 | | Future dry spells in California are almost certain to be worse than the current one. Zackary Canepari for The New York Times | Your Friday Briefing By ADEEL HASSAN |
| Good morning. |
| Here's what you need to know: |
| • Clinton email investigation broadens. |
| The F.B.I. could expand its inquiry to pursue emails that Hillary Rodham Clinton may have deleted from her private server, on the heels of a federal judge's ruling on Thursday. |
| The judge said that Mrs. Clinton did not comply with government policies in her exclusive use of a personal email account while she was secretary of state. |
| • Political gamble in Greece. |
| Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras avoided a potential test of Parliament's confidence in his leadership by resigning and calling for elections next month. |
| Elected in January on an anti-austerity platform, he reversed course to support a third international bailout. His bet is that voters who are tired of instability will give him a clear endorsement to form a new government. |
| • Dear Democrat... |
| President Obama writes in a letter to a congressman that the U.S. would keep economic pressure and turn to military options, if needed, to deter Iran's aggression. |
| His pledge is aimed at wavering Democrats, as backers of the nuclear deal creep closer to gaining the support needed to uphold a presidential veto if Congress blocks the agreement. |
| Iranian officials are emphasizing that once sanctions are lifted, nothing stands in the way of foreigners snapping up assets. |
| • Common cause. |
| Martin O'Malley will announce a plan today for expanding Social Security, just like another Democratic presidential hopeful, Bernie Sanders, who continues to draw huge crowds. |
| Hillary Rodham Clinton, the leading candidate in Democratic polls, has not said whether she would do the same. |
| • Doubts about breast cancer surgery. |
| The lumpectomies and mastectomies that as many as 60,000 American women get each year — after they are told they have a very early stage of breast cancer — may make no difference in their outcomes, researchers say. |
| • The heat is on. |
| Scientists warn that future dry spells in California are almost certain to be worse than this one. Global warming most likely intensified the drought there by 15 percent to 20 percent, they said. |
| July was the planet's warmest month on record, U.S. weather officials say. |
| • Propaganda war. |
| The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, convened his top military decision makers and hurried generals to the border with South Korea after placing all of his front-line units on a "semi-war state" today. |
| The moves came after the return of an old nemesis: South Korean propaganda loudspeakers. Mr. Kim gave South Korea until 5 p.m. Saturday to stop the broadcasts or face North Korean attacks on them. |
| • Prep school rape trial. |
| The trial of Owen Labrie, a St. Paul's School graduate charged with raping a student as part of a sexual competition, resumes on Monday. |
| On Thursday, a lawyer for the defense pressed the 16-year old accuser on the details of their encounter. It was tense and emotional testimony, with the teenager bursting into tears at times. |
| • Only in Iowa? |
| Brady Olson, a 15-year-old in Iowa, is attracting support in the polls and Internet attention after he registered last month as an independent presidential candidate under the name Deez Nuts. |
| MARKETS |
| • A broad sell-off in global markets continued for a second day amid signs of a worsening economic slowdown in China. The Shanghai index fell 4.3 percent. |
| Wall Street stock futures were off slightly this morning, after Thursday's 2 percent fall in the Dow Jones industrial average. The Nasdaq lost 2.8 percent. |
| • Falling oil prices are slamming the currencies in emerging markets, especially in Central Asia, Brazil and South Africa. |
| A barrel of the benchmark U.S. crude is down to $40.99. |
| • Smartphone sales growth in the second quarter slowed to 13.5 percent compared with a year ago, as sales in China declined for the first time, and a research firm declared the Chinese market saturated. |
| Sales in China, which accounted for 30 percent of the total, fell 4 percent, Gartner said. Apple's market share grew to 14.6 percent. |
| • The average U.S. credit score is now 695, the highest it has been in at least a decade, according to the latest analysis by Fair Isaac Corporation, the score's creator. |
| Nearly 20 percent of consumers now have credit scores above 800. |
| • Gay couples can claim Social Security benefits, after the Supreme Court's ruling in June that marriage is a constitutional right, the Justice Department decided. |
| NOTEWORTHY |
| • Multigenerational and multicultural. |
| In "Grandma," Lily Tomlin plays the title character, a solitary soul who is forced into a new world after her granddaughter becomes pregnant. |
| And Patricia Clarkson stars as a New York book critic, and Ben Kingsley as an Indian-American driving instructor, in "Learning to Drive." |
| Here's what else is coming to theaters today. |
| • Popular reads. |
| "My Fight/Your Fight," the autobiography of the mixed martial artist Ronda Rousey, debuts on our hardcover nonfiction best-seller list at No. 5. |
| And "Voices in the Ocean," Susan Casey's look at dolphin intelligence, is No. 13. |
| Get an early look at all our best-seller lists. |
| • More than a one-hit wonder? |
| Carly Rae Jepsen — she sang the once-ubiquitous "Call Me Maybe" — releases her album "Emotion" today, partly inspired by 1980s pop. |
| Our music critic writes that it "is full of pure cotton candy." |
| • Their first rock concert. |
| An audience in North Korea wasn't sure what to make of a live performance by a Western rock band, but the reactions are worth watching. |
| • Weekend TV. |
| On Saturday night, Lifetime feeds up nostalgia in the form of "The Unauthorized Full House Story" (8 p.m. Eastern), and Patrick Stewart plays a TV journalist in the new Starz comedy "Blunt Talk" (9 p.m. Eastern). |
| And "Fear the Walking Dead," a prequel spinoff of the smash hit "The Walking Dead," begins a six-episode run on AMC on Sunday (9 p.m. Eastern). |
| • In case you missed it… |
| Our reports on the workplace environment for Amazon's white-collar workers, and on how three teenagers in London were drawn to join Islamic Stale militants in Syria, were two of our most popular articles this week. |
| Many readers also took exhilarating rides on some of the tallest roller coasters in North America. |
| BACK STORY |
| Routinely blasting off into space, the way we now fly on planes for vacations, has one huge roadblock. |
| The rockets to get our spacecraft above the Earth's atmosphere are prohibitively expensive. |
| While Elon Musk's company SpaceX works on cutting costs by figuring out how to reuse rockets, a handful of other companies believe in another way: an elevator into space. |
| It's not science fiction. At least not completely. |
| Thoth Technology, a Canadian company, just received a U.S. patent for its space elevator design. Thoth executives and others address the annual Space Elevator Conference in Seattle today. |
| Thoth proposes an elevator inside a tower that would extend 12 miles above sea level, with a landing pad on its roof. Spacecraft would refuel and take on passengers and cargo from the pad. |
| But some elements of an elevator's construction have yet to be invented. Critically there is not yet a material that is both lightweight and capable of withstanding enough tension to be the elevator's tether cable. |
| As absurd as it sounds, the idea dates to the end of the 19th century. The author Arthur C. Clarke once said the first space elevator would be built "about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." |
| 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. |
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