 | | Officials estimate that 700 people may have drowned when a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Libya. Matthew Mirabelli/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images | Your Monday Briefing By VICTORIA SHANNON |
| Good morning. |
| Here's what you need to know: |
| • Europe grapples with migrant disaster. |
| European foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg are urging emergency action for the migrant crisis after a ship with more than 700 migrants capsized and sank in the Mediterranean. |
| Officials blamed human traffickers who smuggle migrants from the Middle East and Africa on rickety ships, describing them as "the slave drivers of the 21st century." Humanitarian groups say 900 migrants have already died at sea this year. |
| • "Clinton Cash." |
| A book due out next month says that foreign entities that made payments to the Clinton Foundation through high speaking fees received in return favors from the State Department under Hillary Rodham Clinton. |
| The newly assembled Clinton campaign team plans to diminish the book as a conservative hit job. |
| • China courts Pakistan. |
| China's president travels to Pakistan today, promising $46 billion in infrastructure and energy assistance, a gesture likely to confirm the decline of American influence in the South Asian nation. |
| • Boston Marathon day. |
| Meb Keflezighi, 39, returns to compete in the Boston Marathon today, a year after becoming the first American to win since 1983. |
| It's been two years since the fatal bombing at the race. The United States women are hoping to end their 30-year drought there. |
| • Greek political party on trial. |
| Members of the neo-fascist group Golden Dawn appeared in a Greek court today on charges including membership in a criminal organization and murder. |
| The overtly racist group was catapulted from obscurity during the country's debt crisis in 2012, railing against austerity and the growing influx of immigrants. |
| • Unicef workers killed. |
| Four staff members from the United Nations Children's Fund died when Shabab militants bombed their minivan in Somalia, and four were seriously wounded, the group said. |
| • Testing Cuban waters. |
| Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is the first governor in 50 years to visit Cuba, in a whirlwind 26-hour trip to pave the way for New York companies to expand their reach there. |
| • Etan Patz trial. |
| A New York jury begins its fourth day of deliberations today in the trial of a man accused of murdering a 6-year-old, Etan Patz, in 1979. |
| MARKETS |
| • Wall Street stock futures are rising after deep declines on Friday. European shares are ahead, while Asian indexes mostly fell. |
| • Justice Department lawyers are leaning toward recommending that Comcast's proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable be blocked, news reports say. |
| • Shanghai GM, a Chinese joint venture, plans to spend $16 billion over the next five years on developing new vehicles, the company said as the annual Chinese auto show begins. |
| OVER THE WEEKEND |
| • Most of the 19 presidential candidates or potential contenders at a high-profile Republican forum in New Hampshire, where the nation's first primary will be held early next year, took aim at Hillary Rodham Clinton rather than at one another. |
| • California revised rules to address its drought, reducing the amount of water Los Angeles and San Francisco would have to conserve and raising it for other communities, like Beverly Hills. |
| • A 79-year-old Connecticut man was arrested by federal agents trying to solve the biggest art theft in the nation's history. |
| • Twenty years to the hour after a homemade bomb killed 168 people in Oklahoma City, a delegation led by former President Bill Clinton gathered to honor the dead. |
| • The Islamic State released a video that appears to show its fighters in Libya killing dozens of Ethiopian Christians, some by beheading and others by shooting. |
| • An Indiana county 30 miles north of Louisville, Ky., has seen a "significant increase" in the number of confirmed H.I.V. cases, to 120, linked to intravenous drug users, state health officials said. |
| • "Furious 7," the weekend box office winner again in North America, has now taken in a three-week global total of $1.15 billion. |
| • Catching up on TV: Episode recaps for "Game of Thrones," "Mad Men," "Veep," "Silicon Valley" and "Wolf Hall." |
| NOTEWORTHY |
| • Countrified. |
| Luke Bryan is celebrating being named entertainer of the year at the 50th anniversary of the Academy of Country Music Awards. Miranda Lambert was among the other big winners. |
| • Poetic license. |
| The Library of Congress posted online 50 recordings from its Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, including some by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks and Ray Bradbury. |
| • Happy birthday? |
| Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the N.B.A. Hall of Fame center, is recovering from quadruple coronary bypass surgery — performed on his 68th birthday — in a Los Angeles hospital. |
| • In memoriam. |
| A. Alfred Taubman, who built a fortune in U.S. shopping malls and real estate development but who did prison time in his 70s for price-fixing when he owned the Sotheby's auction house, died at age 91. |
| BACK STORY |
| Today is National Weed Day, but with a growing number of U.S. states loosening restrictions on marijuana use, it may have lost some of its counterculture sheen. |
| April 20 has been informally observed by pot advocates for years. Now, the political satirist Bill Maher has started a petition to turn it into an official national holiday. |
| "It's high time we had a weed day," he argues. Ten thousand have signed the petition in two days. |
| So how did today become associated with marijuana? It's because "4/20" is a number with rich connotations among pot smokers. |
| Or maybe we should call it "4:20." That's when a group of friends met every afternoon in 1971 at San Rafael High School in Marin County, Calif., to get high. |
| Four-twenty eventually became shorthand for pot and pot smoking. The Grateful Dead, which used a recording studio in San Rafael, had a hand in spreading the use of the term. |
| Theories that 420 was police code for suspicion of marijuana, is the number of chemical compounds found in the weed or has some connection to Adolf Hitler's birthday have all been disproved. |
| 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. |
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