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Good morning.
Here’s what you need to know:
• NASA declared 2017 Earth’s second-warmest year on record. The high temperatures surprised scientists, who had expected a sharper retreat from recent record-breaking years.
Iran is the latest example of a water crisis — whether caused by nature, human mismanagement or both — signaling future unrest.
Above, a dam near Cape Town, which is experiencing a drought so severe that the city could run out of water by April.
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• Britain and France took steps to contain the fallout from Brexit.
President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain reached agreements on defense, security and the treatment of migrants.
Mrs. May’s hopes of achieving a favorable trade deal with the E.U. have so far won little sympathy in France, which is keen to lure banks and other businesses from Britain.
Continue reading the main storyChancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is headed to Paris today for talks with Mr. Macron.
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• Germany has replaced the United States as the top-rated global power in an international poll.
Just 30 percent of people interviewed last year across 134 countries approved of U.S. leadership under President Trump, a drop of nearly 20 percentage points since 2016. China has nearly reached parity with the U.S., and Russia is barely trailing it at 27 percent.
There were bright spots for Mr. Trump in Belarus, Israel, Liberia and Macedonia, where approval of American leadership has surged.
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• In Washington, Senate Democrats looked ready to block a stopgap bill meant to keep much of the government from shutting down tonight at midnight. The Democrats are intent on securing concessions that would, among other things, protect young immigrants from deportation.
The Supreme Court temporarily blocked a redistricting effort in North Carolina. The decision makes it likely that the 2018 midterm elections will be held using district layouts that are favorable to Republicans.
Our editorial board went silent for a day, devoting its usual space in print to letters from Trump supporters.
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• Free cellos, violins and pianos: With his new academy, the French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky hopes to attract younger, more diverse audiences to classical music.
Voici notre entretien avec M. Jaroussky en français: «Si nous n’apportons pas de mixité sociale sur scène, nous n’aurons pas de public plus jeune et plus diversifié, non plus.»
Here are seven other uplifting stories we covered this week, from art doppelgängers to a blessing of pets in Madrid.
Business
• Apple should reinvent the smartphone by making it less addictive, our technology columnist writes.
• A lifeline for the Airbus A380: Emirates put in a $16 billion order, just days after Airbus said it might have to stop production.
• Rising oil prices have brightened Russia’s once-gloomy economic outlook, despite sanctions.
• Amazon whittled contenders for its second North American headquarters down to 20, from 238. (In a video, we look at the more unusual bids.)
• Here’s a snapshot of global markets.
Market Snapshot View Full Overview
In the News
• A deadly storm swept through parts of continental Europe, killing at least seven people. Most long-distance rail service in Germany should resume today. (Above, rail travelers stranded in Frankfurt.) [Associated Press]
• Pope Francis drew rebuke when he accused victims of Chile’s most notorious pedophile of slandering a bishop. [Associated Press]
• The Trump administration is moving faster than expected to transfer the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. [The New York Times]
• The French journalist who started the #BalanceTonPorc, or #ExposeYourPig, campaign was sued for defamation by the man she accused of making humiliating advances toward her. [The New York Times]
• In Britain, residents, officials and property owners are arguing over who should pay to replace flammable cladding on buildings — the kind that contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire last year. [The New York Times]
• In Italy, 33 people were arrested in a crackdown on a Chinese mafia organization that the police say had expanded across Europe. [The New York Times]
• Gabon dismantled a network that traded six tons of ivory last year and had links to Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group. [The New York Times]
• Roy Bennett, a rarity in Zimbabwe — a white opposition politician with a significant black following — died in a helicopter crash in the U.S. [The New York Times]
• The police in Hungary had an arrest warrant out for Sebastian Gorka, a former White House national security adviser, while he was serving in the Trump administration. [Associated Press]
• In California, the parents accused of holding their 13 children in captivity were formally charged with torture and abuse. They could face life in prison. [The New York Times]
Smarter Living
Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.
• Recipe of the day: Round out the week with the sweet and satisfying Canadian butter tart.
• It’s still worth getting a flu shot. (Here’s the latest on the flu season in Europe.)
• And here are five ways to protect yourself from digital snooping. (Consider this: We just learned that Lebanon has for years turned Android phones into spying devices.)
Noteworthy
• We launched a new animated video series, Conception, based on readers’ accounts of their experiences with motherhood. In the first episode, we hear from a woman who raised a son alone after her activist husband was killed in El Salvador.
• Newly discovered photographs taken by J.M. Coetzee, the Nobel-winning novelist, in his teenage years reveal a South African adolescence shaped by art and apartheid.
• Elena Ferrante, the pseudonymous Italian writer, will write a weekly column in The Guardian.
• In Spain, a writer reconnected with the soulful culture of her ancestors and a town that (almost) bears her name.
• Prague’s famed Astronomical Clock is undergoing repairs, and the city’s clock master is returning it to its 15th-century roots.
• And in tennis news, temperatures don’t get much more extreme than they are right now at the Australian Open.
Back Story
Long before the world got hooked on “Game of Thrones,” “I Love Lucy” was almost unprecedented in popularity — and daring in content for the time.
Lucy was one of the first pregnant characters shown on U.S. television, and 44 million viewers tuned to CBS 65 years ago today to see Lucille Ball’s character become a mother.
(Lucy gave birth to Ricky on the air the same night, it turns out, that Ms. Ball gave birth to her second child.)
Audience numbers like that episode’s have since been far surpassed — the Super Bowl, for instance, has drawn more than 100 million viewers for each of the past eight years. But almost 72 percent of TVs in the U.S. were tuned in to “I Love Lucy” that day, an astonishing feat.
According to Nielsen’s, the final episode of “M*A*S*H,” in 1983, had the highest rating of any fictional show in U.S. history, 125 million. But few shows can rival the positive response that the “I Love Lucy” birth episode, and the arrival of Ms. Ball’s second child, elicited.
“One million viewers responded with congratulatory telephone calls, telegrams, letters or gifts,” The Times noted in Ms. Ball’s obituary in 1989.
Anna Schaverien contributed reporting.
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