Brexit, France, Hong Kong: Your Monday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/briefing/Brexit-France-Hong-Kong.html

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Good morning.

We’re covering the mood in pre-election Britain, a fight over France’s safety net and a love story in Auschwitz.

As Britain gears up for a general election on Thursday, the only thing uniting the traumatized nation may be its disunity.

Our reporter recently took a 900-mile journey, from London to Glasgow, in an attempt to make sense of a nation grappling with the impacts of nationalism, austerity and economic alienation. He looked closely at how postindustrial transformations had changed local economics, and why the Brexit debate was scrambling political allegiances and causing so much frustration.

Youth vote: As many young people register to vote for the first time, the left-wing opposition Labour Party is hoping for a major boost. But some young voters may instead support the Liberal Democrats, a more centrist party.

Dubious claims: Commentators derided Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s claim that “cupid’s darts will fly once we get Brexit done,” leading to a baby boom.

Hugh, actually: The actor Hugh Grant, who famously played a prime minister going door to door in the film “Love Actually,” is campaigning hard for Britain to remain in the European Union.

As France braces for a fifth day of nationwide strikes, much of its train network is at a standstill. The national railway company has warned travelers to stay away from train stations today to prevent overcrowding on platforms.

The workers driving the strikes fear that President Emmanuel Macron will strip away the generous pension benefits that were enshrined in France after World War II, and which still allow some workers to retire in their 50s. At stake, our correspondent writes, “is nothing less than the future of the country’s vaunted social safety net.”

What’s next: Unions are calling for another nationwide demonstration on Tuesday, a day before the government is scheduled to unveil fresh details of a pension overhaul. Mr. Macron has called the country’s tangled retirement system outdated, unfair and unsustainable.

Profile: Our Paris bureau chief interviewed Ladj Ly, whose film about life in the immigrant suburbs of Paris is up for an Oscar.

Unrelated: Yubo, a video chat app based in France that is popular with teenagers, is among the online platforms that sexual predators have used to target young people.

Jan. 27 will mark 75 years since Soviet soldiers liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. And as anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism strain societies across Europe, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany’s visit to Auschwitz on Friday carried extra symbolism.

Ms. Merkel made her visit as chancellor to the camp in southern Poland — where more than a million people, mostly Jews, were murdered — less than two months after a man armed with a gun and spouting anti-Semitic tropes attacked a German synagogue. She warned of “alarming” levels of racism and hate crimes, and called on political leaders to remain committed to the “very vulnerable and fragile” principles of democracy, human dignity and civil liberties.

Related: We have an article about an improbable love affair between Jewish inmates at Auschwitz in 1943. When they finally reunited, after 72 years apart, he asked her a crucial question.

In the latest battle of President Trump’s widening trade war, his administration is planning a bureaucratic attack that would cripple the World Trade Organization’s ability to resolve international trade disputes. It’s a body blow for an organization that Phil Hogan, the European trade commissioner, says is “facing its deepest crisis since its creation,” in 1995.

Specifically, Washington plans to allow the terms of two of the three remaining members of a W.T.O. panel — which hears appeals in trade disputes — to lapse on Tuesday. The panel can have only seven members and needs a minimum of three to function. Shutting it down entirely, our trade reporter writes, could result in “an outbreak of tit-for-tat tariff wars.”

Background: Mr. Trump’s trade officials have spent two years blocking the W.T.O. from appointing new members to the panel, saying its decisions amounted to judicial activism — a view that was shared by officials in the Obama administration.

Lighter fare: In a rollicking dispatch from southern Italy, our reporter explains why some people see a crackdown on contraband pasta as another distressing sign of globalization.

After Chris Long had a bone marrow transplant to treat his leukemia, he found that DNA from his German donor had traveled to unexpected parts of his body — including his semen.

The U.S. police department where Mr. Long works is now studying his case to see whether DNA could eventually help investigators track hypothetical cases where people commit crimes after having transplants. And they’re using Mr. Long as a human guinea pig.

Ukraine: The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, will meet President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Kyiv today for talks aimed at ending the war along Ukraine’s eastern border that has killed at least 13,000 people. The meeting comes two days after the International Monetary Fund conditionally agreed to lend the country $5.5 billion over three years.

Hong Kong: Hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters marched on Sunday, one of the largest demonstrations in weeks — and a reminder to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, that the monthslong antigovernment movement still has widespread support.

U.S. attack: Investigators are trying to determine the motive of a Saudi gunman who fatally shot three American sailors at a Florida naval base on Friday.

Liberia: A British judge ruled that Agnes Reeves Taylor, the ex-wife of former President Charles Taylor, could not be tried in London over accusations of atrocity in her country’s civil war. The case had been seen as an important test for those seeking to see torture in other countries punished in British courts.

London: The British capital’s fire chief, who had been heavily criticized for her agency’s response to the fatal Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, said on Friday that she would resign at the end of the year. The fire killed 72 people and was the worst in modern British history.

Olympics: Today in Switzerland, the World Anti-Doping Agency will consider a recommendation from one of its committees to bar Russian athletes and teams from global sports for four years. Here’s a primer on what’s at stake.

NATO: A planned conference in Copenhagen to celebrate NATO’s 70th anniversary was canceled on Sunday after the U.S. ambassador to Denmark vetoed the participation of an American expert who is critical of President Trump.

Italian soccer: One of Italy’s main sports newspapers faced widespread condemnation for running a headline that said “BLACK FRIDAY” — a reference to two black players whose clubs were squaring off. But the newspaper, Corriere dello Sport, insisted it had done nothing wrong.

Snapshot: A $120,000 duct-taped banana, above, on display last week at Art Basel Miami Beach. The work, by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, had to be taken down on Sunday because of the Mona Lisa-like attention it was getting. (Our critic explains why it is more than just an overpriced piece of fruit.)

Serbia: A man born without testicles received one transplanted from his identical twin brother in an operation performed last week in Belgrade. It was only the third known transplant of its kind.

North Pole: Two explorers who had trekked hundreds of miles through the Arctic winter — and were running out of food — finally reached safety.

Georgia: An acclaimed film that shows gay romance in the country is missing from the lineup of the Tbilisi Film Festival, after protests at screenings turned violent.

What we’re listening to: This episode of “The Europeans” podcast, about Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s new president. A host said the episode aimed to “explain how the E.U. actually works without boring you to death.”

Cook: Lemony turmeric tea cake should be called “house cake” — to keep in your house at all times for a zingy lift.

Go: “An American in Paris” and “Funny Girl” are both English-language musicals playing in Paris this month.

Smarter Living: Our Social Q’s column offers advice to a woman wondering whether she should hide her husband’s job loss from her parents.

The Golden Globes nominees will be announced today, part of the entertainment awards season that culminates with the Oscars.

This year, our Styles writer Caity Weaver took a close look at the somewhat opaque nonprofit that awards the Globes: the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

It “was born of the chaos of global warfare in 1943,” she wrote, “when eight foreign-born journalists living in California banded together to, apparently, gossip privately about celebrities. (The H.F.P.A.’s website is vague: ‘At first, the members held informal gatherings in private homes.’)”

The organization says it has “about 90 members,” who are not named, and the requirements to belong are something less than rigorous, Caity found.

Members must live in the greater Southern California area, have received a paycheck for publishing something in a non-American publication four times, submit two letters of recommendation from current members and pay a $500 initiation fee.

Perhaps that looseness explains what Variety calls the organization’s “penchant for surprise.”

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Mike

Thank youTo Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford for the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode includes an interview with the U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. • Here’s today’s Mini Crossword puzzle, and a clue: Lacking pizazz (four letters). You can find all our puzzles here. • The Times has 21 reporters covering the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Get to know them here.