Fwd: NYT Now: Your Friday Briefing

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From: NYTimes.com <nytdirect@nytimes.com>
Date: Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 12:30 PM
Subject: NYT Now: Your Friday Briefing
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View in Browser | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. Friday, April 3, 2015 Friday, April 3, 2015 nytnow.com » Enjoy this newsletter? Get continuous updates on today's most important stories with the NYT Now app for iPhone. Download now. President Obama arriving at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Doug Mills/The New York Times Your Friday Briefing By ADEEL HASSAN Good morning. Here's what you need to know: • Jobs report. The Labor Department today reports the latest data on job creation and unemployment in March. Wall Street expects payrolls to have grown by about 250,000, but bad weather and other factors could lower that number. We're also keeping an eye on average hourly earnings, which have been slow. • Breakthrough at nuclear talks. Negotiators from Iran and six world powers now have less than three months to turn Thursday's framework plan into a comprehensive deal. Many important issues have not been resolved. Congress, if it moves forward with new sanctions on Iran just as penalties are supposed to be lifted, can still scuttle a deal; so can Iran's supreme leader. • Kenya in mourning. Relatives are identifying bodies today after Somali militants, targeting non-Muslims, killed at least 147 people at a university in eastern Kenya on Thursday. There is a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the area. The Kenyan authorities are holding an emergency security meeting. • Revising religion laws. Lawmakers in Indiana and Arkansas quickly passed legislation that they hope will quiet the uproar over laws that some say allow discrimination against gays. In Indiana, the changes come just in time for the N.C.A.A. men's basketball championships on Saturday and the national attention that it promises. • The president's day. President Obama discusses the economy, specifically clean-energy jobs, at an Air Force base in Utah today. He arrived from Kentucky last night. His visits to two Republican-led states are an attempt by the White House to show that his policies have appeal outside blue states. • Former top official in China faces trial. The former chief of the country's domestic security apparatus, whose authority once stretched over the court system, the police and the intelligence services, has been charged with bribery, abusing power and disclosing state secrets, prosecutors said today. He is the most senior official to be targeted in a generation and he'll almost certainly be found guilty, as President Xi Jinping continues his campaign against corruption. MARKETS • Wall Street stock exchanges are closed today. Major European markets will be closed from Friday to Monday for the Easter holiday. Asian shares rose today. • Creative Artists filed suit against United Talent, a smaller rival, for recruiting 10 of its talent agents in what it called a "lawless, midnight raid." • A jury in Georgia has awarded $150 million to the family of a 4-year-old boy killed when a Jeep Grand Cherokee exploded into flames after being rear-ended three years ago. NOTEWORTHY • The sixth sequel. "Furious 7," open at movie theaters, is the seventh installment of the "Fast and Furious" series, which has made nearly $2.4 billion worldwide. The release was delayed because of the death of one of its stars, Paul Walker, who is appearing one last time as Brian O'Conner. Here's what else is coming to theaters today. • Popular reads. Jill Alexander Essbaum's debut novel, "Hausfrau," which recounts the tawdry affairs of a bored housewife in Switzerland, enters our hardcover fiction ranking at No. 16 this week. And "Frank," Barney Frank's memoir of life in and out of Congress and in and out of the closet, makes its debut on the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 12. Get a look at all our best-seller lists from the Book Review. • Signature works. The Museum of Modern Art in New York, beginning today, is displaying Jacob Lawrence's 1941 suite of 60 paintings of the Great Migration, in which six million black Southerners moved north. And a survey of work by the Japanese-American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi opens today at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. • Step into a time machine. Find out what it was like to be part of a hit-making machine in the 1990s and early 2000s during the broadcast TV premiere of "Backstreet Boys: Show 'Em What You're Made Of" (9 p.m. Eastern, VH1). • Power couple's return. Francis and Claire Underwood (Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright) will be back in the White House for a fourth season of "House of Cards," in 2016. • Chart check. Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk" is No. 1 on the Billboard singles rankings, while Kendrick Lamar's is on top in the album category this week. BACK STORY Today is quite the holy day — Good Friday for Christians and Passover for Jews at sundown — but it is not a federal holiday. So why are American stock markets closed? Wall Street doesn't take off for anything small. World wars and presidential assassinations can do it, but rarely a blizzard or a widespread power failure. In this case, tradition reigns. The New York Stock Exchange has been closing on Good Friday as a religious observance as far back as 1864. It was made an official market holiday in 1973. (There was trading on this day in 1898, 1906 and 1907, for reasons lost to history.) This year, the Good Friday blackout is especially untimely. It coincides with "Jobs Day," when the all-important monthly employment report comes out. Alas, we won't know how the markets feel about the numbers until trading resumes on Monday. Well, we'll get a hint. Traders have 45 minutes after the 8:30 a.m. Eastern announcement to bet on futures linked to the major indexes. Bonds also trade today (until noon) and currencies trade around the clock. Victoria Shannon contributed reporting. Your Morning Briefing is published weekdays at 6 a.m. Eastern and updated on the web all morning. What would you like to see here? Contact us at briefing@nytimes.com. Want to get the briefing by email? Here's the sign-up. ADVERTISEMENT FOLLOW NYTNOW @NYTNOW NYT Now app for iPhone Now the news keeps up with you Available on the App Store Get more NYTimes.com newsletters » | Sign Up for the Morning Briefing newsletter » ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's NYT Now newsletter. As a member of the TRUSTe privacy program, we are committed to protecting your privacy. (...) | Privacy Policy | Contact | Advertise Copyright 2015 The New York Times Company | 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018