Friday, 29 Mar 2024

Venezuela, North Korea, Academy Awards: Your Monday Briefing

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Good morning.

Venezuela’s opposition looks for its next move, “Green Book” wins the Oscar for best picture and socialism rises among Britain’s millennials. Here’s the latest:

Opposition falters in deadly Venezuelan aid standoff

At least four people died over the weekend in clashes as Venezuela’s opposition movement tried to clear the way for humanitarian aid to enter the country.

Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader who declared himself the legitimate president last month, promised an “aid avalanche” that never arrived. The Venezuela National Guard fired tear gas and live ammunition at protesters on the borders with Colombia and Brazil. Just one aid truck made it through.

Hoping to break President Nicolás Maduro’s blockade and hasten his downfall, the opposition instead found his image damaged by the violence but his hold on the military firm, leaving them to grasp for a Plan B.

What next? Mr. Maduro severed diplomatic ties with Colombia, ordering his country’s envoys to leave within 24 hours.

Mr. Guaidó and the U.S. vice president, Mike Pence, are scheduled to meet with the Lima Group of Latin American nations today to discuss new ways to pressure Mr. Maduro. The opposition has been talking more about the possibility of foreign military intervention.

U.S. and North Korea prepare for second summit meeting

The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is en route to Vietnam, where he will meet with President Trump on Wednesday to discuss the North’s nuclear weapons program.

Mr. Kim has chosen a vintage mode of travel: a train journey south through China, followed by a winding, mountainous road trip to Hanoi.

The U.S. perspective: The discussions in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, will be a major test of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s leadership. He must prevent Mr. Trump from giving away any leverage the U.S. has over North Korea, while remaining in the president’s good graces.

Goals: After the last summit meeting, Mr. Trump declared that “there is no longer a nuclear threat” from North Korea, an assessment U.S. intelligence agencies rejected. This time, the U.S. is trying to extract a timetable for denuclearization.

The rise of millennial socialism in Britain

Britons who came of age in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008 will, in many cases, be worse off than their parents. Raised under austerity, angry at losing the huge state benefits their elders enjoyed, burdened with student debt and seeing few prospects for advancement, many millennials are turning to socialism, fracturing the Labour Party along generational lines between renewed radicalism and an older centrism in retreat.

Alex McIntyre, 19, was raised on budget cuts. A university student with big debt and precarious employment, he has gone on strike, dived into trade unionism and joined the young left in Brighton, a university town of anticapitalist workshops, “red gyms” and rent strikes whose spirit is embodied by Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s socialist leader.

Go deeper: Here is a guide to Britain’s austerity program, introduced in 2010, and its profound effects, including cuts to the police that many police leaders say have led to rising crime.

In other British news: Brexit is stirring up old resentments in Ireland against its former colonial master. No country stands to lose more than Ireland from a messy departure, especially if unresolved questions over the status of the border with Northern Ireland tear at the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998.

A surprise win for best picture at the Oscars

Hollywood’s stars gathered for the 91st Academy Awards in Los Angeles, this year without a host.

Rami Malek won best actor for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and Olivia Coleman took best actress for “The Favourite.” (We have the story behind her gown.) Alfonso Cuarón won best director for “Roma.” And defying our predictions, “Green Book” won for best picture.

Here’s a complete list of winners, and our live chat and commentary.

The red carpet: Our columnist talked to stars and moviemakers, and here are the photos. Despite the Oscars suffering diminished ratings and a general loss of cultural traction, our critic saw a red carpet that was surprisingly diverse and welcoming. And it was also gender fluid.

Here’s what else is happening

The Vatican: Pope Francis, closing a landmark meeting on clerical sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, called for “an all-out battle against the abuse of minors” but didn’t offer the concrete policies demanded by many of the faithful.

Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his future imperiled by prosecutors and political challengers alike, has enraged Jewish leaders in Israel and the U.S. by making a pact with a racist anti-Arab party whose ideology was likened by one influential rabbi to Nazism.

Trade war: President Trump delayed his own March 1 deadline to increase tariffs on Chinese goods, citing “substantial progress” in talks, though few details have been released.

India-Pakistan: Seven decades after the British divided India to create Pakistan, the first museum devoted to the chaos that followed — mass migration, murders, riots and rapes — opened in Amritsar, a city near the border. Curating its exhibits was fraught with risks.

Afghanistan: A U.N. report shows that 2018 was the single deadliest year for civilians in the war-torn country, with children dying in record numbers, and 24 percent of casualties attributed to Afghan and American forces. Meanwhile, the Taliban’s deputy leader arrived in Qatar for what could be the highest-level negotiations yet with American diplomats on ending the Afghan war.

Sex trafficking: A vast investigation in Florida and New York uncovered a multimillion-dollar prostitution operation in which women who the police believe were brought from China on false promises of jobs were trapped in brothels sometimes visited by the rich and famous.

Switzerland: A former Swiss soldier was found guilty of violating Swiss neutrality by fighting against jihadist forces in Syria. Hanna Johannes Cosar was fined for commanding a private army whose aim was to defend Syriacs, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, against Islamic State forces.

R. Kelly: The R&B singer was charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four women, three of whom had been minors at the time. He resolved earlier such cases with nondisclosure agreements, but his actions have come under fresh scrutiny after BuzzFeed and a recent documentary reported on his apparent sex cult.

Charles Dickens: The famed novelist and journalist not only sought to banish his wife of two decades, Catherine, after their separation in 1858 but also tried to have her imprisoned in an asylum, according to newly revealed letters.

Smarter Living

Tips for a more fulfilling life.

Recipe of the day: This creamy turmeric pasta uses mostly pantry staples.

Digital wellness: Are you addicted to your smartphone? Our tech columnist decided to kick his habit. Here’s how he did it.

Remodeling? Software, like free floor-plan apps and augmented-reality tools, could help you sketch out your ideas.

Back Story

One edition of our Friday Morning Briefing included a photograph of the actor Sidney Poitier standing in front of the Apollo Theater and said that he was in Midtown Manhattan.

Sharp-eyed readers asked whether we didn’t mean Harlem, where the storied theater on 125th Street has been a cultural institution for the African-American community in New York City and beyond for 85 years.

But there was also an Apollo Theater on 42nd Street. The Times reviewed its opening production in 1920, a musical comedy called “Jimmie.”

The Apollo in the picture with Mr. Poitier fell into disrepair but reopened in 1979 as the New Apollo, to differentiate it from the one uptown. It was demolished in 1996, and the Lyric Theater, currently home to “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” stands in its place.

There’s also an Apollo Theater in London. Why such a popular name? Apollo was the Greek god of music and poetry.

Chris Stanford, on the briefings team, wrote today’s Back Story.

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