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 India’s cooking “granny” dies. 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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• India’s 107-year-old YouTube star dies.

Mastanamma, pictured above, was always a fine home cook in her village in south India.

But true fame came for her at age 105, after her great-grandson posted videos of her cooking on YouTube, quickly turning her into India’s cooking “granny”.

She wore dentures, cooked outside on an open fire, experimented with chicken pizza and stored bird eggs in her sari. For her channel’s more than a million subscribers, it was all part of the charm.

“Nobody cooks like me in my family,” she once bragged in a video.

→ Separately: The hunter who killed a man-eating tiger in central India broke several laws, officials said, adding a new twist to an already contentious case.

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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 mixed. 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]

• One U.S. Marine died and five are missing 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.

• “Living Coral” is Pantone’s 2019 “Color of the Year.” Here’s an illustrated guide to how the company made that decision.

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.