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Europe Edition

Kabul, Russia, Grammy Awards: Your Monday Briefing

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...Andrew Quilty for The New York Times

• Why attack a hotel? Why turn an ambulance into a car bomb?

There appears to be a brutal calculus behind the Taliban’s intensified war on civilians in Afghanistan. (There were also explosions near Kabul’s main military university overnight.)

The country’s primary airline is struggling to operate after several staff members, including some Ukrainians, were killed in a hotel siege last week and more than 50 other employees fled.

Still, a German chartered flight landed at Kabul’s airport to repatriate 19 Afghan migrants.

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Credit...Pool photo by Yasin Bulbul

• In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has secured broad political backing for his offensive against Kurds in Syria. Our Istanbul bureau chief spent some time at the border, where many Turks told her they were eager for war.

And a female Kurdish fighter carried out what appeared to be a suicide bombing on the Turkish military in Syria, destroying a tank and killing several Turkish soldiers with a grenade.

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Credit...Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

• Thousands of protesters across Russia braved icy temperatures to demonstrate against the lack of choice in the March presidential election in which Vladimir Putin is virtually certain to be re-elected.

Separately, a Moscow movie theater that bucked an official ban on showing a British black comedy about Stalin’s death has halted screenings after a police raid.

In Washington, wealthy Russians have aggressively campaigned against the publication of a list of oligarchs that the Trump administration is expected to release today.

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Credit...Petr David Josek/Associated Press

• European election roundup:

Czech voters decided to stick with President Milos Zeman, above, and his euroskeptic populism in the presidential election runoff, in part thanks to a high turnout in the countryside.

In Finland, President Sauli Niinisto was elected to a second six-year term. (Many have missed the enlivening presence of Lennu, the first dog, during a largely uneventful campaign season.)

And a runoff on Sunday will decide presidential elections in Cyprus after no candidate won an overall majority in the first round.

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• Bots for sale:

Fake accounts infest the world’s social media platforms, our investigation shows, and nearly 15 percent of Twitter’s active users may be bots.

Social media companies struggle to respond as celebrities, athletes and politicians buy millions of fake followers.

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Credit...Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• At the Grammy Awards, Bruno Mars swept the top categories, winning album, record and song of the year.

Ed Sheeran won best pop solo performance for “Shape of You.” Alessia Cara won best new artist. Kraftwerk won best dance/electronic album.

Women of the music industry came together for a #MeToo moment. Hillary Clinton made an unexpected cameo.

Here’s the full list of winners, where you can also listen to the songs. Here’s our full coverage.

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• A decade after the financial crisis, the world has hit a key marker of recovery. All of the world’s big economies are growing. Europe has emerged as a growth leader.

• The winner at Davos was China, our Shanghai bureau chief writes, as many world leaders and executives courted an initiative, Belt and Road, that is intended to spread Beijing’s influence abroad.

• Ingvar Kamprad, a Swedish entrepreneur whose ambition built the Ikea retail empire, died at 91. His success was shadowed by alcoholism, ostensible frugality and his fascination with fascism.

• Facebook, Google and others are working overtime to be ready for stringent data protection rules that will take effect in Europe in May.

Here’s a snapshot of global markets and what could move them this week, including tech and oil earnings.

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Credit...Vahid Salemi/Associated Press

• Heavy snow brought relief and joy to many in drought-struck Iran. [The New York Times]

• Legislation in Poland that would outlaw blaming Poles for the crimes of the Holocaust has prompted furious condemnation from Israelis across the political spectrum. [The New York Times]

• Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled that Carlos Puigdemont, the Catalan separatist leader who remains wanted on possible sedition charges, would have to return to Barcelona to be chosen as Catalonia’s new leader. [Associated Press]

• President Trump told a British broadcaster that he would be “tougher” in Brexit negotiations than the government of Prime Minister Theresa May. [Associated Press]

• The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, will after all campaign in favor of ending his country’s constitutional ban on abortion. [The New York Times]

• Saudi Arabia’s most prominent investor, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has been freed from detention at a luxury hotel in Riyadh. It is widely assumed that he purchased his freedom by handing over a chunk of his fortune. [The New York Times]

• Voters in Bolivia told President Evo Morales in a referendum that it was time to retire. But he intends to run again, part of a tilt toward authoritarian tendencies in Latin America. [The New York Times]

• A French mountain climber who had been stranded on a treacherous peak in Pakistan was rescued, but her Polish climbing partner remained in peril. [The New York Times]

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

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Credit...Lars Leetaru

• Here’s how to make sure your medicine makes it through customs.

• This year, travel with wellness in mind.

• Start the week with a red lentil stew spiced with turmeric, chili and ginger.

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Credit...Greg Du Toit/Barcroft Media, via Getty Images

• Conservationists are using elephants’ fear of bees to protect the endangered animals from farmers and poachers.

• Roger Federer, 36, won the Australian Open under a controversially closed roof. It was his 20th Grand Slam singles title. Caroline Wozniacki won her first.

• The African Nations Championship in Morocco is a lucrative marketplace for soccer talent scouts who can facilitate a move to Europe.

• What does a suffering person want to hear? In our Opinion section, a woman living with a serious cancer weighed in.

• At Yale, a course that tells students how to lead more satisfying lives may be the most popular in the university’s history.

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Credit...Sam Falk/The New York Times

He was born in San Francisco and named after a Confederate general. But he died as a celebrated poet of the United States and its people, especially the flinty farmers of New England.

Robert Frost, whose life was full of paradoxes, died on this day in 1963 in a Boston hospital. A gifted observer of nature and the human spirit, he won four Pulitzer Prizes and spoke at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961.

Frost lived for years in Vermont and New Hampshire, initially working as a farmer, reporter and shoemaker. His poetry, including works like “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” used colloquial language and spoke to an urbanized generation that longed for the simplicities of rural life.

“I don’t like to write anything I don’t see,” he said before his 88th birthday.

But he “had no illusions about the life of the soil,” The Times noted the day after his death in 1963, in part because he knew it could be “spiritually crippling and physically exhausting.”

Mike Ives contributed reporting.

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This briefing was prepared for the European morning and is updated online. Browse past briefings here.

You can get the briefing delivered to your inbox Monday through Friday. We have four global editions, timed for the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia, and an Evening Briefing on U.S. weeknights. Check out our full range of free newsletters here.

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What would you like to see here? Contact us at europebriefing@nytimes.com.

Follow Patrick Boehler on Twitter: @mrbaopanrui.

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