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Europe Edition

North Korea, Bitcoin, Malaysia: Your Friday Briefing

Good morning.

The New York Times is providing full free digital access to European readers through Sunday.

Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...Issei Kato/Reuters

• North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Friday morning, an act of defiance against the new sanctions resolution adopted days earlier by the United Nations Security Council.

The missile passed over Japan — where an alert was issued, on television and via cellphones, warning people to take shelter inside a building or underground — and traveled 2,300 miles, the farthest of any of North Korea’s launches.

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Credit...Toby Melville/Reuters

• A major public inquiry into the fire at Grenfell Tower opened on Thursday in London.

The inquiry is scheduled to produce an interim report by April that will address what caused the fire, why it spread and who should be held accountable, among other issues.

The retired judge leading the investigation cited a “sense of anger and betrayal” among former residents. He also refused requests to allow survivors of the disaster to be part of the inquiry team.

At least 80 were killed in the blaze, the deadliest in Britain in more than a century.

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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

• President Trump came under attack on Thursday from some of his strongest supporters, who were outraged after he compromised with congressional Democrats for the second time in a week.

Mr. Trump agreed to set aside a fight, at least for now, over building a border wall with Mexico as part of a deal with Democrats to protect young, undocumented immigrants.

Many Republicans are left wondering how much more his base will tolerate.

The president also repeated his claims that both sides shared blame for the racial violence last month in Charlottesville, Va.

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Credit...Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• Clerics, academics, a poet, an economist, a journalist and the son of a former king.

Those are among the 16 people arrested in Saudi Arabia this week during a wide-ranging crackdown against perceived opponents of the policies of the kingdom’s new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, above.

Those arrested have been held incommunicado; it is unclear whether they have been formally charged with crimes.

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Credit...Louisa Gouliamaki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The authorities in Greece are scrambling to clean up fuel leaked by an oil tanker that sank this week near Athens.

The sunken vessel — the 45-year-old Agia Zoni II — was carrying more than 2,500 metric tons of oil.

The leak was initially thought to be contained to the area of the shipwreck, but it soon expanded to the coastline known as the Athens Riviera, where it raised fears of more widespread environmental damage.

Witnesses reported floating tar and dead fish on popular beaches.

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Credit...Deutsche Börse, via Business Wire

• Deutsche Börse, the German stock exchange operator, has agreed to pay fines of 10.5 million euros, or about $12.5 million, to resolve an insider trading investigation related to a failed merger with the London Stock Exchange Group.

• Volkswagen’s problems with Takata airbags prompted a recall of almost five million vehicles in China.

• The Swiss food giant Nestlé announced on Thursday that it had bought a majority stake in Blue Bottle, a purveyor of artisanal coffee — one of the surest signs yet that high-end coffee has become a hot business.

• BTC China, a major Bitcoin exchange, announced plans to shut down at the end of the month as Beijing tries to curb virtual currencies.

• A U.S. judge revoked Martin Shkreli’s bail and sent the former pharmaceutical executive to jail after he offered $5,000 to anyone who could “grab a hair” from Hillary Clinton.

• Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

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Credit...Fazry Ismail/European Pressphoto Agency

• A fire at a Malaysian boarding school on Thursday killed 24 people, many of them boys who appear to have been trapped by barred windows. [The New York Times]

• An E.U. report affirmed the safety of a contested weed killer — but parts of the analysis were copied and pasted directly from a study by the weed killer’s manufacturer. [The Guardian]

• An Islamic State convoy stuck in the Syrian desert was said to have crossed into ISIS territory despite a vow by the American-led coalition to trap it. [The New York Times]

• A British tourist is missing and presumed dead after witnesses saw a crocodile drag him into a lagoon in Sri Lanka. [The Telegraph]

• An Israeli lawmaker caused an uproar in his party after disclosing that he had attended his gay nephew’s wedding. [The New York Times]

• Several national antidoping organizations have demanded that Russia be banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics. [BBC]

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

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Credit...Three Lions/Getty Images

• Here are five cheap(ish) essentials for your bathroom.

• Not a kale fan? A warm salad with coconut and tomato might persuade you otherwise.

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Credit...Space Science Institute/JPL-Caltech, via NASA

• NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is expected to vaporize today as it plunges toward Saturn, above; it’s moving so fast that just a few molecules from the atmosphere could rip it apart. We’ve compiled 100 of the best images it sent back during its 20-year mission. And you can test your Cassini knowledge with our quiz.

• The discovery of female remains in a 10th-century tomb in Sweden has reignited a longstanding debate about the role of women among the Vikings, whose exploits are central to Scandinavian identity.

• He’s a flamboyant ex-athlete with a taste for self-promotion and 32 visits to North Korea under his belt. (And, no, he isn’t Dennis Rodman.)

• A museum on the Isle of Skye celebrates two giants from the same Scottish family: one who lived in the 19th century, and one from YouTube.

• Silent films were once a thing of the past, but they’re making a big return — on social media, of all places.

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Credit...Matty Zimmerman/Associated Press

It’s one of the most famous movie images of all time: Marilyn Monroe standing astride a subway vent and laughing as her white dress billows above her waist.

That scene, from “The Seven Year Itch,” was shot on this day in 1954 around 1 a.m. on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Billy Wilder, the director, had invited the news media to drum up buzz for the film. The breeze came from a fan placed under the subway grate.

Off camera, that night was hardly comedy. Hundreds of gawkers, mostly men, showed up on the set and heckled Ms. Monroe. Her husband, Joe DiMaggio, also appeared and was infuriated. She filed for divorce weeks later.

Photographs from that night circulated everywhere, but the film footage was never used. Mr. Wilder reshot the scene on a Hollywood lot. (The Times learned of other video taken that night in New York and wrote about it in January.)

Ms. Monroe died eight years later after an overdose of sleeping pills. Mr. DiMaggio sent fresh flowers to her grave twice a week for the rest of his life.

Charles McDermid contributed reporting.

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Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online.

This briefing was prepared for the European morning. You can browse through past briefings here.

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What would you like to see here? Contact us at europebriefing@nytimes.com.

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