Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
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Good morning.
Here’s what you need to know:
• “If I think that it’s a meeting that is not going to be fruitful, we’re not going to go. If the meeting, when I’m there, is not fruitful, I will respectfully leave.”
While expressing optimism about his potentially historic summit meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, President Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that it could end in failure. Among the possible hurdles: the fate of three U. S. citizens detained by Pyongyang.
The date and location of the talks have yet to be decided. (The venue might depend on the state of North Korea’s Soviet-era air fleet .)
• Also on Wednesday, South Korea confirmed that it had been in talks with U. S. and North Korean officials about negotiating a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War .
• President Raúl Castro is expected to step down today, handing power to someone outside his family for the first time in more than half a century.
His handpicked successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, 57, is a Communist Party loyalist who has shown the sort of restraint the Castros have always prized. But that caution means he’s an enigma both at home and abroad. Our video explains what is known about Mr. Díaz-Canel.
• He will face myriad challenges, including modernizing a moribund economy and navigating President Trump’s reversal of U. S. engagement with the island.
• What passengers on Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 got was Tammie Jo Shults.
Captain Shults displayed “nerves of steel” while landing the Boeing 737 after an engine exploded in midair. One passenger died after being partly sucked out of the plane.
Three decades ago, Captain Shults was one of the first female fighter pilots in the Navy. Read more about her here.
• The accident is renewing scrutiny on engine inspections. No problems were uncovered with the plane when it was checked two days before the explosion.
• After seven months and close to $2.5 billion in rebuilding work, almost all of the 3.4 million residents on the hurricane-ravaged island had power again.
But a freak accident on Wednesday plunged virtually the entire U. S. territory back into darkness .
• “It’s frustrating,” said one resident whose power was restored only in November. “You go three months without electricity and you think you’re getting back to normalcy, and this happens again.”
• A former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, has reached a settlement with a tabloid company to release her from a contract that prevented her from talking about her alleged affair with Donald Trump. The president has denied her story.
The settlement protects Mr. Trump from being drawn into a legal case involving efforts to buy the silence of women during the 2016 campaign.
• He still faces a lawsuit from Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels.
• The new Times podcast follows Rukmini Callimachi to the front lines of the war against the Islamic State.
Listen on a computer, an iOS device or an Android device .
• Across the Midwest, farmers are warning of Republican losses in the midterm elections because of the threat that Chinese tariffs pose to American agriculture.
• Can training undo bias? Researchers are divided on the effectiveness of the anti-bias training that Starbucks will give its employees.
• Advertisers have long had a symbiotic relationship with Facebook. But user concerns about privacy are forcing companies to take a harder look at how they work with the social network.
• A robot has been trained to achieve one of the most difficult tasks confronting humanity: assembling Ikea furniture .
• U. S. stocks were mixed on Wednesday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets today.
Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.
• What to pack for a trip to Victoria, British Columbia .
• Want to feel better? Express gratitude .
• Recipe of the day: Salmon with sesame and herbs makes a great weeknight dinner.
• New York City: 1981-1983
It was a time that resonates today: A Republican in the White House. Street demonstrations demanding equality. A new wave of sexual self-identification.
For its annual Culture issue, T, the Times’s style magazine, looked back at 36 months in New York that changed art, design, activism, food, literature and love — forever.
• Music award draws outrage in Germany
A hip-hop duo whose album features anti-Jewish lyrics won an award at the German equivalent of the Grammys, setting off a debate about the rise of anti-Semitism among the country’s young people.
• Fiction sequels are in bloom
Before the summer movie season brings its bounty of big-screen sequels, readers are treating themselves to the next installments of their favorite book series. Our latest combined print and e-book fiction list has five.
You can find all our best-seller lists here .
• Best of late-night TV
Trevor Noah was cautiously optimistic about President Trump’s planned meeting with Kim Jong-un: “If it wasn’t for his craziness, North Korea would have never come to the table.”
• Quotation of the day
“Welcome to Puerto Rico. This is what we know as ‘life.’ ”
— Eduardo Perez, an ESPN commentator and former Major League baseball player who was hosting a news conference in San Juan when a major power failure hit.
• The Times, in other words
Here’s an image of today’s front page, and links to our Opinion content and crossword puzzles .
• What we’re reading
Recommended by Alicia P. Q. Wittmeyer, the gender editor for our Opinion section: “I really enjoyed this piece by Jianan Qian, in The Millions, on the difference between East Asian and Western modes of storytelling. Such comparisons can be a little fraught — the potential for Orientalism and sweeping generalizations looms large — but she carefully selects examples that are illuminating and touching.”
Our recent back story on the dispute about who was first to reach the North Pole looked at Adm. Robert Peary’s expedition in 1909.
What it didn’t mention were the people with him, specifically Matthew Henson, who was hired as Peary’s valet but became an invaluable navigator and interpreter.
In the decades after the expedition, the roles of Henson and the party’s four Inuit members — Ootah, Seeglo, Egingwah, and Ooqueah — were played down.
Henson, who was African-American, was working at a store in Washington when he met Peary. Their partnership lasted through eight Arctic expeditions over more than 20 years.
