Your Weekend Briefing

Tariffs, Fires, Immigration View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Sunday, July 29, 2018 [NYTimes.com »]( [Your Weekend Briefing]( By MATTHEW SEDACCA AND HEATHER CASEY Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters 1. A huge surprise in the trade war: President Trump came out of a meeting with a top European Union official, Jean-Claude Juncker, to announce [a new collaborative effort on lowering E.U. trade barriers](. Mr. Trump stressed that the Europeans had agreed to buy billions of dollars’ worth of American natural gas and soybeans. (Soybean farmers were one of the focuses of $12 billion in emergency aid Mr. Trump announced the day before.) Above, a farmer in Gideon, Mo., filling planters with soybeans. The aid proved controversial among [many farm groups and Republican lawmakers](. Have you been keeping up with the headlines? Test your knowledge with [our news quiz](. And here’s [the front page of our Sunday paper]( and our [crossword puzzles](. ____ ESA/INAF/Davide Coero Borga 2. And a huge surprise in space: Scientists working with Europe’s space agency announced the discovery of a watery lake on Mars’s southern polar cap. Translation: [There’s a chance of life on the red planet](. You can bet our science desk will be coming back to that subject this week. By the way, Mars was in opposition on Friday, meaning it was on the opposite side of Earth from the sun, and will remain brighter than it has been in about 15 years into early Tuesday. [Here’s when and where to look.]( ____ David Paul Morris/Bloomberg 3. Back to terrestrial matters. The U.S. economy appears to be going strong, despite the global trade strains. President Trump [claimed credit]( citing his deep cuts in corporate taxes. Economists, however, remain skeptical that the pace can continue. It was a tough week for tech stocks: Twitter’s fell following [a drop in active monthly users]( and [Facebook’s shares similarly tumbled]( over the rising cost of trying to repair its credibility. Above, Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. More on that: A British parliamentary committee that is collaborating with a Senate panel has accused Facebook of [providing “disingenuous” answers and withholding information]( on Russian influence and fake news. ____ Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times 4. The Trump administration said it met a court-ordered deadline to reunite thousands of children separated from their parents at the border. But [there are still at least 700 cases of separated families]( including those of 431 parents who were deported without their children. Lawsuits are stacking up across the country. A federal judge is likely to rule on a petition to postpone immediate deportation of reunited families. Our reporters visited a crowded bus station in downtown McAllen, Tex., that has become [an impromptu Ellis Island](. Above, undocumented families dropped off at a bus station there. ____ Audra Melton for The New York Times 5. Georgia’s Republican runoff for governor offered several forecasts for the midterm elections, coming in just over three months. The runoff’s winner, Brian Kemp, above left, a white, Trump-anointed populist, will face Stacey Abrams, an African-American Yale Law School graduate who supports an assault rifle ban and says her “soul rests with those seeking asylum.” By itself, that race will be [a point of demarcation]( for that changing Deep South state. But the outcome also shows how the primary system increasingly rewards those who appeal to the fringes. President Trump said [he would be stumping for vulnerable Republicans]( “six or seven days a week.” “The middle has gone, and it has gone to the extremes, unfortunately,” said former Gov. Roy E. Barnes, the last Democrat to lead the state. “It is a microcosm of what is happening in the country.” Our very detailed map of voting precincts [shows the partisan bubbles in play in 2016](. ([Look up your precinct here.]( ____ Spencer Platt/Getty Images 6. While we’re on the midterms: There doesn’t seem to be a full-on hacking effort against the vote, according to intelligence officials and tech executives. Instead, they say, Russian hackers have directed more efforts at [disrupting the U.S. electric utility grid](. President Trump and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, undeterred by sharp criticism of their conciliatory relationship, [expect to exchange visits next year](. Meanwhile, the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is [scrutinizing tweets and negative statements from Mr. Trump]( about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former F.B.I. director James Comey as part of a possible obstruction of justice case. And the president is managing the fallout from the public release of his conversation with his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, about [something he had denied knowing about]( payments related to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. ____ Jim Wilson/The New York Times 7. Disasters struck near and far. Wildfires have been blazing across California. The Carr Fire in Northern California [surged into parts of the city of Redding]( and [visitors evacuated Yosemite National Park]( above. And flames are surging in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and Oregon, which have suffered long-term drying caused by rising global temperatures. Europe’s extraordinarily hot, dry summer set the stage for [wildfires that devastated a seaside town near Athens, killing least 84 people](. Officials pointed to possible arson, but opposition politicians and citizens accused the government of trying to deflect responsibility for a failed emergency response. ____ Ben C. Solomon/The New York Times 8. In Laos, searches for survivors and casualties from a dam collapse continue — as do questions about whether enough was done to prevent the accident or evacuate beforehand. Above, a soldier working with volunteers in a flooded village. The dam, part of a billion-dollar hydroelectric project meant to bolster the country’s economy, collapsed amid heavy rainfall. The companies building it [knew a day before]( that the dam was deteriorating. Thousands of people have been left homeless, but contradictory reports of the number of dead have [made it impossible to assess the human toll](. In this video dispatch, our correspondent on the scene [speaks with families]( trying to salvage what they can. ____ Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 9. A likely new leader for Pakistan. That’s Imran Khan, [the former cricket star turned strident politician and critic of the U.S.]( above, whose political party won in last week’s voting. He had tried for years to take the reins of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed Islamic nation that has struggled with poverty, economic stagnation and instability. Rival politicians [said the vote was rigged and threatened to stage protests](. Human rights groups as well as analysts said that before the election, military and intelligence officials threatened and blackmailed politicians in rival parties to defect to Mr. Khan’s side. ____ Amanda Demme for The New York Times 10. Finally, [our roundup of the best weekend reads]( includes The Times Magazine’s much-discussed article on the rise of Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness company, into a $250 million business; the sale of a chapter of Malcolm X’s unpublished writings; and the possible real-life inspiration for Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax.” For more suggestions on what to read, watch and listen to, we suggest a glance at the [New York Times best-seller list]( TV and streaming recommendations from [Watching]( and our music critics’ [latest playlist](. Have a great week. Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6 a.m. Eastern. You can [sign up here]( to get our Morning Briefings by email in the Australian, Asian, European or American morning, or to receive an Evening Briefing on U.S. weeknights. Browse our full range of Times newsletters [here](. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at [briefing@nytimes.com](mailto:briefing@nytimes.com?subject=Weekend%20Briefing%20Feedback). 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