Donald Trump, Facebook, Harvard: Your Tuesday Briefing

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Good morning,

We’re covering the growing tensions with Iran, a new cryptocurrency from Facebook, and the science behind puppy dog eyes.

U.S. is to send more troops to the Middle East

President Trump has ordered an additional 1,000 troops to the region, after Tehran announced that it would soon violate part of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran has abided by the terms of the Obama-era agreement since the U.S. withdrew last year. But Tehran said on Monday that it would exceed the limits on uranium stockpiles within days unless European countries helped it circumvent American sanctions. Here’s a look at the background of the dispute.

The details: The additional troops come after 1,500 were deployed in May. They will be used mainly for surveillance and protecting American forces already in the region.

News analysis: Mr. Trump came into office vowing to solve nuclear crises in both Iran and North Korea. He is now confronted with a challenge that’s familiar to his predecessors, our national security correspondent writes.

Related: President Xi Jinping of China plans to make his first state visit to North Korea this week. Several analysts said they expected him to try to revive the failed disarmament talks between Pyongyang and Washington before he meets with Mr. Trump next week.

Facebook plans a new financial system

The tech giant and a group of 27 partners introduced a cryptocurrency today that they hope will become the basis for an alternative financial system.

Facebook has secretly been working on the cryptocurrency, called Libra, for more than a year. Unlike Bitcoin, Libra would be directly backed by government currencies, so it wouldn’t fluctuate in value any more than real-world money.

Closer look: The project will have to overcome concern that Facebook doesn’t protect users’ private information, as well as skepticism about the usefulness of cryptocurrencies.

Explainer: A nonprofit entity in Switzerland will be responsible for the final design of Libra and for putting the system in place. Here’s a look at how the project would work.

Harvard rescinds offer to Parkland student

Kyle Kashuv, a survivor of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., announced on Monday that the university had rescinded its admission offer over racist and derogatory comments he made when he was 16.

Mr. Kashuv made the comments, including racial slurs, months before the shooting in a shared document that he and other students used as a study guide. He apologized when a former classmate posted screenshots of the comments last month, and did so again on Monday.

Quotable: “What I said two years ago isn’t indicative of who I am,” Mr. Kashuv said.

Background: Unlike some Parkland students who mobilized to call for sweeping gun-control measures, Mr. Kashuv has defended the Second Amendment. Some conservatives criticized Harvard’s decision as unfair.

Gloria Vanderbilt, jeans queen

The society heiress with an illustrious family name built a $100 million fashion empire and helped change denim forever in the 1970s and ’80s.

“If you think your clothes have nothing to do with Gloria Vanderbilt, think again,” our chief fashion critic writes.

Obituary: Ms. Vanderbilt was the subject of tabloid headlines from a young age, and she remained in the limelight for decades.

Another angle: For a brief period in the 1960s, Ms. Vanderbilt worked for The Times reviewing children’s books, including “Harriet the Spy.”

If you have 12 minutes, this is worth it

The rise of virtual influencers

Brands like Calvin Klein and KFC are shifting their social media campaigns from human influencers to lifelike computer-generated characters, such as those pictured above, crafted to meet their creative visions.

Using virtual beings as brand ambassadors raises a crucial question: What happens to the idea of truth in advertising?

Here’s what else is happening

The race for 2020: President Trump is to kick off his campaign for a second term at a rally in Orlando, Fla., tonight. The election is shaping up as a test of both Mr. Trump and his country, our chief White House correspondent writes.

New plan for Paul Manafort: President Trump’s former campaign chairman will not be transferred to the Rikers Island jail complex while he faces fraud charges in New York, after a Justice Department official intervened.

Surgeries suspended: North Carolina Children’s Hospital announced that it would suspend heart surgeries for the most complex cases, after a Times investigation found concern about the program’s high mortality rate.

Hong Kong apology: The territory’s top leader, Carrie Lam, said today that she would not resign as she apologized for having proposed legislation to allow extraditions to mainland China.

Ousted leader dies: Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, collapsed and died while on trial in Cairo. The authorities gave no official cause of death, but critics blamed the poor conditions in the prison where Mr. Morsi, 67, had spent the six years since the military ousted him.

Snapshot: Above, that quizzical, slightly sad look your dog gives you is the result of evolution, scientists say. They found that dogs, but not wolves, have a specific muscle that helps raise their eyebrows.

More “Hunger Games”: Suzanne Collins is writing a prequel to her blockbuster dystopian trilogy, to be released next year.

Late-night comedy: Jimmy Kimmel marveled that O.J. Simpson, who just joined Twitter, already had 700,000 followers: “The last time O.J. had this many people following him he was on the 405 headed to the Mexican border.”

What we’re reading: This essay in The Paris Review Daily. “Luc Sante ruminates on a series of family photographs,” writes Stephen Hiltner, a travel editor, “and on his role as the custodian of his family’s fragmented oral history.”

Now, a break from the news

Cook: “Slow-roasted” salmon with cucumbers and feta takes only 30 minutes. (Our Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter has more recommendations.)

Go: Julia Jarcho’s new play, “Pathetic,” is a squirmy, sinister meditation on female desire, with a whiff of ancient Greece. It’s at the Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan.

Read: Ariana Reines’s new poetry collection, “A Sand Book,” seemingly never pulls away from her deepest vulnerabilities.

Watch: Marin Alsop, the first woman to lead a major American orchestra and the next leader of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, spoke with our classical music reporter, Michael Cooper.

Smarter Living: Spending time in nature is good for you, reducing stress and the risk of many ailments while improving mental health. Researchers have now quantified the amount of time to aim for: two hours a week. And it doesn’t seem to matter whether you build the time up little by little, or get it all in one go.

And our Parenting site has a guide to what most children can do at each milestone, from birth to age 5.

And now for the Back Story on …

Counting people

The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision soon about whether a citizenship question can be included in the 2020 census.

The Trump administration has argued that such questions have appeared on the census in the past, but the form sent once a decade to each household has not asked any questions about citizenship since 1950 because of improved statistical sampling techniques.

The issue of counting the population can be so politically sensitive that some countries don’t even attempt it. Take Lebanon.

When the country gained independence from France in 1943, its new political system was built on data from a 1932 census in which Maronite Christians were the majority. The presidency was reserved for a Maronite, while other leadership roles went to Muslims: Sunni for prime minister and Shiite for speaker of Parliament. Parliamentary seats were divided between Muslims and Christians, and then sectioned off by sect.

To maintain the status quo, the government has never conducted another census, though the overall population of Muslims is widely understood to have outstripped that of Christians.

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

— Chris

Thank you
To Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford for the break from the news. Will Dudding, an assistant in the standards department, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Today’s episode is about the U.S. infiltration of Russia’s power grid.
• Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: GPS suggestion (5 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• Maggie Haberman, a White House reporter for The Times, is answering readers’ questions about working during such a heated political moment. Submit yours here.