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El Salvador, Oprah Winfrey, Alabama Crimson Tide: Your Tuesday Briefing

Alabama players celebrating their 26-23 victory in college football’s national championship game in Atlanta on Monday. The Crimson Tide went into halftime trailing Georgia by 13 points.Credit...Jamie Squire/Getty Images

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

The Trump administration is ending protections for nearly 200,000 people from El Salvador who have been allowed to live and work in the U.S. since a pair of earthquakes struck their country in 2001.

The Department of Homeland Security said that because El Salvador’s infrastructure had been rebuilt, the Salvadorans no longer qualified for the Temporary Protected Status program.

Tens of thousands of Haitians and Nicaraguans have also lost their protected status.

The immigrants face deportation by next year, at which point the U.S. could lose up to a million people, including so-called Dreamers, from its legal work force. We examine the choices before the nation’s employers.

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Veronica Lagunas and her daughter Angie at their home in Sylmar, Calif. Ms. Lagunas is one of nearly 200,000 people from El Salvador who have just lost their temporary permission to live and work in the U.S.
Credit...Emily Berl for The New York Times

• North Korea agreed today to send athletes to the Winter Olympics in South Korea next month, a symbolic breakthrough after months of escalating tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

The North not only shunned the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul but also tried to disrupt them after talks on co-hosting them fell apart.

The current negotiations, at a border village, could help gauge whether North Korea is willing to moderate its behavior after a year of nuclear and missile tests that have raised fears of war on the Korean Peninsula.

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Can the Olympics Bring the Koreas Together?

North Korea has agreed to send athletes to the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea, but the Olympics have long been a window into geopolitics between the two sides.

Escalating brinkmanship, crippling sanctions, intercontinental missile testing — can the hair-trigger standoff between North and South Korea be defused by figure skating? The 2018 Winter Games will be hosted by North Korea’s mortal enemy about 40 miles from their border, in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Whether the regime ends up as a participant or a pariah, it will not be the first time the Olympics has been at the center of a geopolitical chess game. Despite a tiny economy and decades of international isolation, North Korea has produced an impressive slate of world-class athletes, and won dozens of Olympic medals, from judo to gymnastics, table tennis to wrestling. In the early 2000s, the two Koreas, still formally at war, actually marched together in the Olympic ceremonies. This year, even with the global crackdown on the regime, South Korea’s president and the International Olympic Committee have been repeatedly urging North Korea to attend the so-called games of peace. To fully understand the global push to get North Korea to compete, you need to rewind to the 1988 Olympics. Seoul was selected as the host city. To North Korea, it was not just a snub, but an affront to their national dignity. They demanded, with apparent support from China and the Soviet Union, that the International Olympic Committee allow the North to co-host and move some events across the border. There were two years of secret negotiations and threats. Ten months before the 1988 games, two agents of the regime placed a bomb on Korean Air Flight 858, killing more than 100 people. The bombers later said that the goal was to sabotage the Olympics by scaring off attendees. But the games went on as planned and were hailed as a historic success for the South. Meanwhile, North Korea, which carried out a feeble boycott after being abandoned by the Soviets and Chinese, was named a state sponsor of terror by the United States. What followed was years of international isolation, crippling hardship and famine, and aggressive nuclear ambitions. There have been periods of calm. The North occasionally sent teams to international competitions in the South. In 1991, the two Koreas actually united to play as a single team in youth soccer and table top tennis tournaments. But North Korea notoriously lashed out again when the South was hosting the World Cup in 2002. During the final set of matches, two boats from the North opened fire on a South Korean patrol ship, triggering a gun battle that killed and injured dozens of sailors on both sides. It was the last major international sports competition held in South Korea. Today, the threat posed by North Korea has been intensifying. But diplomacy has found a place on the playing field. There were the North and South gymnasts in Rio, the cross-border women’s hockey and soccer matches last spring, the tae kwon do exchange in June. And then there was a pair of figure skaters from North Korea, who, in September, won worldwide fans and qualified to compete in the Olympics, skating to a Beatles song. But it remains to be seen whether the games can offer a diplomatic off-ramp for the Korean standoff or even a brief reprieve for a whirl around the rink.

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North Korea has agreed to send athletes to the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea, but the Olympics have long been a window into geopolitics between the two sides.

• The special counsel, Robert Mueller, told President Trump’s lawyers last month that he would probably seek to interview the president, two people familiar with the discussion said.

No formal request has been made, and no date has been set. The White House has pledged full cooperation in the investigation into whether the Trump campaign worked with Russian operatives to try to influence the election.

Separately, we profiled the former journalist whose firm compiled the notorious dossier about possible links between Mr. Trump and Russia.

And the book that has Washington buzzing is “altogether fitting, if ultimately, unsatisfying,” one of our political correspondents writes. Read his review of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”

• Oprah Winfrey’s rousing speech at the Golden Globe Awards had some Democrats dreaming that she would run for president.

Others were skeptical about her prospects.

“We have to show what we stand for,” one Democratic strategist said. “Other than ‘we all get a car,’ what will an Oprah presidency look like?”

Ms. Winfrey has said she has no political ambitions. But politicians could learn from her address on Sunday, our chief TV critic writes. (Read her speech here.)

The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: U.S. Ends Protections for Salvadorans

The Trump administration has said that hundreds of thousands of people who were granted temporary protection from deportation in 2001 must leave.

Supporters of the new tax law say it will help American multinationals compete more aggressively overseas. Others see incentives to put factories overseas.

A growing number of experts, including some Federal Reserve officials, say it’s time for a new approach to managing the economy.

Apple has been asked by two major investors to study the health effects of its devices and to offer parents more tools to limit children’s screen time.

H&M apologized for an image on its online store showing a black child in a sweatshirt that said “coolest monkey in the jungle.” The item will no longer be sold.

U.S. stocks were mixed on Monday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets today.

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

Want to get organized? Try a paper planner instead of apps.

What is holding you back?

Recipe of the day: Make a loaf of zucchini bread for yourself, and another to share.

Partisan writing you shouldn’t miss

Writers from across the political spectrum discuss questions about President Trump’s mental state.

Another title for Alabama

The Crimson Tide won its fifth college football championship in nine years, coming from behind to beat the Georgia Bulldogs in overtime, 26-23.

Our reporters analyzed key moments from the game, which President Trump attended.

Charges dismissed in ranch standoff

Citing the government’s missteps in withholding evidence, a Las Vegas judge dismissed charges against Cliven Bundy and his sons over their armed confrontation with federal agents at their Nevada ranch in 2014.

Brain surgery in 3-D

New videomicroscopes are giving surgeons at a Manhattan hospital “Superman eyes,” making delicate operations easier to navigate.

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Surgeons operated on the arteries of a patient’s brain at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. The surgeons used a videomicroscope, a device that puts a magnified, high-resolution 3-D image on a screen so that an entire team may see the progress of the operation.
Credit...Beatrice de Gea for The New York Times

A one-of-a-kind job

More than 13,000 people applied to visit every destination on our Travel section’s annual list of 52 Places to Go.

Meet a few of the applicants in this video. (We’ll announce the winner and the list of destinations this week.)

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The 52 Places Traveler: Meet the Applicants

Over 13,000 people applied for our first-of-its-kind job: someone who will go to every destination on this year’s 52 Places to Go list. Meet a few of them here.

Hi. Hello. Hi, guys. Good morning, 52 Places team. My name is Kimberly Ivany. Rachel Nuwer. Buzz Bissinger. Carmina Balaguer. Jennifer Neal. Talek Nantes. Jamie Lafferty. I’m Jada Yuan. Jordi from Barcelona. Sandra E. Garcia. I’m Scott. Snd I‘m Olivia. And I want to travel the world for The New York Times. I’m a chef and author. Professional adventure cartoonist. Filmmaker and cinematographer. I’m an investigative journalist. I’ve written several books, including “Friday Night Lights.” I have degrees in both medicine and public health. So what we’re proposing is a father-daughter traveling team. for your writer-at-large position. Welcome to Mount Tabor Park. We’ve arrived here at the little island, and it is paradise. We are here at Pelican Bay State Prison, working with them on business coaching. This is Buckstone Jump. Look at it! Isn’t it beautiful? And we’re going to go under. And Nick, how late are you staying open? We’re open until 8 o’clock. There’s a woman on the side of the road over there painting the landscape. Oh, we live in a beautiful place. It forces you to get outside and pay attention. Hey, New York Times. We‘re here in Toronto. Let’s tour Old Montreal. Let me give you a guided tour of how I got here. I want you to meet the coconut crab. And if I become The New York Times Travel writer-at-large, you can meet more awesome crabs like this, and have adventures with me, on the road. What could be a better, better experience? So, think about it. With us you get two for the price of one.

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Over 13,000 people applied for our first-of-its-kind job: someone who will go to every destination on this year’s 52 Places to Go list. Meet a few of them here.

Readers respond to coverage of Mormon leader

Hundreds wrote to say that our recent obituary for Thomas Monson, the president of the Mormon Church, focused too narrowly on politics and controversy and overlooked his contributions to the community.

Our obituaries editor addressed their concerns.

Best of late-night TV

Several hosts addressed Oprah Winfrey’s appearance at the Golden Globes: “People were immediately calling that speech presidential,” Stephen Colbert said. “And a year ago, I would have agreed.”

Quotation of the day

“It’s sort of an America-last tax policy. We are basically saying that if you earn in the U.S., you pay X, and if you earn abroad, you pay X divided by two.”

Kimberly Clausing, an economist, describing how the new federal tax law could actually make it attractive for American multinational companies to put more assembly lines on foreign soil.

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Thailand’s prime minister evaded journalists’ questions on Monday, telling reporters to quiz a life-size cardboard cutout of himself instead. “If you want to ask any questions on politics or conflict,” Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said, “ask this guy.”Credit...Reuters

Welcome to the year of purple.

The Pantone Color Institute, which helps manufacturers select colors for designs, has been naming a color of the year since 2000 (It chose Greenery last year, and Rose Quartz — think millennial pink — shared the title with Serenity blue in 2016).

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The color of the year.Credit...Pantone Color Institute, via Associated Press

This year the shade is Ultra Violet. “We wanted to pick something that brings hope and an uplifting message,” the institute’s director, Leatrice Eiseman, told The Times.

In Phoenician times, purple dye was made from the mucus of sea snails in the coastal city of Tyre, in what is now Lebanon.

Because the color was difficult and expensive to produce, it became associated with power and royalty, from ancient Rome to the kingdoms of Europe. In the 1500s, Queen Elizabeth I decreed that only members of the royal family could wear the color.

In 1856, a British chemist, William Henry Perkin, made the color more accessible when he accidentally created a purple dye while trying to concoct a treatment for malaria.

More than 160 years later, a color that’s rare in nature is about to have its moment.

For more on the color purple, read on.

Valencia Prashad contributed reporting.

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Follow Chris Stanford on Twitter: @stanfordc.

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