Brexit, Emmanuel Macron, Hemp: Your Monday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/briefing/brexit-emmanuel-macron-hemp.html

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Good morning.

Risks for France, maneuvering in North Korea and smog over Poland. Here’s the latest:

• The stakes are high as President Emmanuel Macron of France leaves on Monday for a state visit to Washington after a year of carefully courting President Trump — with little to show for it. (Above, flags displayed at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.)

Faced with rising public anger at home and opposition in the E.U., he will try, once again, to bring the American president around on climate change, Iran and trade. But expectations for any breakthroughs are low, raising questions about the wisdom of Mr. Macron’s charm offensive.

Meanwhile, Manuel Valls, a former prime minister of France, has identified a path for a political comeback by running for mayor — of Barcelona, Spain.

And a French court ruled that an Algerian woman’s refusal to shake hands with male officials at a naturalization ceremony in Grenoble was grounds for denying her citizenship.

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• President Trump, who is expected to meet with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, in the weeks ahead, rejected suggestions that he had given North Korea a huge gift simply by agreeing to meet.

In a series of tweets, the president inaccurately stated that Mr. Kim had “agreed to denuclearization.” In fact, North Korea said it would consider relinquishing its nuclear weapons and was ending testing. But experts are unsure, at a basic level, what Mr. Kim wants.

Separately, we reported that there’s a strong possibility that Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, could end up cooperating with federal officials who are investigating him for activity that could relate to work he did for the president.

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• Another Brexit vote?

With Britain’s exit negotiations going poorly and its economy slowing, several pro-European groups are actively trying to drum up popular support for another say over the country’s future.

They want a new “people’s vote” to decide whether the final Brexit deal matches up to the extravagant promises made in the 2016 referendum campaign on leaving the E.U. (Above, anti-Brexit campaigners in London this month.)

Meanwhile, the British police have reportedly identified suspects in the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter. The suspects are believed to be in Russia.

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• When Facebook expands into developing countries, it is often welcomed as a force for good. But as Times journalists saw in Sri Lanka, the social media platform has been used to spread false rumors that ultimately led to violent mob attacks against the minority Muslim population there.

In India, Indonesia, Mexico and elsewhere, religious and ethnic tensions have found new life online, where misinformation and hate speech are able to proliferate wildly — often to deadly effect. (Above, a home destroyed in March by a Buddhist mob in Digana, Sri Lanka.)

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• The newest front line in America’s global shadow war is a half-finished drone base, above, in a barren stretch of Niger.

It will be used to target extremists in West and North Africa, regions where most Americans have no idea the country is fighting.

The mission in Niger is expected to come under scrutiny in a long-awaited Pentagon investigation into the deadly Oct. 4 ambush there of four American soldiers.

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• British regulators fined the chief executive of Barclays, James Staley, above, over his attempt to unmask a whistle-blower. But the bank said it would stand by him.

• Martin Sorrell’s resignation as chief executive of WPP, the world’s largest advertising group, has set off an intense debate about the future of the advertising business.

• Here’s what to look for this week: European leaders will discuss trade with President Trump, and the European Central Bank has stimulus on its mind.

• Mind control: Nigel Oakes, the mysterious founder of the company behind Cambridge Analytica, has long aimed to shape public opinion through “the power of the subliminal.”

• Everything Must Go. The entire contents of London Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 1 building, which opened in the 1960s, have gone up for auction.

• Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

• Why does Poland have some of the most polluted air in all of the European Union, and 33 of its 50 dirtiest cities? Its love affair with coal. Above, a coal mine in Belchatow, Poland, in 2013. [The New York Times]

• In Germany, the Social Democrats chose Andrea Nahles as the party’s first female leader, hoping her combative, independent style can revive its flagging poll numbers. [The New York Times]

• Up to 12,000 people were evacuated in Berlin after a World War II-era bomb was found during construction near the city’s main train station. [The New York Times]

• In Syria, inspectors were finally able to visit the site of a reported chemical attack and collect samples for analysis. [The New York Times]

• France has a history of giving its highest award, the Legion of Honor, to foreign dictators and other shady characters (President Bashar al-Assad of Syria just returned his). [The New York Times]

• In Hungary, tens of thousands of Hungarians marched against Prime Minister Viktor Orban for the second week in a row. [Politico]

• Incursions by Turkish military ships and jets into Greek territory have spiked, and the potential for conflict is the greatest it has been in 20 years. [The New York Times]

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

• These apps let you enjoy Paris despite the language barrier.

• What to do when your partner ruins his or her credit — and credibility.

• Recipe of the day: Celebrate spring with a recipe for pappardelle with pancetta and fresh peas.

• Our pop music team pulls back the curtain on how music is made today. First in the series is “The Middle,” a song written by a shy Australian that took producers more than a year to mold into an international hit.

• “Pollution Pods” at an art installation in London are five geodesic domes that simulate the air quality in five cities, from cleanest (Tautra, Norway) through varying levels of pollution (London, New Delhi, Beijing and São Paulo).

• “Cannabis mania.” In Italy, hemp flowers were recently legalized (it’s still forbidden to eat or smoke them), creating a booming industry. Is it a bubble waiting to be burst?

“Here we are in front of the elephants.”

It’s a phrase that you probably don’t recognize, but it helped launch a platform that you probably do: YouTube.

Thirteen years ago today, one of the video-sharing site’s co-founders, Jawed Karim, above, published its first clip: a brief video of himself at the San Diego Zoo.

YouTube now has over a billion users who consume a billion hours of video each day. With five billion views, the music video for “Despacito” is the most-watched video on YouTube. (Here’s a full list.)

People can watch Tom Cruise jump off Oprah Winfrey’s couch on repeat; laugh at a baby biting his brother’s finger; and relive the world’s introduction to the singer Susan Boyle.

YouTube, now owned by Google, was dreamed up by Mr. Karim and two other former PayPal employees. They were initially depressed by YouTube’s content: “There’s not that many videos I’d want to watch,” one lamented.

The trip to the zoo was one of those videos.

“The cool thing about these guys is they have really, really, really long trunks and that’s cool,” Mr. Karim says in the 19-second video, which has more than 48 million views. “And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”

Remy Tumin wrote today’s Back Story.

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