Republican Party, Venezuela, Chris Paul: Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/briefing/republican-party-venezuela-chris-paul.html

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Good evening. Here’s the latest.

1. If the Republican health care bill dies in the Senate, the party may have to work with their Democratic counterparts to shore up the Affordable Care Act.

That was the warning from the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, as he continued talks with his fellow Republicans over a new version of the bill that he hopes to vote on after the July 4 recess.

In Mr. McConnell’s home state, Kentucky, many of his constituents are worried about health care. The Affordable Care Act had a huge impact there — nearly one in three people now receive coverage through Medicaid. Above, inside a hospital in central Appalachia.

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2. President Trump accepted an invitation to visit France for Bastille Day, which is July 14.

And he drew criticism after a video surfaced of him interrupting a phone call with the leader of Ireland to compliment a female reporter’s smile.

Tomorrow the new president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, will visit the White House. Mr. Moon is more open to engaging with the North than the hawks in Mr. Trump’s cabinet.

And we rounded up the best partisan writing on this week’s political news.

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3. The global cyberattack that struck parts of Asia, Europe and the U.S. this week was the second time in two months that hackers have tried to shake down computer users, threatening to delete their data unless they paid up.

Here’s what we know about the attack so far. Security experts say such attacks could become more frequent as criminals try to take advantage of any vulnerability in digital infrastructure.

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4. Rogue policemen attack the Supreme Court, dropping grenades from a helicopter. The president calls it an attempted coup.

A video posted on social media shows a policeman — who once appeared in an action film — taking responsibility, saying he represents an insurgent coalition against a “criminal government.”

That was last night in Venezuela, which has been shaken for weeks by large antigovernment protests. More than 70 people have died.

Here are 10 articles in which our journalists track the country’s descent into chaos.

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5. Saturday is the 150th anniversary of Canada’s founding as a nation.

We asked readers in Canada to share accounts of their family’s earliest histories. Here are some of those stories.

Many expressed a deep sense of pride in the tolerance and diversity of modern Canada. Some indigenous people wrote about the traumatic legacy of losing lands and relatives. Above, a member of the Wood Mountain Lakota Nation whose daughter wrote in.

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6. Phil Jackson is out as team president of the New York Knicks, a little more than three years after he was brought in as franchise savior. His replacement was not immediately announced.

And the Los Angeles Clippers traded Chris Paul to the Houston Rockets, according to multiple reports, where he will join James Harden in a formidable backcourt.

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7. Michael Bond, the British author who created Paddington Bear, died at his home in London. He was 91.

Mr. Bond found a lone teddy bear on a store shelf on Christmas Eve in 1956 and began writing stories about him. The polite but disaster-prone character was inspired by Mr. Bond’s memories of child evacuees in World War II.

The books have sold more than 35 million copies worldwide and have been translated into at least 40 languages.

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8. There’s a new but promising category in the American labor market: people working in so-called new-collar or middle-skill jobs.

Two-thirds of American adults do not have a four-year college degree. Luckily, some tech companies are rating skills over degrees.

Microsoft just announced a $25 million grant to a program to encourage that approach, which could work in other industries. Sean Bridges, above, went from fast-food jobs to cybersecurity analysis.

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9. In consumer tech news, Amazon rolled out Echo Show, a $230 smart speaker with a touch-screen.

Our critic says it’s great for office desks or kitchens, but superfluous if you already have an Echo speaker and a smartphone or tablet.

Our tech columnist says the device clarifies Amazon’s vision for the future of computing. “It represents the model for a new kind of communal, household computer,” he writes. Like the operating system of suburbia.

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10. Finally, Stephen Colbert took a shot at CNN over the network’s retracted report about a Trump ally. Three journalists resigned over the incident.

“This is CNN’s worst mistake since their short-lived spinoff, ‘Wolf Blitzer’s Rockin’ Situation Garage,’” he quipped.

Have a great night.

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