplomats drawn into the pressure campaign. For Yermak it meant months of debating these investigations, whether to open them and how to announce them in public. The entire time, he says, he stuck to one principle: “Zelensky and his team will never get mixed up in the internal politics of the United States of America, under any circumstances.” They managed to hold that line long enough for a whistle-blower to raise the alarm about Trump and Giuliani’s conduct over #Ukraine. By early September, as news of that complaint made its way to Congress, the package of aid to Ukraine was finally released. Yermak’s relief did not last long. With the start of the impeachment inquiry, his country was again dragged into the center of a partisan brawl in Washington; only this time it was televised. Read more at the link in bio. Photograph by @paoloverzone—@vu_photo for TIME

A year is a long time in #politics. Long enough in the case of Volodymyr Zelensky, the comedian elected President of #Ukraine, to go from the set of his sitcom in #Kyiv to the biggest political drama in the world, the one in which an American President may wind up getting impeached. The Democrats have cast Zelensky as the victim of President #Trump’s abuse of power, even as Republicans treat him as the witness key to proving Trump’s innocence. Neither role is anywhere close to what Zelensky imagined for himself when he announced his run for the presidency on New Year’s Eve, although he knew the job would be tough if he won, and often very unpleasant. Ukraine has been at war with #Russia for the past five years, and his priority as President would be to stop that war from taking any more lives—a toll that is now more than 13,000 and counting. That task would mean confronting Vladimir #Putin. But Zelensky also wondered early on about Trump and the challenges of working with him. “What’s he like?” he asked TIME's Simon Shuster when they first met in March. “Normal guy?” The 41-year-old seemed confident, even cocky, in planning to win Trump over with little more than a wisecrack and a smile. “We’ll figure it out,” he told Shuster. “I’m sure we’ll get along.” Things have turned out rather differently. Read this week's full International cover story at the link in bio. Photograph by @paolopellegrin—@magnumphotos for TIME