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Good morning. South Africa scolds Australia’s home minister, a Saudi prince ratchets up rhetoric against Iran and the world’s coldest capital is now also the world’s most polluted. Here’s what you need to know:
•Diplomatic fireworks over Russia.
France, Germany and the U.S. joined Britain in denouncing Russia over an attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil that used a terrifyingly powerful, military-grade nerve agent, Novichok.
The move came a day after Britain formally accused Russia of attempted murder, in an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, above. (The British royal family’s symbolic slap of boycotting the World Cup this summer in Russia was dismissed by a Russian official as “not so important.”)
And President Trump took his toughest action yet against Russia — over a different issue, issuing new sanctions on Russian groups and individuals for election interference and other “malicious” cyberattacks.
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•“That threat simply does not exist.”
South Africa fired back after Peter Dutton, Australia’s home affairs minister, above, said that white farmers in South African needed protection in a “civilized country.”
He offered the white farmers expedited visas in the face of efforts by South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress, to make it constitutional to expropriate land without paying the landowners.
The majority of South African farmland remains under white ownership more than 25 years after apartheid ended.
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• Tensions are growing more volatile between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a rivalry that has fueled sectarianism and war across the Middle East.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, above, compared Iran’s supreme leader to Adolf Hitler, and said that his country would acquire a nuclear bomb “as soon as possible” if Iran developed nuclear weapons.
Separately, experts believe an cyberattack last year on a petrochemical company in Saudi Arabia was intended to cause a catastrophic explosion. They fear the next one might succeed.
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•Disaster has swallowed the country sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves.
That’s Venezuela. A chain of political, economic, food and medical crises have set off the largest exodus of refugees in the history of the Americas.
For months, our reporter recorded interviews over encrypted channels with Leopoldo López, above, an opposition leader under house arrest. After our article published, his house was raided and his security chief detained. He anticipates being returned to prison.
Listen to some of the interviews with Mr. Lopez, with our reporter’s commentary, in Part One and Part Two of a special episode of “The Daily” podcast.
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• In the world’s coldest capital, survival can require burning raw coal.
That means smoke worsens the misery of winter in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. The city’s dirty air has surpassed notoriously polluted megacities, like Beijing and New Delhi.
Locals are skeptical of a government-proposed ban on coal. “People will burn anything,” one said. “The tires on their cars, their neighbors’ fences. It’s hard to survive in minus 30 degrees.”
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Business
• Ye Jianming was a hard-charging Chinese energy tycoon whose company surprised the world last year with a $9 billion purchase. Now he seems to be the latest member of the corporate elite to fall from President Xi Jinping’s graces.
• Amazon Japan’s Tokyo offices were raided by the country’s fair-trade watchdog, on suspicion of antitrust violations related to having suppliers take on some costs of retailer discounts.
• From cable to the White House: Larry Kudlow, a cable television figure with a flair for provocative punditry, is replacing Gary Cohn as President Trump’s top economic adviser. We collected some of Mr. Kudlow’s economic predictions that did not bear out.
• The Pentagon wants to enlist Silicon Valley’s help on artificial intelligence, as it once collaborated with older tech companies.
• Most U.S. stocks were lower. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.
In the News
• Easter Island is critically vulnerable to rising sea levels. Two Times journalists traveled 2,200 miles off the coast of Chile to see how the ocean is erasing the island’s famous ancient monuments. [The New York Times]
• An Australian military adviser and a Cambodian soldier were killed by a blast at a shooting range on a Cambodian military base. [Phnom Penh Post]
• The chief of the Australian Border Force, Roman Quaedvlieg, was fired after nearly 10 months on paid leave, for “misbehavior” and helping get his girlfriend a job on the force. [Canberra Times]
• Australian politicians traded barbs two days before state elections. Labor charged that the Liberal Party was planning to fire teachers and police officers; the Liberals accused Labor of spending like “drunken sailors.” [ABC]
• The eastern quoll, a spotted cat-sized marsupial, was reintroduced into the wilds of mainland Australia this week or the first time since the species was decimated by foxes about half a century ago. [BBC]
Smarter Living
Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.
• Protect children from danger? Our Australia bureau chief learned a better way from the Nippers: Teach kids how to manage risk.
• How to enjoy fine dining on a fast food budget
• Recipe of the day: Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with these recipes.
Noteworthy
• Australia Fare: Nestled on the ground floor of a Melbourne parking garage, Soi 38 is a colorful nook of a restaurant, serving bowls of Thai noodles for $10 a pop at lunchtime only, six days a week.
• In memoriam: Here’s our obituary of Alison Hargreaves, who died in 1995 on the world’s second tallest mountain after conquering Everest solo and without bottled oxygen. (Assessing how the gender breakdown of our obituaries changed over time for our Overlooked obits project was a project in itself.)
• The latest World Happiness Report’s top 10 countries: Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. The report finds that a country’s overall happiness is almost identical to that of its immigrants.
Back Story
St. Patrick’s Day, which is Saturday, is all the more enjoyable for a number of intriguing myths and misconceptions — and not just about leprechauns.
Scientists say there were never any snakes in Ireland, for one thing, which contradicts the tale of St. Patrick driving them into the sea. It’s not even airtight to maintain, as scholars do, that the snake story is an allegory for St.Patrick’s eradication of pagan religions. (Christianity may have already arrived.)
The real Patrick, who became a patron saint of Ireland, wasn’t even Irish: He was believed to have been a Roman born in England who was enslaved by Irish marauders. He escaped after six years and returned to Ireland to spread Christianity.
Corned beef, a mainstay of St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S., was introduced by Irish immigrants who bought it from Jewish neighbors in New York City. And there’s the color: It was once St. Patrick’s blue. (Green dates to 18th Century Irish independence movements.)
And for a celebration of Irish culture, St. Patrick’s Day is remarkably global. In Sydney, where the Opera House is tinted green each year, the celebrations date to 1810. In Singapore, as the Irish Times writes, “the Singapore River transforms into a sea of green as part of its own two-day street festival.”
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