California, N.F.L., ‘Insatiable’: Your Friday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/briefing/california-nfl-insatiable.html

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Globally, 2018 is shaping up to be the fourth-hottest year on record. (The hotter years were the three previous ones.)

The disruptions to everyday life have been far-reaching: wildfires in California, dozens of heat-related deaths in Japan, a heat wave on four continents that has taken a toll on crops and the electricity grid.

For many scientists, this is the year they started living climate change rather than just studying it.

“It’s not a wake-up call anymore,” a scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies said of global warming. “It’s now absolutely happening to millions of people around the world.”

• Separately, our reporter traveled around the evacuation zone of the largest wildfire in California’s recorded history.

• U.S. national security officials were so concerned that President Trump might upend a policy agreement at last month’s NATO meeting that they pushed the military alliance’s ambassadors to finish the deal beforehand.

John Bolton, the national security adviser, directed the effort to reach the agreement, which achieved several crucial NATO goals, including a pledge to build up a force to quickly respond to any attack on an alliance member.

• The summit meeting occurred weeks after a Group of 7 event at which Mr. Trump refused to sign a joint communiqué, escalated a trade war and publicly derided Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada.

• Insurgents said they had taken control of the southeastern Afghan city of Ghazni early today. If confirmed, the move would represent the militant group’s most important strategic gain in years.

Government officials denied that the city, a provincial capital, had fallen but conceded that the insurgents were close.

• Ghazni sits on an important north-south highway. If the Taliban control the city, they would essentially cut off the south.

• The authorities are piecing together what happened in a decrepit trailer in the desert outside the village of Amalia, where the remains of a 3-year-old boy were found.

Eleven other children and five adults were living at the compound, which was well supplied with guns and ammunition but had little food. Sheriff’s officers searched the property last week.

• The dead child is believed to be that of a man who was arrested at the site. Prosecutors said he was training one of the other children in the use of an assault rifle “in preparation for future school shootings,” the child’s foster parent reported.

• The parents of Melania Trump, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, obtained U.S. citizenship on Thursday through a system that President Trump has repeatedly denounced and called “chain migration.”

The immigration program allows adult American citizens to obtain residency for their relatives. Mrs. Trump and her parents are from Slovenia.

• Mr. Trump often rails against family-based immigration at his rallies, calling it a pathway for terrorists to enter the U.S. We explain the controversy behind “chain migration.”

• In a setback for the pesticide industry, a federal appeals court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday to ban a widely used pesticide associated with developmental disabilities and other health problems in children.

• A blacklisted Russian aluminum company with ties to President Vladimir Putin got a break from President Trump’s tariffs. Then someone noticed.

• Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note9, its latest big-screen smartphone, hoping to reverse slower sales.

• Women have long been paid less than men at work and do more in the home. It turns out those patterns start in childhood.

• U.S. stocks were mixed on Thursday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets today.

Tips for a more fulfilling life.

• Are you a smart traveler? Take our quiz.

• How to deal with a bad boss.

• Recipe of the day: End the week with a simple, light dinner: spicy shrimp salad with mint.

• N.F.L., and protests, resume

The preseason began in earnest Thursday night, and the question of whether players would continue their social justice protests during the national anthem was answered loud and clear.

• The week in good news

Scientists are creating plastics that can break down on command. It’s one of the seven stories that inspired us.

• Quiz time!

Did you keep up with this week’s news? Test yourself.

• Ready for the weekend

At the movies, we review Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” and the monster-shark film “The Meg,” which “doesn’t seem to know how dumb it is.”

On TV, a trailer for “Insatiable,” a Netflix series released today, spurred fierce criticism and charges of body-shaming. But that might be the least of its problems.

Our architecture critic visited three new or expanded parks along the Brooklyn and Queens shorelines that offer a little breathing room.

The Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan is one of the biggest-thinking small museums in town, our critic writes. Its six floors are currently dedicated to exploring the concept of time.

Last, we suggest eight new books and, if you’re in New York, a slate of cultural events.

• Best of late-night TV

Kanye West told Jimmy Kimmel why he supports President Trump. “What it represented to me is not about policies, because I’m not a politician like that,” he said. “But it represented overcoming fear and doing what you felt, no matter what anyone said.”

• Quotation of the day

“In our increasingly muggy and smoky discomfort, it’s now rote science to pinpoint how heat-trapping gases have cranked up the risks. It’s a shift we all are living together.”

— Katherine Mach, a Stanford University climate scientist.

• The Times, in other words

Here’s an image of today’s front page, and links to our Opinion content and crossword puzzles.

• What we’re reading

Lauren Katzenberg, our At War editor, recommends this piece from ProPublica: “Isaac Arnsdorf’s investigation reveals the disturbing influence of three private sector executives, known as the Mar-a-Lago crowd, on Veterans Affairs. (One is the Marvel Entertainment chairman, Ike Perlmutter.) These ‘shadow rulers,’ as the headline calls them, are close allies of President Trump who have been bombarding V.A. officials with demands, and who have intervened in and stalled overhauls in veteran policy for their own personal benefit.”

The Sarajevo Film Festival begins today in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The red carpets, more than 200 screenings and hundreds of thousands of euros in prizes are a far cry from the festival’s origins during the siege of Sarajevo and the Bosnian War in the 1990s.

In 1993, Haris Pasovic, a Bosnian director, helped organize a gathering called “Beyond the End of the World,” a title inspired by one of the screened films: “Until the End of the World,” by the German director Wim Wenders.

At the time, a reporter asked Mr. Pasovic, “Why are you holding a film festival in the middle of a war?”

“Why are they holding a war in the middle of a film festival?” he replied. In an interview the next year, he said, “People have to have food for their souls.”

The gathering lasted 10 days, but screenings continued through a separate organization, culminating in the inaugural Sarajevo Film Festival in 1995. About 15,000 people risked their safety to watch 37 films from over 15 countries, some of which were smuggled in by their own directors.

Soon after the first festival closed, the Dayton peace accord was signed, ending the Bosnian War.

Matthew Sedacca wrote today’s Back Story.

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