United Nations, Facebook, Hamas: Your Monday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/briefing/united-nations-facebook-hamas.html

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

• World leaders gather in New York this week for the U.N. General Assembly. We’ll be watching their posturing on climate change, the Iran nuclear deal, atrocities in Myanmar and North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

Many of the leaders will be scrutinizing President Trump, who is set to deliver his first centerpiece speech there tomorrow.

For Nikki Haley, the American envoy, the week will be a test of how much influence she has among her peers and on Mr. Trump. Here’s a brief explainer of the gathering’s significance and the U.N.’s broader challenges.

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• Britain lowered its terrorism threat level, a day after the police arrested a second man late Saturday in connection with a bombing in a London subway station that left 29 people injured.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for Friday’s crude bombing attack, which was the fifth terrorist attack in the country this year.

“It’s really important that we show business as usual rather than allow terrorists to disrupt our way of life and stop us doing what we’re doing,” said Sadiq Khan, the mayor, as London Fashion Week began on the day of the bombing with a defiant shrug.

Above, armed police officers outside a Scottish Premiership soccer match in Glasgow on Saturday.

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• Arrivals of migrants in Italy have plunged in recent months, leading some to charge that the government in Rome was paying off Libya’s warlords, condemning migrants to misery in militant-run detention centers there.

Italian officials denied such payments and said that they had instead resorted to diplomacy. “We approached the issue slowly, slowly, Italian style,” a deputy foreign minister said. “We spoke to everyone.”

Separately, Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister, announced his intention to lead his center-right party’s ballot again in the next elections.

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• A clash is brewing between America’s tech giants and an increasing number of governments worried about the companies’ influence and reach. Many regulators are mimicking Europe’s stance on digital privacy, using tougher rules to control how parts of the internet are run.

Our correspondents looked at how Facebook, which is used by more than two billion people each month, tries to win over wary regulators. “Ultimately, it’s a grand power struggle,” said David Reed, an early pioneer of the internet.

Our media columnist argues that Facebook should reveal more about what it knows about Russian interference in last year’s U.S. presidential election.

Today, the European Commission is expected to publish a list of options for taxing technology companies.

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• Across the world, more people are now obese than underweight.

Western food companies like Nestlé are aggressively expanding in developing nations, contributing to a new epidemic of diabetes and heart disease, chronic illnesses that are fed by soaring rates of obesity in places that struggled with hunger and malnutrition just a generation ago.

• New technologies are testing the limits of computer semiconductors. To deal with that, researchers are taking design cues from human brains.

• Rolling Stone, the magazine that was once a bible for the counterculture, is going up for sale on the eve of its 50th anniversary.

• Dogecoin was meant to poke fun at the hype around virtual currencies. But investors didn’t get the joke and bought it anyway, bringing its market value as high as $400 million.

• Recent U.S. statistics have been rosy. But look farther back, and you’ll find a 50-year decline in men’s lifetime earnings.

• Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

• In Myanmar, a new generation of Rohingya Muslims is being radicalized by persecution and an apartheidlike existence in the Buddhist-majority country. Above, a Rohingya imam who says he is a militant, at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. [The New York Times]

• Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, said it had agreed to talks with the rival Fatah movement to form a unity government and hold general elections. [Reuters]

• Across the eastern Caribbean, residents still sifting through the wreckage left by Hurricane Irma learned that Tropical Storm Maria was heading their way. [The New York Times]

• Ahead of Germany’s federal election on Sunday, polls suggest that the far-right Alternative for Germany party could end up third behind the leading conservatives and the Social Democrats. [Deutsche Welle]

• Iceland’s coalition government collapsed over relevations that the prime minister’s father helped expunge the criminal record of a convicted pedophile. [Iceland Monitor]

• In southern France, a woman attacked four U.S. college students with acid at a train station in Marseille. The suspect has “a psychiatric history,” the police said. [The New York Times]

• With climate change, jellyfish are booming in the Mediterranean, to the point that researchers say there may be little to do but live with them — and eat them. [The New York Times]

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

• Recipe of the day: Use a muffin tray to make Melissa Clark’s zucchini and tomato tartlets with a cheddar crust.

• Here’s how to clean up safely after a cyclone, hurricane, flood or other natural disaster.

• Letting teenagers sleep a little longer could help them attain higher academic achievement, and lift the economy.

• At the Emmy Awards, Stephen Colbert, the host, used his opening monologue for an extended roast of President Trump. Here are highlights from the ceremony honoring the best in American television, and from the red carpet. And here’s the full list of winners.

• In British soccer, U.S. owners are more prominent than ever. And watching Arsenal tie Chelsea, our soccer correspondent contemplates on how the latter has surrendered some of its winning edge.

• Hatem El-Gamasy often appears as a pundit for Egyptian television news programs. His viewers don’t know his day job: He owns a New York City bodega.

• Two rare white giraffes were spotted in Kenya and captured on video, in what is believed to be the first such footage.

On this day in 1973, Jimmy Carter, then governor of Georgia, filled out a report saying that he had seen a U.F.O.

It wasn’t such a strange statement at the time — a Gallup poll that year found that 51 percent of people interviewed believed in unidentified flying objects, and that 11 percent believed they had seen “a flying saucer” themselves.

Mr. Carter filed his report with the unofficial National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, and said he had seen the object in Leary, Ga., in 1969.

Decades later, he recounted the incident on CNN: “I and about 25 others saw something in the air that changed colors and was round and came and left. We couldn’t figure out what it was.”

But he added that he believed it was impossible “to have space people from other planets or other stars” come to Earth.

While he didn’t believe they could visit us, Mr. Carter did record a message for “possible unknown civilizations in the galaxies” as president. It was part of the golden record placed in the Voyager in August 1977.

He said it represented “our hope and our determination, our good will in the vast and awesome universe.”

Karen Zraick contributed reporting.

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