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Europe Edition

Dolores O’Riordan, Baghdad, Romania: Your Tuesday Briefing

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...Andy Earl

• Dolores O’Riordan, the lead singer of the Irish alternative rock group the Cranberries, has died in London at age 46. Her death is being treated as “unexplained,” the police said.

Fans offered tributes on social media. “She was part of my DNA, the soundtrack to my life,” one wrote.

Ms. O’Riordan’s vocal stylings, which showed a Celtic influence, were central to the group’s appeal. She was the sole writer of the noisy, angry “Zombie,” a response to an Irish Republican Army terrorist bombing in 1993.

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Credit...Khalid Al-Mousily/Reuters

• There was no immediate claim of responsibility for two suicide bombings in Baghdad on Monday morning that shattered Iraq’s growing sense of security and hope.

More than two dozen people were killed. Security officials have cast suspicion on Islamic State sleeper cells.

Separately in neighboring Syria, Turkey’s president vowed to “strangle” a proposed American-trained force that could put thousands of Kurdish militia fighters near its southern border.

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Credit...Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

• On Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Americans reflected on the legacy of the civil rights leader.

In interviews, black Americans, including two of Dr. King’s children, expressed frustration and disappointment about the direction of the United States in President Trump’s first year in office.

“I’ve been involved in the civil rights movement since my college days, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been more confused than I am right now,” one 94-year-old activist said.

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Credit...Giuseppe Cacace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• In Riyadh, the Saudi capital, the planned reopening next month of a luxury hotel is signaling that mass arrests tied to what the authorities have called a crackdown on corruption are winding down.

The hotel had served as a posh prison for princes and business executives.

A film on emoji (our critic’s review was harsh) was among the first to be screened publicly in the ultraconservative Islamic kingdom after the government ended a decades-old ban on cinemas last month.

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Credit...Andrew Renneisen for The New York Times

• Meet Nice Leng’ete.

She started a program in Kenya that is creating a new rite of passage to replace female genital cutting.

In seven years, she has helped 50,000 girls avoid the agonizing and controversial ritual.

Her work mirrors national and global trends. Rates of female genital cutting worldwide have fallen 14 percent in the last 30 years.

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Credit...Christie hemm Klok for The New York Times

• Alexa, Google Assistant and other voice-based virtual assistants are everywhere. But what are we doing with them?

Many people use assistants for just basic tasks, like getting the weather forecast or music.

It’s still a long way from the digital home envisioned by their makers.

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Credit...Michael Nagle for The New York Times

• The Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger aircraft, may no longer be manufactured if its only major buyer, Emirates, does not order any more.

• Greek lawmakers approved new austerity measures demanded by international creditors, including cuts to some family benefits and restrictions on trade unions.

• The collapse of Carillion, Britain’s second-largest construction firm, has raised questions about the outsourcing of public services to private companies.

• 2019 might become the year a Chinese carmaker will enter the U.S. market, possibly in partnership with Fiat Chrysler.

Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

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Credit...Ballesteros/European Pressphoto Agency

• Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain, above, has threatened to prolong his government’s direct rule over Catalonia if separatist lawmakers try to allow Carles Puigdemont to run the region from exile. [The New York Times]

• Mihai Tudose is Romania’s second prime minister to resign in less than seven months over a dispute with Liviu Dragnea, the powerful leader of the governing Social Democrats. [The New York Times]

• Russia’s Justice Ministry has filed a lawsuit to shut down a company that Aleksei Navalny, the Kremlin’s leading critic, uses to finance his political campaigning. [Associated Press]

• In central Russia, two masked teenagers armed with knives stormed a school, wounding at least 12 people. The motive was not immediately clear. [The New York Times]

• Many Iranians are suspicious of official accounts of “suicides” by some young men who had been imprisoned after recent protests. [The New York Times]

• In a deadly shootout that transfixed Venezuela, security forces surrounded the hide-out of a rebel band led by a rogue helicopter pilot who was once an action movie actor. [The New York Times]

• A California couple is accused of holding 13 of their children captive, some shackled to beds. A 17-year-old girl escaped and alerted the police. [The New York Times]

• In Denmark, about 1,000 adults and adolescents may face prosecution on child pornography charges for sharing video through Facebook of teenagers having sex. [The New York Times]

• Our most-read Op-Ed today debates the actor Aziz Ansari’s behavior, the #MeToo movement and the difference between “bad sex” and sexual assault. [The New York Times]

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

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Credit...Stuart Bradford

• Magnesium, found in leafy green vegetables, might help you sleep.

• Here are four simple tips for working from home.

• Recipe of the day: If you’re a fan of French cooking, you’ll love Mark Bittman’s chicken with vinegar.

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• Our latest interactive looks back on the fraught events of 1968 and imagines, if there had been smartphones, the flurry of notifications that might have accompanied each twist and turn.

• A 910-carat diamond was discovered in Lesotho. Worth tens of millions of dollars, it is the fifth-biggest gem-quality diamond ever found.

Maria Sharapova cruised through the first round of the Australian Open.

• A switch from the Cyrillic to Roman script is wildly popular in Kazakhstan, except for all those pesky apostrophes.

• Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, is a proud city, with an energetic art scene and great dining and coffee. Here’s our guide.

• And Besançon, the French capital of watch manufacturing, is making a comeback.

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Credit...Renee Perez/Associated Press

The event 80 years ago today would be historic, The Times announced: The first swing concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Benny Goodman, the jazz clarinetist, would perform.

“The event will be decisive in the history of swing,” a Times writer declared later in 1938. “What will it sound like in this strange milieu of righteousness and uplift, and what will be its effect on swing?”

Fans of swing were concerned that exposure to New York’s elite would eventually rob the grass-roots genre of its “elusiveness, its absolute freedom from technique or rules.”

Those fears were dispelled by Mr. Goodman’s success in captivating the audience.

Carnegie Hall “had never seen an audience that behaved this way: listeners who not only listened but swayed to the music, made sounds and seemed ready to break into some kind of hysterical dance,” The Times reported. Above, Mr. Goodman at Carnegie Hall in 1982.

Our critic found the music liberating in a dark era of totalitarian ideologies. “It is not so much a doctrine set to music as it is a revolt against doctrine.”

“If the individual has his unhampered say in music, he may manage to have it in other fields,” he wrote. “Dictators should be suspicious of swing.”

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This briefing was prepared for the European morning and is updated online. Browse past briefings here.

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Follow Patrick Boehler on Twitter: @mrbaopanrui.

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