Tuesday’s top story: secretary of state visits Moscow amid US tensions with Iran. Plus, why copying the populist right won’t help save the left

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

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Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.

First high-level US-Russia meeting since Mueller report

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, will meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday, the first such encounter between high-level American and Russian officials since the release of the Mueller report into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Mueller investigation is said to have limited Donald Trump’s desire for a closer relationship with the Kremlin. The talks will likely focus on recent tensions between the US and Iran and Venezuela, where the ruling regimes are both backed by Russia.

Viktor Orbán. Trump and Viktor Orbán showered praise on one another during the Hungarian prime minister’s visit to the White House on Monday, with Trump telling Orbán, a nationalist with close ties to the Kremlin, that he was doing a “tremendous job”.

Markets drop as China retaliates against US import tariffs

Facebook Twitter Pinterest China’s president, Xi Jinping. Beijing has announced tariffs on $60bn of US imports. Photograph: Florence Lo/Reuters

Global markets tumbled again on Tuesday after China responded to new US import tariffs by announcing its own 25% tariffs on $60bn of US imports, as the tit-for-tat trade war between the two economic superpowers continues to ramp up. Beijing has targeted nearly 2,500 US products, with stocks in Apple, Boeing and Caterpillar suffering considerably amid concerns they would be among the companies worst affected by China’s decision.

Trump’s war. Democrats and Republicans are conflicted about Trump’s trade war tactics, with the president threatening to extend tariffs to another $300bn of Chinese imports, while insisting against the evidence that US producers and consumers will be unaffected.

Bannon sought alliance with FBI officials at 2017 meeting

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bannon with Trump in January 2017, when he was still the White House chief strategist. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Steve Bannon, at the time Trump’s closest adviser, urged two senior FBI officials to put their “differences” with Trump “behind them” at a meeting in January 2017, a day after Trump asked the then FBI director, James Comey, to pledge loyalty to the president. The exchange has not been publicly disclosed before, and was not in the Mueller report, but shows how the White House tried to forge an alliance with the FBI before its investigations into the Trump White House.

Michael Flynn. The conversation between Bannon and the FBI officials Andrew McCabe and Bill Priestap took place as the White House scrambled to respond to revelations that Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI about his contact with the Russian ambassador.

Alabama set to pass nation’s strictest abortion law

Play Video 1:30 Anger erupts in Alabama senate over rape and incest exceptions to abortion bill – video

The Alabama state senate is set to vote on Tuesday on a bill that would ban all abortions at any stage of pregnancy, making it the strictest abortion law in the US. The bill is designed expressly as a challenge to Roe v Wade, which, if passed, would likely be overturned in lower courts but eventually make its way to the US supreme court, where anti-abortion activists hope justices will be persuaded to overturn the landmark 1973 decision.

Democrat anger. A video of the Alabama state senator Bobby Singleton angrily objecting to the bill went viral last week. Singleton, a Democrat, triggered chaotic scenes in the statehouse with his lectern-pounding performance.

Crib sheet

A California jury has ordered Monsanto to pay more than $2bn to a couple who developed cancer after using Roundup, the largest verdict against the company so far over its carcinogenic weedkiller.

A retired naval officer dived deeper in a submarine than any other human to date, only to find plastic litter almost 35,853ft down at the bottom of the Mariana Trench .

A Somali man who was tortured and shot as a teenager will on Tuesday confront Yusuf Abdi Ali, the military commander he says is responsible, in a Virginia courtroom on the first day of a hearing expected to throw light on atrocities committed in Somalia under the dictator Siad Barre.

Three people are dead and three others missing after two sightseeing planes carrying cruise ship tourists collided in midair close to the south-east Alaska town of Ketchikan.

Must-reads

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chris O’Dowd and Rosamund Pike in State of the Union. Photograph: Marc Hom/SundanceTV

How Hollywood went long on short content

Rosamund Pike and Chris O’Dowd’s new marital discord comedy, State of the Union, clocks in at a mere 10 minutes an episode. Netflix has two new shows half as long as traditional sitcoms. Adrian Horton asks why Hollywood is serving up “snackable” content.

Is pandering to rightwing anxieties a sound strategy for the left?

Old liberal heavyweights such as Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton have advised their younger counterparts to focus on immigration if they want to reclaim political ground. But Cas Mudde argues that copying the populist right is the wrong way to defeat it.

A city cuts ties with its own migrant detention centre

Last month, the city of Adelanto, California, unexpectedly ended its agreement with Ice to manage its immigration detention centre, causing alarm among immigrants’ rights activists and potentially leaving the facility in the hands of a private prison corporation, as Eric Fernandez reports.

The drive-in cinemas still packing ’em in

Immortalised on screen in Grease and American Graffiti, the drive-in movie theatre is making a minor comeback across the US. Tyler Wetherall looks at the history – and possible future – of this nostalgic slice of Americana.

Opinion

Sweden has a global reputation for enlightened politics, but the country’s failure to confront its wartime past has allowed the extreme right to rise again, says Elisabeth Åsbrink.

When Denmark and Norway had their postwar legal and moral purges dealing with collaborators and local Nazis, Sweden did nothing of the kind. No self-examination or moral debate took place. Those who had sympathised with Hitler simply went silent, and continued their lives as if nothing had happened.

Sport

The MLS commissioner Don Garber recently revealed that the North American soccer league would grow to 30 teams in the coming years. Graham Ruthven asks whether expansion has come at the expense of the league’s founder clubs.

Prosecutors in Florida have dropped charges against the former UFC champion Conor McGregor after he allegedly smashed a fan’s phone outside a Miami hotel, saying the victim had recanted his story and dropped a civil lawsuit over the incident.

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