Fwd: NYT Now: Your Thursday Briefing

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: NYTimes.com <nytdirect@nytimes.com>
Date: Thu, May 7, 2015 at 12:17 PM
Subject: NYT Now: Your Thursday Briefing
To: pascal.alter@gmail.com

View in Browser | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. Thursday, May 7, 2015 Thursday, May 7, 2015 nytnow.com » Enjoy this newsletter? Get continuous updates on today's most important stories with the NYT Now app for iPhone. Download now. Britain votes today in a general election. Neither main party has a clear advantage. Peter Nicholls/Reuters Your Thursday Briefing By ADEEL HASSAN Good morning. Here's what you need to know: • A deeply divided Britain. The final opinion polls heading into today's election suggest that neither main party has a clear advantage, and they point to a messy, inconclusive outcome. The stakes for the world's fifth-largest economy are high, with the result possibly influencing Scotland's independence movement and Britain's membership in the European Union. • Pressure on the N.F.L. The nation's wealthiest sports league is considering whether to punish one of its greatest players, Tom Brady, a four-time Super Bowl champion, and its second most valuable franchise, the New England Patriots. A 243-page report released on Wednesday found that "it is more probable than not" that Patriots staff members deflated footballs in the A.F.C. championship game to gain an edge, and that Brady knew about it. Brady is to speak tonight at a previously scheduled event at Salem State University in Massachusetts. • Senate votes on Iran nuclear bill. The measure would give Congress a chance to review, and possibly reject, any final nuclear deal that President Obama makes with Iran. The morning vote requires 60 of 100 senators to agree to formally end floor deliberations on the legislation. The final vote should come later today. • Dangerous weather. Oklahomans will be surveying the damage this morning after tornadoes swept across the Southern Plains, overturning cars and destroying homes. Forecasters warn that more storms are possible there this week. • Kerry's dire warning. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Saudi Arabia for meetings with senior government leaders to discuss regional security. He said on Wednesday that a humanitarian crisis in Yemen was growing and that he would discuss plans to halt the Saudi-led bombing campaign there to allow for the delivery of food, medicine and other aid. MARKETS • Wall Street stock futures are moderately lower. European and Asian shares are off sharply. • Alibaba, the Chinese online giant that handles more e-commerce than Amazon and eBay combined, reports quarterly earnings today. • Siemens is cutting 4,500 more jobs, about 1 percent of its global work force. • Global food prices fell in April to their lowest level since June 2010, the United Nations food agency said today. • Al Jazeera America is replacing its chief executive amid continuing turmoil at the network. • Whole Foods is making plans for a new food-store chain, with lower prices, to open next year. NOTEWORTHY • Steps to sainthood. The Rev. Junipero Serra, an 18th-century missionary who brought Christianity to American Indians on the West Coast, is a step closer to sainthood after approval from Pope Francis. Some Native Americans, however, say the Franciscan missionary suppressed local culture and mistreated Indians. • Not dead yet. The film director Peter Bogdanovich unveils a crowdfunding campaign today with other producers to raise money to finish Orson Welles's movie "The Other Side of the Wind." • Short and sweet. It's Short Story Month, and one publisher is releasing a short story online each day for 99 cents. The works include classic short stories by Willa Cather, Raymond Carver, Anton Chekhov, Alice Munro and Edgar Allan Poe; newer works by Junot Díaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Nam Le; and original stories by Maeve Binchy, Carrie Brown, Hari Kunzru and Alexander McCall Smith. • Day and night action. The Players Championship — golf's so-called fifth major and its richest event (a $10 million purse) — begins today in Ponte Vedra Beach (1 p.m. Eastern, the Golf Channel). The U.S. plays Belarus at the ice hockey world championships in the Czech Republic (10 a.m. Eastern). And the Stanley Cup playoffs tonight have Montreal at Tampa Bay (7 p.m. Eastern) and Chicago at Minnesota (9:30 p.m. Eastern). All the games are on NBCSN. • Chart topper. The country music bar band Zac Brown Band scored its third Billboard No. 1 album this week with "Jekyll + Hyde." • In memoriam. Oscar Carl Holderer, the last known surviving member of the German engineering team that designed the rocket that took U.S. astronauts to the moon, died in Huntsville, Ala. He was 95. BACK STORY Today, the National Day of Prayer, is a tradition whose roots lie before the U.S. was born. The first day of prayer was called in 1775 by the Continental Congress. They liked it so much that they continued days of "prayer, fasting and thanksgiving." In modern times, the observance became official through an act of Congress in 1952, when the U.S. was fighting the Korean War and entering a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Congress asked President Harry S. Truman to set aside a "suitable day" annually when people of all faiths could pray for the country. And President Ronald Reagan set that day to the first Thursday in May. Some presidents have also proclaimed days of prayer in tough times. That happened after riots in the summer of 1967, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2011, a federal appeals court threw out a ruling that the National Day of Prayer was unconstitutional. The judges said that a group had no standing to sue because President Obama's right to proclaim the day did not cause harm and he was not forcing anyone to pray. 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