Robert Mueller, Iran, Tony Awards: Your Tuesday Briefing

President Trump has expressed a desire, at times, to be interviewed by the special counsel Robert Mueller. The president’s lawyers have been negotiating the terms of an interview, and The Times obtained a list of questions Mr. Mueller hopes to ask. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

What Mueller wants to ask Trump

• The Times has obtained a list of at least four dozen questions that Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference, has for President Trump.

Here’s our analysis, as well as an annotated list of the questions themselves.

Offering the most detailed look yet at Mr. Mueller’s investigation, the questions appear intended to shed light on any ties to Russia that Mr. Trump might have, and to determine if he obstructed the inquiry.

• The questions were read by the special counsel’s investigators to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who compiled them into a list. That document was provided to The Times by a person outside the president’s legal team.

U.S. delays tariffs for allies

• The Trump administration will give the European Union, Canada and Mexico another 30-day exemption from steel and aluminum tariffs, which had been set to go into effect today.

The decision is expected to at least temporarily help ties with those allies as the U.S. prepares for tricky negotiations with North Korea and considers abandoning the Iran nuclear deal.

For its part, China says it will refuse to discuss President Trump’s two toughest trade demands when American officials arrive in Beijing this week.

• As the trade disputeescalates, Washington is considering prohibiting Chinese citizens from performing sensitive research in the U.S. It fears that students and researchers could help Beijing’s plan to dominate cutting-edge technologies.

Netanyahu makes his case

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accused Iran on Monday of lying for years about its efforts to build a nuclear weapon.

His highly theatrical presentation came shortly before President Trump’s self-imposed deadline of May 12 to decide whether to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement. Mr. Netanyahu has opposed the deal from the outset.

• Mr. Netanyahu didn’t provide any evidence that Iran had violated the agreement since it took effect in early 2016, but the disclosures could add to Mr. Trump’s resolve to abandon the deal.

A monthlong odyssey

• The U.S. allowed eight members of a caravan of migrants who are camped out at the border with Mexico to begin the asylum process on Monday.

The group, which started out in March to flee violence in Central America, numbered more than 1,200 at one point but dwindled to around 300.

• President Trump has said the caravan is a threat to national security and shows the weakness of U.S. immigration laws.

A photographer of victims becomes one

• Shah Marai, the chief photographer in Kabul for Agence France-Presse, was among the 25 people who were killed in a double bombing in the Afghan capital on Monday.

It was the latest violence in a conflict that began more than 15 years ago and that shows no sign of ebbing.

• Mr. Marai started working as a driver for Agence France-Presse during the Taliban regime in the 1990s, when photography was largely banned. View a selection of his work here.

“The Daily”: Mueller’s questions for Trump

• The special counsel’s queries offer a rare view into an investigation shrouded in secrecy.

Listen on a computer, an iOS device or an Android device.

Business

• The tax overhaul last year was sold as “rocket fuel” for American investment and growth, but so far there’s no sign of acceleration.

• Facebook’s latest privacy changes have become a financial nightmare for companies and programmers whose work relied on access to its user data.

Separately, a co-founder of the messaging service WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in 2014, is leaving the company’s board of directors. Jan Koum had grown increasingly concerned about Facebook’s position on user data, a company executive said.

• Sprint and T-Mobile argue that their proposed merger would benefit wireless customers, but analysts — including our columnist — are skeptical about the deal’s chances.

• The Times announced that its metro editor, Wendell Jamieson, had resigned after an internal investigation but did not specify the reason for his departure.

• U.S. stocks were down on Monday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets today.

Market Snapshot View Full Overview

Smarter Living

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

• Regardless of your income, you can benefit from a financial planner.

• Make yourself aware of subtle signs of heart disease.

• Recipe of the day: The best chicken salad is all about texture.

Noteworthy

• The newest mission to Mars

NASA’s InSight spacecraft, scheduled to launch on Saturday, isn’t interested in the surface of the red planet. Instead, it hopes to discover the planet’s deep interior.

With a smartphone, you can explore the history of the many missions to Mars in augmented reality.

• In memoriam

Judith Leiber, 97, designed handbags that were prized as objets d’art. Gerson Leiber, 96, was a modernist artist. They were married 72 years and died hours apart.

• Making the list for a Tony

Nominations for this year’s awards are to be announced at 8:30 a.m. Here’s what to watch for.

Just 30 Broadway productions are eligible for prizes, the smallest number in more than a decade.

• Doing what comedians do

The problem with Michelle Wolf’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday wasn’t her jokes. It was the event itself, our chief TV critic says.

“Was Ms. Wolf’s set vicious? Absolutely,” he writes. “But was it gratuitous? Not at all.”

• Best of late-night TV

Michelle Wolf used to work for both Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers. The two comedians came to her defense on Monday.

• Quotation of the day

“We want to show people that we are not North Korea. When our guests walk on the streets they see a church, a mosque and a synagogue all in the same block. This is not the country you think it is.”

— Reza Kianian, a prominent Iranian actor who is an ambassador for the Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran.

• The Times, in other words

Here’s an image of today’s front page, and links to our Opinion content and crossword puzzles.

• What we’re reading

Prashant Rao, our deputy Europe business editor, recommends this piece from Sixth Tone: “Sometimes the best way to look at an issue is not with words, but with images. This four-part series has been analyzing China’s history through archive photographs and the latest edition looks at pictures that were never published. Why did they not make the cut? What do they tell us about China’s modern history?”

Back Story

It doesn’t often happen that what you achieve at the age of 11 makes a lasting impact.

But on this day in 1930, “Pluto” was suggested as the name of what was then the newly discovered ninth planet, inspired by a British schoolgirl, Venetia Burney.

A conversation over breakfast led to the naming of Pluto. NASA

Shortly after “Planet X” was discovered in February of that year, Venetia’s grandfather was reading about the news over breakfast. Interested in Greek and Roman mythology, Venetia suggested Pluto, the god of the underworld.

Her grandfather, a retired librarian at Oxford, sent her suggestion to a professor of astronomy at the university, who wrote back: “I think PLUTO excellent!!”

The name worked on a few levels: As the most distant planet, the name of an underworld god was fitting. And the planet’s first two letters matched the initials of Percival Lowell, the astronomer who initiated the search for Pluto.

As a reward, her grandfather gave her a five-pound note, and later an asteroid was named 6235 Burney in her honor, in 1987.

But she was modest about her achievement during an interview with NASA in 2006 (the same year that Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet): “It doesn’t arise in conversation and you don’t just go around telling people that you named Pluto.”

Anna Schaverien wrote today’s Back Story.

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Correction:Monday’s Morning B riefing misstated part of the name of the movie with the biggest global opening of all time. It is “Avengers: Infinity War,” not Wars.

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