Huawei, Angela Merkel, Golden Globes: Your Friday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/briefing/huawei-angela-merkel-golden-globes.html

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Good morning. The Huawei arrest threatens U.S.-China relations, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party chooses her replacement and Britain holds back its “golden visas.” Here’s the latest:

• A new blow to U.S.-China relations.

The arrest of a top executive at one of China’s most celebrated corporations threatened to upend a fragile trade truce with the U.S., and put the Trump administration’s national security and trade policies on a collision course.

Meng Wanzhou, above, Huawei’s chief financial officer and the daughter of the company’s founder, was arrested in Canada. Washington is seeking her extradition, and officials said her arrest was the culmination of a monthslong investigation into whether Huawei violated Iran sanctions. A bail hearing is scheduled for today.

Chinese officials demanded her immediate release and state media described the move as a “declaration of war.” Markets around the world dropped amid the tensions.

For years, the U.S. has warned that Huawei’s equipment could be a conduit for espionage, and Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have recently adopted Washington’s distrust.

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• Taking stock of Angela Merkel’s leadership.

Today, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, will gather in Hamburg to elect her successor as party leader.

Ms. Merkel, above, led the party for 18 years and Germany for 13, becoming a face of stability in the country and in Europe. She steered her country and the continent through successive crises as she helped Germany become Europe’s leading power for the first time since two world wars.

But in the end her legacy may boil down to just two things: her decisions to welcome more than a million migrants into Germany in 2015 and to impose economic austerity on European neighbors. Some believe they may have helped plant the seeds of the forces now tearing Europe apart.

Here are the three leading candidates to take her place in the party.

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• Britain suspends “golden visas.”

Today, the British government will suspend a special kind of visa until the Home Office introduces tighter restrictions to tackle corruption and organized crime.

The “golden visas” were introduced in 2008 to attract foreign nationals willing to invest large amounts — a minimum of $2.5 million — in Britain. They provided a faster route to permanent residency. Above, London’s financial district.

The visas were particularly popular among Russian oligarchs and wealthy people from China and the United Arab Emirates. More than 1,000 “golden visas” were granted in the 12-month period ending in September.

The program has long been criticized by anti-corruption campaigners railing against Britain’s openness to ill-gotten riches overseas.

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• A tale of a killing, sexual abuse — and a podcast.

It was a cold but memorable case: 36 years ago, a woman vanished from her Sydney suburb. Days later, her husband moved in with the family’s 16-year-old babysitter. The girl was his student, and they were having an affair.

On Thursday, that man — Chris Dawson, 70 — was arrested and charged with the homicide of his wife. A wildly popular podcast about the case, called “Teacher’s Pet,” helped the police to uncover new evidence. Above, police officers searching the Dawsons’ former home.

The podcast has also sparked a conversation for women and men who came of age in the 1980s about a culture of impunity around sexual abuse in high schools, with many victims finally breaking their silence.

Separately, the Australian government passed a contentious encryption law. Opposed by privacy advocates, it requires tech companies to provide law enforcement and security agencies with access to encrypted communications.

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• Lyft, which has been racing its rival Uber to go public, confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a crucial step toward an I.P.O.

• Facebook’s internal emails and documents released by the British Parliament revealed how the company prized users’ personal data above almost everything else. Here’s what else those communications show.

• Saudi Arabia is poised to push OPEC to cut oil production by a million barrels a day as a way to balance the markets.

• U.S. stocks were down. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

• Yemen’s warring sides agreed to exchange at least 5,000 prisoners as peace talks began in Sweden, aimed at ending a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and pushed millions to the brink of famine. Above, a blown-up bridge in Yemen. [The New York Times]

• Five U.S. Marines are missing and two have been found after two aircraft crashed off the coast of Japan, the latest in a string of American military aircraft accidents. [The New York Times]

• North Korea is expanding a missile base that would be a likely site for deploying intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S., two experts said, citing satellite imagery. [The New York Times]

• An elderly American priest in the Philippines was arrested on charges that he sexually assaulted at least seven boys in a rural town where he’d been living for decades. [The New York Times]

• Luxembourg, a small country with a population of about 560,000, will offer free mass transit for all in 2020, the first nation to offer such a benefit. [The New York Times]

• Cuba started offering its citizens full internet access for mobile phones this week, becoming one of the last nations to offer the service. [AP]

Tips for a more fulfilling life.

• Recipe of the day: End the week with a comforting bowl of polenta topped with fried eggs.

• One thing you can do to help the environment? Choose an environmentally friendly Christmas tree.

• Got food allergies? Here’s how to make traveling less strenuous.

• Standout actors, from Julia Roberts to Ethan Hawke, turn common experiences into enchanting moments of dance for the Times Magazine’s annual Great Performers issue.

• “Crazy Rich Asians,” “A Star Is Born” and “Black Panther” were all nominated for Golden Globes. Here’s a full list of nominees and a rundown of the biggest snubs and surprises.

• In this week’s Australia Letter, our bureau chief Damien Cave explains how his dispatch on a reconciliation monument in Elliston came about, despite having just one interview lined up and no idea where the story would take him.

You may have read that the Bank of England is looking for a new face for its 50-pound note (about $65).

There have been many suggestions: the former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the mathematician Alan Turing and the physicist Stephen Hawking.

One lesser-known name caught our attention — Noor Inayat Khan, who spied for Britain during World War II.

Ms. Khan wasn’t what one would expect of a British spy. She was born a princess to Indian royalty, and she was a musician and a writer. But she spoke French and had excellent radio skills. She became the first female radio operator that Britain sent into occupied France.

She did the work of six radio operators, moving constantly and dying her hair blond to avoid detection. Her work became crucial to the war effort.

Ms. Khan never made it home; she was captured and executed at the Dachau concentration camp in 1944. She was 30.