Monday, June 24, 2019 | View in browser

Good morning.

We’re covering the U.S. response to Iranian aggression, a mission to protect rare trees in Thailand and France’s most famous rooster.

By Alisha Haridasani Gupta

The U.S. and Iran on the edge

Days after President Trump called off a strike on Iranian targets in retaliation for downing a U.S. drone, the two countries remain in a tense standoff.

The White House is poised to tighten sanctions against Iran today. The national security adviser, John Bolton, has warned that military action remains an option. But Mr. Trump remains skeptical of military entanglements, a view that clashes with his hawkish secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

Behind the scenes, American intelligence and military officers have been working on clandestine plans, including the use of cyberattacks, to counter Iranian aggression without plunging into a full-out war, according to current and former officials.

How the pull-back happened: Our reporters describe Mr. Trump’s unusual decision-making process.

Retaliation: We learned that U.S. Cyber Command conducted online attacks last week against an Iranian intelligence group that U.S. officials believe helped plan recent attacks against oil tankers.

What’s next? The Trump administration is expected to present evidence to the U.N. Security Council suggesting that the American drone was in international air space when it was shot down by Iran — a point that Tehran disputes.

Response: Global leaders have urged both sides to de-escalate, calling on the U.S. to respond diplomatically to Iran.

President Tayyip Erdogan greeting people after casting his ballot in Istanbul on Sunday, during the mayoral election re-run. Adem Altan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Turkey’s leader suffers a stinging defeat

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s candidate for mayor of Istanbul conceded in a repeat election.

The opposition candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, won with 54 percent of the vote. His victory represented the biggest political defeat of Mr. Erdogan’s career, ending his party’s 25-year dominance of the city.

Reminder: Mr. Erdogan’s party contested the results of the original election in March after losing by a small margin. The High Election Council ordered a do-over.

Analysis: Experts said the loss, which comes amid an economic slowdown and frustration with Mr. Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian shift, could mark the beginning of the end of the president’s 16-year rule.

U.S. immigration battle deepens

President Trump delayed planned nationwide raids that would have deported about 2,000 undocumented families, but said they would resume if Democrats didn’t agree to change the country’s asylum laws within two weeks.

Democrats had threatened to withhold support for a bill to send $4.5 billion in humanitarian aid to the southern border, where the authorities have been overwhelmed by record numbers of migrants.

The raids were supported by the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the agency that would have carried them out), but opposed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Inside a border facility: Lawyers who visited a detention center for migrant children in Clint, Tex., found tremendous overcrowding and filthy conditions.

Protest: More than 200 people gathered over the weekend at a U.S. base in Oklahoma once used to intern Japanese-Americans, to demonstrate against the government’s plan to house 1,400 undocumented children there.

Rescue workers removed a victim from the debris in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, on Saturday. Den Ayuthyea/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A Chinese-owned building in Cambodia collapses

At least 18 people were killed and 24 injured after the building, still under construction, crumbled in the seaside resort town of Sihanoukville, the police said.

Workers said that the building had doubled as their sleeping quarters, and that many had been trapped inside when it collapsed at 4 a.m. on Saturday. Three Chinese citizens and a Cambodian have been arrested, according to the police.

Work on the building was taking place without the required permits, the authorities said, and it continued despite two orders to stop. A construction supervisor said the materials being used had been insufficient.

Background: Sihanoukville has been transformed by a surge in Chinese investment accompanying Beijing’s vast Belt and Road Initiative, bringing high-rise hotels and casinos to what was once a sleepy beach town.

If you have 6 minutes, this is worth it

Rangers guard Thailand’s “lungs”

Luke Duggleby for The New York Times

The jungles of southern Thailand are home to sun bears, crocodiles, elephants — and rosewood, a rare and precious tree that takes decades to grow and has recently become a popular material for ornamental furniture in China.

The spike in demand has set off a fight between tree poachers, mostly from Cambodia, and Thai rangers, above. “These forests are the lungs of the country,” said an elite ranger trainer. “The army protects the country, the police protect the society, we protect the air that we breathe.”

Here’s what else is happening

Australia: Sydney’s City Council is expected to declare a climate emergency today, joining hundreds of local governments around the world in trying to force urgent steps to tackle the crisis, often in the face of inaction at a national level.

India: Satellite images demonstrate that one of the country’s largest cities — Chennai, with nearly five million people — is running low on water, in part because of a delayed monsoon season.

Ethiopia: At least four senior officials were killed in different parts of the country as part of an attempted coup in the northern state of Amhara, according to the office of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Mr. Abiy has tried to spearhead sweeping political reforms, but has been battling growing violence and mounting pressure from regional strongmen, including in Amhara.

Britain: A court in London ruled that a woman with the mental capacity of a child must undergo an abortion against her wishes.

President Trump: He denied allegations by an advice columnist, E. Jean Carroll, that he had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1995 or 1996, saying he had “no idea” who she was. Ms. Carroll describes the episode in her forthcoming book, from which an excerpt was published on New York magazine’s website.

Boris Johnson: The police in London responded to a call over a loud altercation between the front-runner to become Britain’s prime minister and his girlfriend. The call was made by a neighbor who had been alarmed by the sound of screaming and banging.

Kasia Strek for The New York Times

Snapshot: Above, Maurice, the most famous chicken in France, and his owner, who is being sued by a couple of summertime residents of an island home who are bothered by the rooster’s morning crowing. The controversy has turned Maurice into a symbol of the country’s conflict between vacationers and locals.

Mars: NASA’s Curiosity rover exploring the red planet discovered such startlingly high amounts of methane — a gas which on Earth is usually produced by living creatures — that scientists sent new instructions for the rover to follow up. Results of these observations are expected today.

‘Flying Wallendas’: Two members of a circus family will try to walk a wire stretched between skyscrapers in Manhattan’s Times Square, 25 stories above street level, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern.

What we’re reading: This reconstruction of the disappearance of MH370, in The Atlantic. Maggie Haberman, our White House correspondent, calls the piece, by the investigative reporter William Langewiesche, “haunting.”

Now, a break from the news

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Cook: A salsa of pasilla chiles and tomatillos is a perfect match for avocado tacos.

Watch: “Toy Story 4” is exactly what you expect — not more, not less — from an estimably well-oiled machine like Pixar, writes our critic.

Read: Natalia Ginzburg was one of the great Italian writers of the 20th century. Several of her books have been recently reissued.

Go: The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has opened its summer exhibition, “Van Gogh and the Sunflowers,” featuring research into the museum’s “Sunflowers” painting that offers new insight into the artist’s friendship with Paul Gauguin.

Smarter Living: Women face unique challenges when negotiating for a raise, starting with being viewed as “unlikable” when they try, according to Kristin Wong, the author of “Get Money: Live the Life You Want, Not Just the Life You Can Afford.” She urges women to be extra prepared, bringing not just a list of accomplishments but also their dollar value, along with proof of performance improvement and documentation of being underpaid. She has more advice in our Working Woman’s Handbook.

And we look at the gear that can help when you’re traveling with children.

And now for the Back Story on …

Building to last

We have spent 19 years in the third millennium A.D.

Amazingly, if we go back to 19 B.C., we can find a piece of human-built infrastructure still able to be used today.

Nineteen B.C. was the year that Agrippa, the Roman statesman and architect, completed an aqueduct to Rome, the Aqua Virgo. Whether it was named for a virgin or for its pure waters is a matter of debate.

A technician walking in the Acqua Vergine aqueduct in 2013. Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

It was Ancient Rome’s sixth aqueduct. Engineers had been using gravity to channel water to the city’s growing population since the late fourth century B.C.

They learned to excavate rock, lay pipe and, when necessary, build extraordinary arched bridges to carry the ducts. Some bridges remain as landmarks.

The water flowed into Rome’s cisterns, baths and homes, and spurted from fountains that also filled buckets for use in unconnected homes.

The Aqua Virgo, which flowed largely underground, went through periods of abandonment and revival. Its Renaissance reconstruction, the Aqua Vergine, feeds the famed Baroque Trevi Fountain.

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Alisha

Thank you
To Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford for the break from the news. Andrea Kannapell, the briefings editor, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about the U.S. standoff with Iran.
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Major export of Tuscany (5 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• Sharon Pian Chan of The Seattle Times is joining The New York Times as vice president of philanthropy, to spearhead our newsroom initiative to work in partnership with nonprofits, foundations and other organizations to support our broader mission to foster independent journalism.