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| Developing: Ricardo Rosselló stepped down as Puerto Rico's governor and announced that Pedro Pierluisi would be sworn in as his successor. It will likely be contested in court. |
| Here's the latest. |
 Erin Schaff/The New York Times |
| 1. Dysfunction persists within the Trump administration. |
| President Trump abruptly dropped his plan to nominate Representative John Ratcliffe, above, as the director of national intelligence, after bipartisan criticism about his qualifications to succeed Dan Coats, who is stepping down on Aug. 15. Mr. Trump is now without any obvious candidate to fill the country's top intelligence job. |
| Meanwhile, as officials debate whether to withdraw all Western troops from Afghanistan, senior U.S. military and intelligence officials are sharply divided over how much of a threat the Islamic State affiliate there poses to the West. |
| _____ |
 Nick Oxford/Reuters |
| 2. The U.S. economy added 164,000 jobs in July, as hiring continued at a steady clip despite a trade war with China and a global slowdown. |
| But there are signs that headwinds may be taking a toll: There is a major slowdown underway in jobs that actually make things, like manufacturing, mining and construction. The trade war is probably part of it, both directly and indirectly, our Upshot correspondent writes. Above, a drilling crew member on an oil rig near Wink, Tex. |
| As China considers how to hit back at President Trump, who announced more tariffs this week, it has increasingly acknowledged that it must first address a significant obstacle — its own slumping economy. |
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| 3. We analyzed the Democratic candidates' fund-raising to see how widespread their support was, and created some detailed maps that break it down state by state. |
| The first big data dump of the primaries shows that Senator Bernie Sanders, tapping a huge network of online donors who supported his 2016 presidential bid, has amassed a huge lead, with 746,000 individual donors for a total of $36 million. |
| Representative Tulsi Gabbard has an estimated 88,000 donors and has raised $4 million, drawing support from the far left. The congresswoman from Hawaii thinks we're doomed, or will be if America doesn't leave the rest of the world alone. That's why the 38-year-old is running for president. |
| _____ |
 Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Associated Press |
| 4. A police administrative judge in New York recommended firing the police officer who put Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold five years ago, causing a national outcry over aggressive policing in minority neighborhoods. |
| The decision sets in motion the final stage of a long legal and political battle over the fate of the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, pictured above in May, which sparked a heated discussion during the Democratic presidential debate this week. |
| The New York police commissioner, James O'Neill, must now make a final decision on whether to allow Officer Pantaleo to remain on the force, but the N.Y.P.D. did suspend him on Friday. |
| _____ |
 Sean Gallup/Getty Images |
| 5. Climate change has made events like last week's European heat wave at least 10 times more likely, according to a group that conducts rapid analyses of weather events. |
| The summer scorcher, the second to hit Europe since late June, set temperature records in Paris, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries. The heat has since moved north over Greenland, above, causing the surface of the island's vast ice sheet to melt at near-record levels. |
| We also talked to 10 Republican insiders about the rising influence of young conservative voters who identify climate change as a top priority. Strategists said lawmakers were aware of the problem, but few were taking action — a worrisome prospect for the planet and the party. |
| _____ |
 Tasneem Alsultan for The New York Times |
| 6. It came in thick bureaucratic language, but the impact was clear: Saudi Arabia is chipping away at a guardianship system that oppresses women. |
| All Saudis over the age of 21 now have the right to handle their own affairs, along with the ability to obtain a passport and travel on their own, granting women the kind of rights that had previously been under the control of male relatives. Above, travelers at the Buraydah train station on Friday. |
| As a practical matter, the changes will most likely take time to trickle down to individual households and to women. As a symbolic matter, however, they are pivotal as part of a long-term social evolution. The biggest beneficiaries may be divorced and widowed women, who currently cannot run their own family affairs. |
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| 7. This math equation is stumping the internet. |
| Mathematical Twitter is normally a quiet, well-ordered place, but not today, after a provocateur shared a seemingly simple problem that produced all kinds of answers, depending on your approach. |
| By all means try to solve the equation, but mathematician Steven Strogatz writes for The Times that ultimately it's like writing the phrase "Eats shoots and leaves" and concluding that language is capricious: "Well, yes, in the absence of punctuation, it is; that's why we invented the stuff." |
| _____ |
 Perfect Day |
| 8. After impossible meat, cow-free dairy is coming soon to a grocery store near you. |
| Thanks to advances in synthetic biology, researchers at several start-up companies have begun producing the proteins that make dairy taste like dairy. The process is comparable to the way Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat make meatless burgers. Above, a vegan, lactose-free ice cream containing milk proteins. |
| Who's going to tell the cows? That's unclear, but Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist who studies dogs, kept a list of things people said to their pets. Our running monologue tells us a lot about who we are, she writes in an Op-Ed. |
| _____ |
 Julio Cortez/Associated Press |
| 9. Larger bases, an automatic strike zone and stealing first base? No problem in the lower-level Atlantic League — and maybe someday the majors too. |
| The Atlantic League, whose eight teams are peppered with former major leaguers seeking one more chance, has become an M.L.B. testing ground for ideas that could make the game livelier. At least 10 new baseball rules are being tested. |
| Our soccer columnist Rory Smith also looks at the evolving business of soccer with a profile of the Spanish club Sevilla, which has transformed its fortunes through uncommonly deep scouting and a very smart man with a cellphone. |
| _____ |
 Jacob Moscovitch for The New York Times |
| 10. And finally, the secret to having the best summer ever: In Columbia, Mo., it's friendship and roller skates. |
| Noah Doolady, above left, learned to skate when he was 5 years old, and always dreamed of having a partner with whom to zip around town. His need became even more acute when the local roller rink closed early this year, so he bought five extra pairs of skates "hoping that someone would skate with me." |
| Then he met Kev Presley, above right. The two love to skate downtown, and when they're feeling dangerous, head to gravel roads. "Skating by yourself is still great," Kev said, "but skating with someone else is just magic." |
| Here's hoping you skate into a magical weekend. |
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