France, Ukraine, Reindeer: Your Monday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/briefing/france-ukraine-reindeer.html

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Good morning.

France’s far right sees opportunity in the “Yellow Vest” movement, climate negotiators defy all odds and Ukraine moves toward religious autonomy. Here’s the latest:

Anti-government protests — this time on a smaller scale — bubbled up again for a fifth consecutive weekend, increasing pressure on President Emmanuel Macron.

But for the far-right National Rally party — formerly known as the National Front — the grass-roots movement presents an opportunity. Its leaders — including Marine Le Pen, who lost to Mr. Macron in last year’s presidential election — have swooped in to provide demonstrators with venues and encouragement, hoping to capitalize on a huge pool of potential recruits. The party has also sent its own activists into the protests to push an anti-immigrant agenda, which was never a focus of the movement.

Go deeper: The “Yellow Vests,” who remain untethered to a political party and still have no clear leader or agreed-upon set of demands, have used Facebook to organize. But conspiracy theories threaten to undermine their only trusted form of communication.

Diplomats from nearly 200 countries defied expectations and reached a deal this weekend that would keep the Paris climate accord alive.

Even the U.S. agreed to the pact despite President Trump’s vow to abandon the accord, which cannot formally happen until late 2020.

The details: The deal created a uniform set of standards for measuring emissions and tracking policies, called for stepped-up plans to cut emissions ahead of the next talks in 2020 and built a process to help countries struggling to meet their emissions goals.

The complications: The U.S. and other big oil producers derailed an effort to formally endorse a U.N. report that called for a drastic cut in fossil fuel use. And the deal doesn’t contain more robust promises of climate aid for developing countries.

Mounting evidence suggests that a system of forced labor is emerging from a sprawling network of camps in the Xinjiang region in China. Hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslim inmates are detained there.

China’s ruling Communist Party has said in a surge of upbeat propaganda that detainees receive job training and an escape from poverty. The message is a brazen defiance of international outrage against the sweeping internment program, which forces Muslims to renounce religious piety and pledge loyalty to the party.

Why it matters: The emerging labor program indicates Beijing’s determination to continue operating the camps, despite calls to close them from the U.N. and U.S. and European diplomats.

Go deeper: Just four miles from one of these camps, McKinsey, a U.S. consulting firm, held its lavish annual corporate retreat this year, underscoring its deep relationship with Beijing. The company has worked with contentious institutions around the world — including Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy; Russia’s state-owned bank, which has connections to its intelligence agency; and Ukraine’s disgraced president, Viktor Yanukovych — raising the question of whether it has been complicit in advancing the tactics of America’s biggest rivals.

Some 190 bishops, priests and other church figures elected Metropolitan Epiphanius as the head of a newly unified Ukrainian church, bringing the country one step closer toward a split from the Russian Orthodox Church.

In January, Epiphanius will travel to Istanbul, the historic seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church, to receive an official order granting autonomy.

Why it matters: For centuries, the Kiev church answered to Moscow. But Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, in part, fueled the move for an independent church, creating a widening schism between the countries at a time of heightened tensions.

Newborn Ebola survivor: An infant in Congo is the youngest person to have recovered from the virus in what is now the world’s second-deadliest outbreak of the disease, medical officials said.

Turkey’s extradition request: The country’s foreign minister said the U.S. is “working on” sending back Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and is wanted in Turkey on charges that he instigated a failed coup there in 2016.

Singapore’s gay movement: Inspired by India’s removal of a colonial-era law criminalizing gay sex, activists are pushing to strike down Singapore’s version of the ban.

Trump tax scheme: One of the family’s ploys to avoid paying taxes in the 1990s ended up allowing for inflated rents for thousands of residents of their father’s real estate empire.

Israel’s capital: Australia recognized West Jerusalem as the country’s capital city but said it would move its embassy there from Tel Aviv only after a peace settlement was reached.

Norway’s reindeer: The Sami, an indigenous people in the northern regions of the country, are fighting to keep their herding traditions alive.

A third gender: People in Germany who don’t identify as male or female can now choose the option “diverse” on birth certificates and legal documents.

Murder in China: The case of a 12-year-old boy who was able to return to school five days after stabbing his mother to death has raised widespread questions about the country’s juvenile justice system.

Russian rap: President Vladimir Putin suggested the country should “lead and guide” the wildly popular music genre “in the right direction.”

Netflix and popcorn: After disrupting the cable TV industry, the streaming giant is now taking aim at Hollywood movie studios, with a lineup of original films from heavyweights like Martin Scorsese and Michael Bay.

Egyptian tomb: Archaeologists south of Cairo unearthed a 4,400-year-old tomb for a royal priest and his family that was in near-perfect condition.

Tips for a more fulfilling life.

Recipe of the day: Try this vegetarian riff on pasta carbonara.

What we know about diet and weight loss.

How to officiate a wedding and why you’d want to.

The exiled Chinese writer Ma Jian says his latest novel, “China Dream,” was heavily influenced by George Orwell’s dystopian classic “1984.”

Orwell’s 1949 novel described a totalitarian regime that suppressed critical thought. Mr. Ma says “China Dream” shows how the vision has become reality in China under President Xi Jinping.

“I’m going to carve this book in stone and bring it to Orwell’s grave,” he said on a recent trip to Hong Kong.

Mr. Ma isn’t the only one thinking of Orwell these days.

Last year, a White House adviser defended a colleague’s provably false claim about the size of Mr. Trump’s inauguration crowd as “alternative facts.” Some readers said the comment sounded Orwellian, and sales of “1984” surged.

And in May, the White House described China’s decision to order 36 airline companies to purge their websites of references to Macau, Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate countries as “Orwellian nonsense.”

(China’s foreign ministry fired back by saying it was an “objective fact” that all three places were “inseparable parts of Chinese territory.”)

Mike Ives, a reporter in our Hong Kong office, wrote today’s Back Story.

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