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Your Weekend Briefing

Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead. We start today with an exclusive Times investigation.

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Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

1. The Notre-Dame fire exposed schools, day care centers and parks to alarming levels of lead. French authorities responded with delays and denials.

The April fire destroyed the cathedral’s roof and spire, which were covered with 460 tons of lead tiles. Levels of lead dust deposited near the cathedral were up to 1,300 times higher than French safety guidelines and spread in a toxic cloud across the city.

French authorities were aware of the threat of lead contamination within days of the fire, a Times investigation found, yet their response in alerting the public to health risks was halting. Above, workers in protective suits earlier this month.

Here are the takeaways, and what it means for Parisians and visitors.

Have you been keeping up with the headlines? Test your knowledge with our news quiz. And here’s the front page of our Sunday paper, the Sunday Review from Opinion and our crossword puzzles.


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Credit...Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters

2. In other international news:

Drone strikes set two major oil processing centers ablaze deep in Saudi Arabia. Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are supported by Iran, claimed responsibility. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for strikes, calling them “an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.”

It was not clear how badly damaged the facilities were, but shutting them down for more than a few days would disrupt world oil supplies.

And in Israel, a robust turnout by Arab voters on Tuesday could deprive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of another term — the question is whether they will vote. Mr. Netanyahu, facing a tough race, made an election-eve vow to annex parts of the occupied West Bank if he wins re-election, citing U.S. support.


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Credit...Jessica Pons for The New York Times

3. Back in the U.S., California lawmakers are riding a wave of anti-Trump sentiment — and going on the offensive.

Democrats there have enacted a sweeping liberal agenda that in almost every way offers a counternarrative to Trump administration policies on issues from immigration to health care to environment policy.

Just this past week, legislators approved a statewide rent control and a mandate that forces companies like Uber and Lyft to classify their drivers as employees. On Friday, the state passed a bill that requires all public universities to provide medication abortions on campus. A former political adviser called the movement a “renaissance in a belief in government.”


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Credit...Richard Vogel/Associated Press

4. “It never comes up where they source it. You don’t ask.”

That was a 17-year-old who was one of 400 people hospitalized across the U.S. for vaping-related lung illness. As the authorities work to understand the cause, a small-town drug bust offers a closer look at the vast black market for vaping supplies.

In other public health news, five weeks before a landmark trial in the opioid epidemic, the defendants argued in court that the judge overseeing it was biased.

And in case you missed it, prosecutors traced about $1 billion in wire transfers by the Sackler family as it faced a raft of lawsuits over its role in the opioid crisis.


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Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

5. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was the most important federal agency that many had never heard of. Until last week.

It all changed when meteorologists working for NOAA corrected President Trump on Twitter after he inaccurately described Hurricane Dorian’s path (and sparked #sharpiegate). The president then ordered the agency to support his version of events, triggering a collision course with an organization that prides itself on never bowing to political pressure. Above, Grand Bahama last week.

The Trump administration was also grappling with the abrupt departure of John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s third national security adviser. In his wake, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has emerged as a singular figure in Mr. Trump’s factional foreign policy circle.


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Credit...Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York Times

6. President Trump won a major victory this past week when the Supreme Court backed a tough asylum plan. A closer look shows the ruling is in keeping with a wider international trend.

Mr. Trump’s plan to bar migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. is similar to a scheme employed by Australia since 2012. Europe tried a comparable scheme in 2016, but it didn’t work. Here’s how the plans compare. Above, a Venezuelan family in Nuevo Laredo, Mex., before asking for asylum in the U.S.

Tens of thousands of Salvadorans already in the U.S. are facing another challenge: They played a crucial role in construction in and around Washington. Now their legal status has been revoked and they are fighting deportation.


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Credit...Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York Times

7. “If God made me white, I was going to be a cowboy. But God made me black. And I am a black cowboy.”

Larry Callies, above, a former mail deliverer and a rodeo rider, opened the Black Cowboy Museum in 2017 after finding a photo that included a group of black cowboys. Mr. Callies hopes the museum, wedged between storefronts in Rosenberg, Tex., will help restore black cowboys to their place in history.

In this week’s episode of the podcast “1619,” we look at how racial health disparities have been as foundational as democracy itself. It’s the latest in our major initiative observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery.


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Credit...Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times

8. This weekend’s Book Review theme: the furies.

In “She Said,” Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey revisit their sexual-assault investigation into Harvey Weinstein. The reporters “instinctively understand the dangers of the Harvey-as-Monster story line — and the importance of refocusing our attention on structures of power,” Susan Faludi writes in her review.

And “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh” reinvestigates the allegations of sexual misconduct against the Supreme Court justice. The book offers “a weird satisfaction in rewinding the story more than 30 years,” writes Hanna Rosin, in what ends in “a kind of cinematic inevitability.”

We also have reviews of Rachel Cusk, Angie Cruz, and more. As Pamela Paul, our Books editor, tweeted: “This cover. This issue. These books.”


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Credit...Boglarka Bodnar/EPA, via Shutterstock

9. Why is everything coming up ... lavender?

The plant is everywhere these days, from household and wellness products to food and cocktails. To feed the demand, hundreds of lavender farms have sprouted up in recent years in places like Kansas, Maine and West Virginia.

“You’ve got the smell, but to look at it, it’s almost like a pointillist painting,” said a journalist turned Texas lavender farmer. “It’s a beautiful, sensual experience to be in a lavender field.”


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Credit...Ramona Rosales for The New York Times

10. And finally, check out one of our Best Weekend Reads.

We visited Alaska’s starkly beautiful Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before drilling begins, spoke with six men about their stories of sexual assault in the military, and talked to Demi Moore, above, ahead of her new memoir.

For more ideas on what to read, watch and listen to, may we suggest these 10 new books our editors liked, a glance at the latest small-screen recommendations from Watching, podcasts to look forward to this fall and our music critics’ latest playlist.


Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6 a.m. Eastern.

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What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.

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