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Iran, Heat Wave, Robert Mueller: Your Weekend Briefing

Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead.

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Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

1. Tensions between Iran and the West are simmering once again.

Britain threatened Iran with “serious consequences” for seizing a British-owned oil tanker, above, and warned ships to stay out of the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for the world’s oil supplies. The British defense minister said the tanker had been intercepted in Omani, not Iranian, waters and called the seizure “a hostile act.”

The incident comes at a particularly vulnerable time for Britain: Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to resign on Wednesday, and to be replaced by Boris Johnson. But the leadership contest within the governing Conservative Party has all but paralyzed the government and frustrated voters.

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...Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

2. It’s going to be another hot one.

High temperatures continue to stretch across the U.S., from the Great Lakes to the Texas Panhandle to Boston for a weekend-long heat blast. Heat indexes (air temperature and humidity combined) are expected to reach as high as 115 degrees in some places.

A festival and triathlon were canceled in New York (and New Yorkers worked through the heat, above). In South Dakota, a busy interstate was shut down for hours after the pavement buckled under the heat. Relief is expected by Monday.

Are you hot? Here are some tips for cooling off and 26 no-cook dinner ideas.

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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

3. Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is heading to Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

Over five hours of nationally broadcast testimony, Democrats are counting on Mr. Mueller, above in May, to focus the broader public’s attention on the findings of his 22-month investigation — either to jump-start a stalled impeachment push, or to severely damage President Trump’s re-election prospects.

Some Republicans, on the other hand, are advocating a gentler approach to close the door on his inquiry. Here’s how they’re preparing for the showdown.

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Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

4. The week in U.S. politics was dominated by a chant: “Send her back.”

It began as an angry tweet from President Trump to a group of four congresswomen of color, saying they should “go back” to the countries they came from, despite the fact that all are U.S. citizens, and all but one were born in the country. His supporters turned that message into a rallying cry, above. Here’s how it all evolved.

The House voted, nearly along party lines, to condemn Mr. Trump’s comments as racist. The president disavowed the chant, and then disavowed the disavowal.

In business, TV and politics, Mr. Trump has sought to turn racial divisions to his advantage. Here’s a deeper look at his record on race.

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Credit...Charles Krupa/Associated Press

5. 3,271 bottles of oxycodone a month for a town of 2,831.

That number is part of a new lawsuit that details how various corporate interests — far beyond the familiar players like Purdue Pharma — fed the opioid epidemic. Cities and counties are suing major drugstore chains and Walmart, contending they distributed billions of painkillers that devastated communities.

Earlier in the week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that drug overdose deaths in the U.S. declined slightly last year for the first time since 1990. Experts are unsure if it is the start of a trend.

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6.“MEN WALK ON MOON: ASTRONAUTS LAND ON PLAIN; COLLECT ROCKS, PLANT FLAG”

So read the front page of The Times 50 years ago today, celebrating the Apollo 11 landing by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. The event fascinated the world, with hundreds of millions tuning in to watch it live, including one family who rented a TV set just for the event.

You can experience the moon landing just as the astronauts did through our special augmented reality project. Here is a roundup of our reporting this year on the mission, and what you might expect next out of spaceflight.

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Credit...Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

7. The architect Cesar Pelli, whose designs reconciled modernism with his interest in shape, texture and the architecture of the past, died on Friday. He was 92.

Although his work was wide-ranging, Mr. Pelli was particularly known for his skyscrapers, including the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia, above, which were the tallest skyscrapers in the world from 1998 to 2004.

Mr. Pelli never apologized for designing buildings that satisfied their owners rather than challenging them. Architects, he wrote, “must produce what is needed of us. This is not a weakness in our discipline, but a source of strength.”

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Credit...Christopher Lee for The New York Times

8. “Miss one ping and there goes your Uber Eats Quest bonus.”

Our reporter spent 27 hours as a rider for food-delivery apps, learning firsthand how “the high-tech era of on-demand everything is transforming even some of the lowest-tech, lowest-status, low-wage occupations,” he writes.

In other tech news: Did you see your friends transformed into old people this week? They were using FaceApp, which lets you “age” a photo by decades. It also raises questions of privacy violation.

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Credit...Calla Kessler/The New York Times

9. A closer, a starter, a designated hitter: The Baseball Hall of Fame will add six new members this weekend.

Mariano Rivera, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Lee Smith, Harold Baines and the late Roy Halladay will be inducted in Cooperstown, N.Y., above, on Sunday afternoon. Rivera is the only one of the new inductees who won a championship, and the only Hall of Famer ever elected unanimously by baseball writers.

But for some players, not reaching the Hall of Fame has brought more fame. And the pattern spans generations.

On the golf course: Shane Lowry of Ireland is atop the leader board in the British Open heading into the final day of the tournament at Royal Portrush.

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

We reconstructed how the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris was saved from complete disaster, above, went inside the Guantánamo Bay military base, highlighted 16 black chefs changing cooking in America and visited the Costalegre beaches of Mexico on the latest 52 Places stop.

For more on what to read, watch and listen to, may we suggest these 11 new books our editors liked, a glance at the latest small-screen recommendations from Watching, our music critics’ latest playlist and eight podcasts for the tech curious.

May cooler heads prevail this week.

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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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