Tariffs, Italy, Telegram: Your Friday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/briefing/tariffs-italy-telegram-your-friday-briefing.html

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Good morning.

American tariffs hit Europe, Italy gets a government and a mystery is solved in France. Here’s the latest:

• U.S. tariffs go into effect on metals from the European Union, Canada and Mexico today, and some countries have already hit back. Combined with similar responses being prepared by China, Russia and Turkey, the impact of the penalties on American goods could be severe.

European officials are preparing to impose retaliatory levies on an estimated $3 billion of imported American products. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said the U.S. left the bloc no choice but to proceed with a case at the World Trade Organization and its own tariffs on American products. Above, a steel mill in Salzgitter, Germany, in March.

Our economics correspondent analyzed the risks posed to the U.S. by the government's erratic trade policy.

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• Italy will be led by populists who deeply oppose the euro.

The country’s president gave the green light to a government that would put Europe’s fourth-largest economy in the hands of officials antagonistic to the E.U., its currency and illegal migrants. Above, Giuseppe Conte, who will be sworn in today as prime minister, in Rome.

The parties want to renegotiate E.U. treaties and lift sanctions against Russia while moving Italy closer to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who once said he didn’t need to meddle in the Italian election because it was all going his way.

European leaders in Brussels, already worried about Poland and Hungary, now fear a threat to unity from within the bloc’s core.

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• President Trump pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative commentator who pleaded guilty in 2014 to making illegal campaign contributions. He said he was also considering commuting the sentence of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, who is in prison for corruption, and pardoning Martha Stewart, who served time for lying to investigators about a stock sale.

All three cases involve prosecutors whom Mr. Trump now considers enemies.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim Yong-chol, North Korea’s top nuclear weapons negotiator, in New York. They are trying to salvage the summit meeting planned for June 12 that Mr. Trump canceled last week. Here’s a quick video about Mr. Kim.

Mr. Trump said he expected the North Korean delegation to give him a letter from Kim Jong-un, the country’s leader, today in Washington.

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• Prepare to cringe.

A British review investigating the lack of women on corporate boards in the country released a list of the 10 worst excuses given by top executives.

Among them: “We have one woman already on the board, so we are done.” (Another claimed all the “good” women had been snapped up.)

The list is the British government’s latest effort to shame companies into addressing workplace gender disparities.

Separately, a self-described jihadist accused of encouraging a terrorist attack on the school of 4-year-old Prince George, who is third in line to the British throne, pleaded guilty and admitted urging assaults on soccer stadiums, Jewish institutions and other targets.

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• The messaging service Telegram accused Apple of refusing to allow global updates of its software after Russia ordered the iPhone maker to remove Telegram from its App Store. Telegram ran afoul of the Russian authorities for refusing to cooperate with security agencies. Supporters of the service, above, rallied in Moscow in April.

• China didn’t qualify for the World Cup this year, but the sudden appearance of Chinese companies as top corporate sponsors hints at the country’s opportunistic rise in the soccer world.

• Tesla earned a “recommended” rating from Consumer Reports for its first mass-market electric car, after a software update fixed what the magazine had called “big flaws.”

• Hamburg became the first city in Germany to restrict diesel vehicles, banning them on stretches of two roads. The move highlights the country’s growing opposition to the fuel.

• Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

• Saudi Arabia hired the parent company of the political data firm Cambridge Analytica to help plot the kingdom’s reforms, our reporters found. The firm provided a psychological road map of the country’s citizenry and its sentiment toward the royal family. [The New York Times]

• The European Court of Human Rights censured Lithuania and Romania for their complicity in the C.I.A.’s secret renditions program after the Sept. 11 attacks. [The New York Times]

• “Robbed children.” Prime Minister Leo Varadkar of Ireland apologized to 126 people who were adopted under falsified birth certificates that made their adoptive parents appear to be their birth ones. [The New York Times]

• Harvey Weinstein was indicted on two counts of rape and one count of criminal sexual act by a grand jury in Manhattan. If convicted, he could face 25 years in prison. [The New York Times]

• Denmark passed a ban on full-face veils, the latest European country to bar Muslim women from wearing a niqab or burqa. [BBC]

• The N.B.A. finals begin with an unprecedented fourth straight year of the same matchup: the Golden State Warriors versus the Cleveland Cavaliers. [The New York Times]

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

• Recipe of the day: End the week with a simple strawberry and mascarpone tart.

• Here’s what should — and shouldn’t — happen during gynecological exams.

• You’ve been recycling these six things all wrong.

• Mystery solved. Why did a New Jersey sign wash up on a beach in France? It took one hurricane, five years and a 3,600-mile ocean journey to find the answer.

• The Times’s recent investigation into thousands of internal Islamic State documents led to a thoughtful conversation with readers on the ethical and legal considerations of reporting in a war zone. (The original documents are to be given back to Iraq.)

• In the northern Italian region of Piemonte, informal shops are redefining where and how visitors drink wine (so they don’t have to pay for a five-course meal).

It’s now a widely known way to save people from choking: Wrap your arms around them from behind and squeeze their abdomen to create air flow to the lungs.

The Heimlich maneuver was first described in June 1974 in an article published by its creator, Dr. Henry Heimlich. Above, Dr. Heimlich demonstrated the maneuver on Johnny Carson in 1979.

In the early 1970s, almost 4,000 Americans died annually from choking on food or small objects. It was the sixth-leading cause of accidental death in the U.S. By some estimates, more than 100,000 people have been saved because of the technique.

A thoracic surgeon, Dr. Heimlich developed the method that compresses the lungs, causing a flow of air that carries the stuck object out of the airway and then the mouth. It has become a safety icon that is taught in schools, portrayed in movies and endorsed by medical authorities. At first, however, Dr. Heimlich found himself at odds with a skeptical medical establishment.

In May 2016, shortly before his death at the age of 96, he saved an 87-year-old woman’s life using his own method. “I felt it was just confirmation of what I had been doing throughout my life,” he said.

Claire Moses wrote today’s Back Story.

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