Fwd: NYT Now: Your Thursday Briefing

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Date: Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 12:21 PM
Subject: NYT Now: Your Thursday Briefing
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View in Browser | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. Thursday, August 13, 2015 Thursday, August 13, 2015 nytnow.com » Enjoy this newsletter? The NYT Now app for iPhone is now completely free. It's the fastest way to catch up with the news throughout the day. Download now. At least 44 people were killed and 400 wounded in explosions at a warehouse in Tianjin, China, late on Wednesday. Jason Lee/Reuters Your Thursday Briefing By ADEEL HASSAN Good morning. Here's what you need to know: • Reassurance from China. Global markets are calmer today after Chinese officials expressed support for the currency, despite a third straight day of letting its value fall in an effort to bolster a slowing economy. Central bank officials indicated that they would step in to support the renminbi, easing some market worries about financial instability. Wall Street stock futures are ahead slightly. European shares are up almost 1 percent, and Asia ended higher. • Rising Republican. The campaign of the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina is beginning to gain strength after months of attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton. Some voters see Mrs. Fiorina as capable of taking on Donald J. Trump, and as the Republican Party's weapon to counter the perception that it is waging a "war on women." • U.N. chief addresses leadership. The U.N. secretary general plans to talk to all his mission chiefs and force commanders in a videoconference today, after he ousted his top official in the Central African Republic. The official faced repeated accusations that peacekeepers there had committed sexual violence against civilians, including children. Dismissing a senior official is "unprecedented" in the U.N. system, a spokesman said. • Time runs out on Assange inquiries. Swedish prosecutors are still investigating a 2010 accusation of rape facing Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, but said today that they had dropped other sexual assault investigations because they had run out of time to bring charges. • The sex slaves of ISIS. The systematic rape of women and girls in Iraq and Syria is deeply enmeshed in the radical theology of the Islamic State. A special report from The Times looks at how the extremists developed a detailed code of sex slavery and how sexual assaults are celebrated as spiritually beneficial. • Truck bomb in Iraq. An explosion ripped through a popular Baghdad food market in a Shiite neighborhood today, killing at least 58 people. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the bombing. Death tolls have rarely reached this level for a single attack since the peak of sectarian bloodletting in 2006 and 2007. • Deadly explosions in China. An unknown number of people remained unaccounted for in the wreckage of a hazardous-goods warehouse in the port city of Tianjin after it was rocked by fiery explosions. At least 44 people were killed and 400 wounded. The force of the blasts registered on earthquake scales and was felt miles away. MARKETS • The Greek Parliament is due to vote today on this week's proposal for a third bailout. German officials gave it their tacit approval. Eurozone governments still need to vote on the deal. Greece has a $3.5 billion payment due to the European Central Bank in a week. • Samsung, whose mobile phone business is struggling, is expected to show off new gadgets at a New York event today. • Nestlé can resume sales of Maggi noodles in India, a court decided today, if new tests show acceptable levels of lead. The judges said an order to pull the popular food from shelves in June was improper. NOTEWORTHY • Defending his crown. Rory McIlroy returns from injury for the final major golf tournament of the season — the P.G.A. Championship — at Whistling Straits near Kohler, Wis. He tees off at 2:20 p.m. Eastern, along with Jordan Spieth, the Masters and U.S. Open champion, and the British Open winner Zach Johnson (Thursday and Friday, 2-8 p.m. Eastern, TNT; PGA live-stream, 9 a.m.). • Cancer diagnosis for Carter. Former President Jimmy Carter announced that doctors discovered during his recent liver surgery that he has a spreading cancer. • Deficit spending. Today is Earth Overshoot Day. Never heard of it? A nonprofit group has determined it's the day humanity has exhausted nature's largess for the year. So on Friday, we start operating at an environmental deficit. The group, the Global Footprint Network, says we are using our natural resources faster than nature can refill them. • How we live. New research suggests that as a result of their parents' unpredictable work, some children's language and problem-solving skills may suffer, and that they may be more likely to smoke and drink later on. • The ups and downs of competing. The World Yo-Yo Contest begins in Tokyo today. BACK STORY In the animal world, there is a 50-50 split between left or right dominance. Among humans, oddly, only 10 percent to 12 percent are lefties. But today is their day: International Left-Handers Day. What makes humans southpaws? It seems to be a combination of nature and nurture. What leftiness means for intelligence, behavior and even income is subject to debate. Various studies say that lefties are smarter, more prone to mental illness or more creative than righties — or that they are not. While the left-handed today don't carry the social stigma of yore (the word "sinister" comes from the Latin for "left"), they still face practical challenges in a right-centric world. Scissors, can openers, guitars, spiral notebooks and A.T.M.s are among the tools that favor the right. So some companies and shops specialize in products for the left-handed, including techie gadgets. There are two other big exceptions to the 50-50 split in handedness. One is certain species' preference (kangaroos and parrots, for instance, are by and large southpaws), and the other is … the universe itself. A physics study concluded last month that the direction in which a particle spins as it decays proves that the universe has a left-handed bias. 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. 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