Brexit, Greenland, U.S. Shutdown: Your Tuesday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/briefing/brexit-greenland-us-shutdown-your-tuesday-briefing.html

Version 0 of 1.

Good morning.

Plan B for Brexit underwhelms Parliament, Greenland’s melting is accelerating, and the U.S. partial shutdown enters its fifth week. Here’s the latest:

Prime Minister Theresa May returned to Parliament with an alternative blueprint for Britain’s withdrawal from the E.U.

Infuriating some lawmakers, it looked a lot like her initial plan, which was voted down last week in one of the most resounding parliamentary defeats in British history.

Why it matters: The face-off could become another epic political showdown that leaves the Brexit process where it has been for months — stuck in limbo with no obvious path forward.

Go deeper: The speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, has emerged as a surprise star of Brexit after he broke with precedent to wrest some control over the decision-making process.

A new study warns that the ice sheet covering the massive island, which lies mainly above the Arctic Circle, is melting at such an accelerated rate that it may become “a major contributor to sea level rise” around the world within two decades.

The study’s authors found that ice loss in 2012 was nearly four times the rate in 2003, adding to research showing that the melting is speeding up as the warming increases. Another study found that Greenland’s ice loss had reached its fastest rate in at least 350 years.

Why it matters: The study is the latest in a series of papers published this month suggesting that scientific estimates of the effects of a warming planet have been, if anything, too conservative. Researchers say they collectively underline the need for a sharp reduction in emissions of planet-warming gases.

President Trump, faced with increasing backlash over the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, made an offer over the weekend: temporary protections for roughly 700,000 young undocumented immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” in exchange for $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall.

Democrats called it “hostage taking” and refused to negotiate until the government reopens.

Some of the 800,000 furloughed federal employees are turning to pawnshops and brokers for short-term loans. Subsidies for low-income renters have stopped.

Go deeper: People who have done business with Mr. Trump over the years say his uncompromising fixation on a southern border wall is consistent with the negotiating tactics he used for decades in the private sector, focused foremost on claiming victory.

In other U.S. news: In a rare public statement, the office of the special counsel running the Russia investigation disputed a BuzzFeed News report that Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, told prosecutors that the president had directed him to lie to Congress.

England, Wales and Scotland are dotted by more than 100 rustic shelters called bothies (the word rhymes with “frothy”). Often little more than four walls, a roof, a stove and a stone floor — and no bathroom — they serve as remote way stations for a motley assortment of adventurers who take to Britain’s spectacular and sometimes forbidding countryside.

Details: The bothies are free to use, and the vast majority are repurposed structures like shepherds’ huts and mining outbuildings. They came into recreational use in the 1930s as weekend getaways, sometimes used clandestinely, for working-class laborers.

Future: Some longtime proponents of bothy culture fear that it is endangered by the internet, where map coordinates for the often hard-to-find dwellings can be obtained by all, rather than just by hiking insiders. But getting to bothies can be such a task — through cold, driving rain and bogs, and over trails that can be mere faint notions — that overcrowding may never become a problem.

Google: The French authorities fined Google 50 million euros for not properly telling users how it collects data across its services, including its search engine, Google Maps and YouTube, to present personalized advertisements. It is the largest penalty to date under the E.U.’s privacy law known as G.D.P.R.

Afghanistan: Hours before the Taliban announced that they had resumed peace talks with American officials, they attacked a base in central Afghanistan run by the national intelligence agency, killing dozens of people.

Hidden painting: The opening of an Oscar de la Renta boutique in Paris is in flux because of a mysterious artwork more than three centuries old that resurfaced behind a wall.

Russia: The Trump administration cast its move to lift sanctions on the business empire of the Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska as tough on him and on Russia. But a confidential document shows that the deal frees him from hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

Northern Ireland: The police arrested four men on Sunday over a car bombing in Londonderry the night before that drew condemnation from across the political spectrum. It caused no casualties or major damage.

Carlos Ghosn: For the second time in a week, a Japanese court has rejected a bail request by the ousted Nissan chairman, who has spent more than two months in a Tokyo jail on charges of financial misconduct.

Kamala Harris: The California Democrat who became the second black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate declared her candidacy for president, joining an increasingly crowded and diverse field. (Here’s our candidate tracker.)

Meng Hongwei: Nearly four months after the Interpol president was detained in China on corruption charges, his wife, Grace Meng, applied for asylum in France. “I cannot go back to China; such strange things happen there, and fundamental rights are not respected,” Ms. Meng told a French newspaper.

China’s economy: Official numbers show 6.6 percent growth in 2018, the slowest for the country since 1990. But many economists see more slowing than government figures show.

Vulgar question: The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by a clothing line whose brand name, “Fuct,” was rejected by the trademark office as the “phonetic twin” of the most versatile Anglo-Saxon curse word.

Halal tourism: Muslims now make up one of the fastest-growing segments of the travel industry. Hotels, flights and tour operators are increasingly catering to their dietary and religious needs.

Tips for a more fulfilling life.

Recipe of the day: Pan-seared chicken comes alive with a lemon-anchovy sauce. (Our Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter has more recommendations.)

Classic bow shoes are back in style. Here are eight options.

Meaningful relationships with robots? Here’s a deeper look at “digisexuals.”

The Australian Open, once the least grand of tennis’s four Grand Slam events, has caught up.

When the tournament began in the early 20th century, travel time for Americans and Europeans could be more than a month, so play was largely limited to Australians and New Zealanders.

Jet travel made the trip easier. But for decades, low prize money and dates around the Christmas holidays kept many players above the Equator. Chris Evert played the Australian Open just six times; John McEnroe five; Bjorn Borg once.

Over time, the prize money and ranking points increased, and the tournament shifted to the third and fourth weeks of January. In 1988, its home moved to the brand-new Melbourne Park. Today, the “Grand Slam of Asia-Pacific” lures business support and fans from across the region.

And now the stars line up. Serena Williams is seeking her eighth title, and Novak Djokovic is vying for his seventh. Catch up with our latest coverage here.

Ben Rothenberg, who’s covering the Australian Open for The Times, wrote today’s Back Story.

Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings.

Check out this page to find a Morning Briefing for your region. (In addition to our European edition, we have Australian, Asian and U.S. editions.)

What would you like to see here? Contact us at europebriefing@nytimes.com.