Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up .)
Good morning. Protests in Australia, a heat wave in Japan and the lighter side of China’s tech craze. Here’s what you need to know:
• President Trump claims vindication.
In a series of Twitter posts, Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that his administration’s release of top-secret documents related to the surveillance of Carter Page, a former campaign aide, had confirmed that the Justice Department and the F. B. I. “misled the courts” in the early stages of the investigation into Russian election meddling.
Mr. Trump has long sought to discredit the investigation, seeing it as an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of his election. Above, the president on Friday, a day before his administration disclosed the documents.
Mr. Trump has also shifted to a harsher tone toward his one-time lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, after it emerged that Mr. Cohen had taped their conversation about payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.
_____
• Russia has asked the U. S. to release Maria Butina, above, saying prosecutors’ accusations that she infiltrated U. S. political organizations as a covert Russian agent were “fabricated.”
Moscow is using its formidable social media apparatus to press for her release — even as it moves toward a crackdown on “fake news” at home that critics see as leading to blanket censorship.
In Washington, Republican lawmakers grappling with the fallout from President Trump’s disastrous meeting last week with President Vladimir Putin are facing a troubling new charge: complicity .
“We have indulged myths and fabrications, pretended it wasn’t so bad, and our indulgence got us the capitulation in Helsinki,” said Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona.
_____
• Australia’s island concerns.
“Bring them here!” Demonstrators gathered across Australia on Saturday to denounce five years of the country’s offshore detention policy .
About 1,600 people remain on two islands, according to Human Rights Watch: 750 men on Manus and 850 men, women and children on Nauru.
And we took a deep look at how the Solomon Islands, long a key to the Australian-American alliance, have become the stage for competition with China. “My fear is that in the next 10 years,” a fisherman said, “this place will be taken over by the Chinese.”
Australia’s foreign and defense ministers meet their U. S. counterparts in California on Monday for annual consultations between the two nations .
_____
• A dangerous homecoming.
After more than a year in exile, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum returned to Afghanistan, facing criminal charges of rape and kidnapping, as well as accusations of human rights abuses and killing his first wife.
An array of top officials met his plane and gave him safe passage — not to jail, but to his office and home. (He remains the country’s first vice president.)
Moments after he left the airport, a suicide bomber attacked, killing 20 people, including nine members of General Dostum’s security detail, and wounding 90 others.
_____
• Don’t trust the robot waiter with the soup.
Many Chinese are embracing technology full tilt, our Hong Kong-based technology correspondent reports, no matter how questionable or eccentric.
“Robots wait on restaurant diners. Artificial intelligence marks up schoolwork. Facial recognition technology helps dole out everything from Kentucky Fried Chicken orders to toilet paper.”
Plenty of it doesn’t actually work. Still, he notes, the exuberance may be a good thing, as useful products find their place and bad ones disappear.
• Fukushima’s nuclear signature was found in California wine, though the levels of radioactive particles were too low to be of concern.
• Dispatch from Sevnica, Slovenia: In the hometown of the first lady, Melania Trump, shopkeepers brand everything from slippers to salami with her name .
• Among this week’s headlines to watch for: Tech giants including Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter announce earnings, and the U. S. trade representative plans a hearing on Tuesday to discuss tariffs on $16 billion in Chinese products.
• China may have saved “Skyscraper” from collapsing. The disaster drama, which is set in Hong Kong and features Dwayne Johnson alongside a number of Asian actors, collected $75 million internationally this weekend, led by $45 million in China. In the U. S., the revenge action film “Equalizer 2” ruled .
• Here’s a snapshot of global markets .
• In Japan, 11 more people died of suspected heatstroke over the weekend as a record heat wave grips the country. Many cities are seeing their highest temperatures ever, with no reprieve forecast until Thursday. [ The Japan Times]
• President Xi Jinping of China has begun an Africa tour with stops in Senegal, Rwanda, South Africa and Mauritius. [ Al Jazeera]
• More than 50,000 people in the Philippines have been arrested for offenses as trivial as drinking in public or being outdoors without a shirt, as the country’s brutal drug war expands. [ The New York Times]
• A 15-year-old Indonesian girl who was raped by her brother was sentenced to six months in prison for having an abortion. The brother received a two-year prison sentence for having sex with a minor. [ A. P.]
• India dropped its 12 percent tax on menstrual hygiene products after months of campaigning by activists. [BBC]
• Margaret Thatcher’s teddy bears: Newly released private documents revealed some lesser-known aspects of the life and times of the British prime minister. [ The New York Times]
Tips for a more fulfilling life.
• Don’t quit your daydreams. That’s part of the advice in the books of Mindy Kaling, above.
• Recipe of the day: Fans of key lime and lemon meringue will love this recipe for Atlantic Beach pie .
• Walk and crawl inside the Thai cave. This augmented reality project allows you to experience the obstacles the rescuers faced, like crawling through a two-foot opening, to get to where the 12 boys and their coach awaited escape.
• In memoriam. Shinobu Hashimoto, 100, a screenwriter who collaborated with Akira Kurosawa on classic Japanese films like “Rashomon” and “Seven Samurai”; Jonathan Gold, 57, a renowned food critic who explored Los Angeles’s immigrant communities, and won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism.
• The road to marriage isn’t getting any easier for Princess Mako of Japan. The man she plans to marry is already a top subject in tabloid magazines, and now the Japanese government is taking issue with calling him her “fiancé.”
“Die Hard,” which was released 30 years ago this month, made Bruce Willis a bona fide action hero. But the lead role was originally meant for someone else.
The film is based on “Nothing Lasts Forever,” Roderick Thorp’s 1979 novel about a Los Angeles office building that is overrun by German terrorists on Christmas Eve.
