Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
Good morning.
Here’s what you need to know:
• President Trump refused to back down from his threat to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea, despite his own advisers’ efforts to modulate his message.
“We’ re backed by 100 percent by our military, ” he said. “And we’ re backed by many other leaders.” Don’ t worry: the photo above just shows people walking in front of a news monitor in Tokyo.
China — which half a century ago was the focus of American nuclear fears — appears to see a chance to position itself as the sober-minded power in the region.
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• A resident of Guam, the tiny Pacific island at the center of the global war of words, answered our callout for reaction to North Korean threats to envelope it in fire:
“We are geopolitical playthings. We know too well the consequences of war and have perfected our responses. So what’s different? For me? This time I cried.”
Here’s our full guide to the crisis .
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• President Trump sharply escalated a sudden open rift with the top Republican in Congress. He raised the possibility that Mitch McConnell, above, should perhaps relinquish his position as Senate majority leader if he cannot deliver on Mr. Trump’s legislative priorities.
Our White House correspondent is covering Mr. Trump’s latest comments to reporters, including his praise for Russia’s curb of U. S. Embassy staffing as an opportunity for savings.
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• Dalian Wanda, the Chinese conglomerate, and Xiao Jianhua, a missing billionaire, are both under official pressure from Beijing — and that may not be a coincidence.
Mr. Xiao, who has ties to Wanda going back years, was spirited from Hong Kong months ago and is believed to be on the mainland.
A Wanda insider said Mr. Xiao might be laying out for government regulators the complex and interlocking web of debts and shareholding ties among many companies that could pose a danger to China’s financial stability.
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• Australians have 14 days to register for ballots for a mail-in vote on whether gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to marry.
Many Australians deride the postal vote as a costly, “irregular and unscientific” gauge of the nation’s readiness to embrace same-sex marriage that would not itself change any law.
“Really, this plebiscite is no more than a glorified opinion poll — a 122-million-dollar opinion poll, ” a Melbourne professor said.
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• And in a bold step for science, researchers created gene-edited piglets cleansed of viruses that might cause disease in humans.
The advance may make it possible one day to transplant livers, hearts and other organs from pigs into humans — a remarkable prospect that raises some ethical alarms.
