Cambridge Analytica, Putin, Rhinos: Your Wednesday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/briefing/cambridge-analytica-putin-rhinos.html

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Good morning.

Cambridge Analytica reels, President Trump congratulates Vladimir Putin, but first, puppies:

• The daily news cycle can be depressing, so let’s start with a story about dogs going to the movies.

Wes Anderson made a movie about dogs, so a sneak preview screening was B.Y.O.D., or Bring Your Own Dog.

Iko, a 9-year-old Shiba Inu, wasn’t impressed. “I think he’s just trying to figure out if this is the vet or not,” Iko’s owner said.

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• Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm that worked for both the Trump and pro-Brexit campaigns, suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, above, amid furor over the access it gained to private information on more than 50 million Facebook users.

Just to explain how powerful such data can be: Researchers have figured out how to tie interest you expressed on Facebook in, say, pop music to certain personality traits, such as how extroverted, conscientious or open-minded you are.

Here’s more on the scandal and its fallout.

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• “We had a very good call.”

President Trump congratulated President Vladimir Putin of Russia on his re-election but did not question the fairness of the vote. The two did not discuss the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in England.

Last fall, the global watchdog agency for chemical arms reduction celebrated Russia’s declaration that it had destroyed the last of its weapons. Now there are questions about whether it was deceived.

On “The Daily” podcast, our former Moscow correspondent describes Mr. Putin’s trajectory from childhood to one of the most powerful leaders in the world.

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• On the 15th anniversary of the American-led invasion of Iraq, we are relaunching At War, which began as a blog for our journalists and contributors in Baghdad years ago. You can read more about it here.

In an Op-Ed, the Iraqi-born novelist Sinan Antoon writes about how he opposed the invasion, and he mourns what has happened since.

“The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in the United States as a ‘blunder,’ or even a colossal mistake,’” he writes. “It was a crime.”

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• Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, was taken into custody in an investigation into whether his 2007 election campaign received illegal funding from the Libyan regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Mr. Sarkozy has denied any wrongdoing since reports emerged in 2012 that his campaign had received millions of euros, including from a French-Lebanese arms dealer who has also been charged in the investigation.

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• The world’s last male northern white rhino has died.

The loss of the 45-year-old rhino (named Sudan), above, leaves only his daughter and granddaughter in the subspecies.

Neither can carry a pregnancy to term, so conservationists hope to fertilize their eggs in vitro with banked sperm and use southern white rhinos as surrogate mothers.

• Raids in Austria and Germany, including at the BMW headquarters in Munich, above, suggest that all of Germany’s top domestic automakers may have evaded emissions rules.

• Steven Mnuchin, the U.S. Treasury secretary, was hounded at the G-20 meeting in Buenos Aires by countries seeking exemptions from President Trump’s stiff steel and aluminum tariffs — which take effect on Friday.

• The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates for the first time this year. As the U.S. economy keeps growing, many economists argue that the seeds of the next crisis are already being sown.

• Hundreds of U.S. start-ups are telling venture capitalists: Embrace diversity or keep your money.

• Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

• What’s in a name? For the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, decades of bitter battles with its neighbor Greece over history, identity and culture. Above, Macedonia’s capital, Skopje. [The New York Times]

• There was yet another shooting at a U.S. school. The suspect was shot dead after injuring two students. [The New York Times]

• President Trump welcomed Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, at the White House as the powerful heir began a two-week visit to the U.S. [The New York Times]

• Norway’s justice minister resigned after an uproar over a Facebook post in which she accused her own government of protecting terrorists over citizens. [The New York Times]

• Finland’s foreign minister said that denuclearization had not been on the agenda in talks between North Korean and U.S. officials in Helsinki. The talks end today. [Reuters]

• The U.S. is pushing to limit junk-food warning labels in trade talks with Mexico and Canada. Health advocates say the label requirements help fight obesity, but manufacturers fear losing profits. [The New York Times]

• Ukraine is requiring lawmakers to leave weapons and explosives in lockers before entering Parliament. [Associated Press]

• A former Playboy model who said she had an affair with President Trump is suing to be released from a 2016 legal agreement requiring her silence. [The New York Times]

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

• Renovating? Here’s some advice.

• Enjoy fine dining on a fast-food budget.

• Recipe of the day: Get through your Wednesday by planning to make this no-bake mango dessert.

• Get incredibly close to David Bowie’s groundbreaking costumes in our latest article featuring augmented reality.

• We tagged along with Roger Federer, the Swiss tennis star, on his first trip to Chicago. At 36, he is still near the peak of his tennis powers.

• Jews have lived in the south of France since Roman times, and some traditional dishes will appear there at Seders this week. (Here’s a recipe for Provençal haroseth.)

• Growing hops for beer is resource-intensive, and farmers can’t keep up. So scientists engineered yeast that can help reproduce the flavor.

• And a children’s book about Mike Pence’s fictional gay bunny, written by the comedian John Oliver, has jumped to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list in the U.S.

Each week, The Times’s crossword column, Wordplay, highlights the answer to one of the most difficult clues from the previous week’s puzzles.

This week’s word: nene.

If it looks like a goose and honks like a goose, it should just be a goose, right? The nene, however, is special. Not only is it Hawaii’s state bird, the nene, above, is the world’s rarest goose.

Its webbed feet have adapted to living on hardened lava, but it is a weak flier. Nenes were once hunted nearly to extinction, but conservation efforts have bolstered their population.

Another reason to know your nenes is that, although they may be rare in the wild, they come up quite a bit in crossword puzzles. Nene has been an entry in The Times’s crossword 295 times since 1944.

It appeared in the puzzle on March 12, with the clue “Hawaiian goose.” The word might also appear in the easier puzzles at the beginning of the week, with the clue “Hawaiian state bird” or “Hawaiian honker.”

Later in the week, as the crosswords become more difficult, it might be referred to as “Aloha State bird,” “Endangered state bird,” “Lava geese,” “Bird so-called from its call” or “Gray-brown goose.”

You can find out about the nene and other birds that appear regularly in our Crossword Aviary.

Deb Amlen contributed reporting.

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