Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
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Good morning. A cease-fire in Kashmir, a divorce quiz in China, and the longest commercial flight in the world. Here’s what you need to know:
• Kim Yong-chol, North Korea’s top nuclear weapons negotiator, landed in New York ahead of talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Above, Mr. Kim and other officials in February.
One of Kim Jong-un’s most trusted aides, he is the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit the U. S. in 18 years.
Officials on both sides have been scrambling to salvage the proposed June 12 summit meeting in Singapore, compressing a process that would normally take months into a matter of days.
Here is a look at who is meeting with whom, and what they might be talking about.
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• President Trump told Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in March 2017 that he should reverse his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Mr. Sessions refused, but the previously unreported confrontation is being investigated by the special counsel, Robert Mueller.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump reiterated that he wished he had chosen another attorney general instead of Mr. Sessions, above at a White House meeting early this month.
Ivanka Trump, meanwhile, abruptly left a conference call after she was questioned about her company’s trademarks in China and her father’s exercise regimen.
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• It’s the hunger season in South Sudan.
More than four years of civil war have obliterated the economy and overrun the most productive land, and food scarcity between harvest seasons is intensifying.
Within months, millions of people potentially face acute malnutrition. Our team went to South Sudan to document the extent of hunger.
Juba, the capital, still has food, but the price for even a single plate of bean stew is astronomical.
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• An extremely cautious optimism greeted a cease-fire between India and Pakistan along the disputed Kashmir border .
The agreement could temper hostilities in a region that has seen some of its worst violence in years, but a number of similar agreements have failed there. One difference this time: India has been observing a rare cease-fire for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in mid-June.
“Our lives become hell during the firing,” a local farmer said. “We are happy with this cease-fire news and hope it will last.”
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• Want a divorce in China?
You may have to fail a quiz about your spouse first.
The government, aiming to slow the rapidly rising divorce rate, is in some areas requiring unhappy couples to take a written test consisting of 15 questions. But the more couples know about each other, the less likely they are to have their divorce immediately approved.
Local news outlets reported that the authorities interpreted a score of 60 points or higher (out of a possible 100) to mean “room for recovery.”
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• Wu Xiaohui, the Anbang Insurance Group tycoon at the center of one of China’s biggest cases of financial fraud, is appealing his lengthy prison sentence .
• Eighteen hours and 45 minutes: That’s how long it’ll take to get from Singapore to Newark when the world’s longest commercial flight begins in October. (In case you wondered, the shortest is a 90-second hop between two Scottish islands.)
• “Weaponized AI is probably one of the most sensitized topics of AI — if not THE most,” read one insider’s warning, just before Google’s $9 million contract with the Pentagon set off an identity crisis.
• Our chief television critic looked at ABC’s decision to cancel the hit reboot of “Roseanne” after its star’s racist Twitter post about Valerie Jarrett, a former Obama adviser. “When an institution like ABC takes a stand — in prime time, where people notice it — that matters,” he wrote.
• A Vietnamese court rejected an appeal in the so-called Super Swindler fraud case, affirming that individual employees rather than the bank they worked at were responsible for the restitution of depositor funds they illegally appropriated.
• U. S. stocks were up. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.
• Japanese hunters killed 333 Antarctic whales, 120 of which were pregnant. We looked at some of the complex questions around the issue, including Japan’s claim of scientific research and Australia’s bind in trying to curtail the hunt. [ The New York Times]
• Arkady Babchenko, a dissident Russian journalist who was reported to have been fatally shot in his apartment, caused quite a stir when he appeared at a news conference in Ukraine. [ The New York Times]
• Two teams of insurgents launched separate attacks in Afghanistan, killing three police officers in a rural area and pinning down hundreds of government employees in a ministry building in Kabul. [ The New York Times]
• Hamas declared a cease-fire with Israel after nearly 24 hours of fighting, possibly averting their fourth war in a decade. [ The New York Times]
• Pre-monsoon storms in northern India have killed at least 48 people in just two days, in what an official called a “critical situation.” [ Time]
• The Dutch foreign minister called on Russia to “accept its responsibility” for the 298 people killed when a Malaysian passenger jet was shot down over Ukraine in 2014. [ The New York Times]
• A sudden rash of bomb jokes has disrupted flights across Indonesia. On Monday, 10 people were injured trying to evacuate a LionAir plane. [ The New York Times]
• One of Japan’s most influential businesswomen surprised the country by disclosing that she is in a same-sex relationship with a well-known L. G. B. T. activist. [ The Japan Times]
Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.
• You can age well — just by staying at home .
• Tips to book the best hotel .
• Recipe of the day: Embrace simple pleasures, and make a big batch of pimento cheese for sandwiches.
• Scientists found the remains of a man who, 2,000 years ago, fled the spectacular volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii, only to be crushed by a large rock.
• Lawrence Kasdan, the filmmaker whose credits include “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” spoke to us about his storied writing career .
• And in this week’s Australia Diary, our correspondent writes about a stranger’s racist comment in Sydney, her home for more than 20 years.
“One of the world’s greatest industrialists.”
That’s what Joseph Stalin once said about Henry Ford. But why would a communist leader have such kind words for a titan of modern capitalism?
On this day in 1929, Ford Motor agreed to sell $30 million worth of cars to the Soviet Union, and to help build one of the world’s largest car factories in Nizhny Novgorod, a city in western Russia that was transformed by the help of American architects and engineers.
