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Your Thursday News Briefing: Donald Trump, China, Mark Cuban
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Good morning.
Here’s what you need to know:
The plot to subvert an election
For two years, Americans have learned details of Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election: hacked and leaked emails, widespread fraud on social media, overtures from people suspected of being Kremlin spies, and allegations of conspiracy.
The clamor of partisan politics has taken a toll on public comprehension and confidence, as has President Trump’s frequent claim that Russian interference is all a “hoax.”
This morning, The Times published a special report with a full timeline exploring what has been learned, and what it all means. Read it here.
• At Facebook: With seven weeks until the midterm elections, the social network is setting up a central hub to root out disinformation. We visited the “War Room.”
Impasse may benefit Brett Kavanaugh
Christine Blasey Ford is resisting appearing before lawmakers on Monday to testify about her accusation that the Supreme Court nominee sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers.
Senate Republicans have rejected her request for an F.B.I. investigation, and said that Monday is her one chance to be heard.
The standoff seemed to draw wavering Republican senators back into Judge Kavanaugh’s camp on Wednesday, and a committee meeting has been scheduled for next Wednesday for a possible vote to move his nomination to the Senate floor.
• In profile: Dr. Blasey, 51, is a university professor in California. A team of our reporters spoke to her friends and associates, who described her as a precise, scientific thinker, a community leader and a devoted mother of two boys. Read more here.
• Fact check: Dr. Blasey has been the subject of disinformation that spread widely on social media. Here are five false and misleading claims about her.
On the cusp of a new Cold War
As the U.S. and China engage in a tit-for-tat trade dispute, some in the business and policy communities see the opening stages of an economic conflict that could persist for many years.
“This thing will last,” Jack Ma, the billionaire chairman of Alibaba Group, said this week in China. “If you want a short-term solution, there is no solution.”
Both countries have dug in their heels, despite a softening Chinese economy that President Trump sees as an opening to force Beijing’s hand.
• Inside the administration: After an interview in which Mr. Trump again criticized Jeff Sessions (“I don’t have an attorney general,” he declared), the president was asked on Wednesday if he planned to fire Mr. Sessions. “We are looking at lots of different things,” Mr. Trump said.
Seeking help, they drowned in a van
Two women in South Carolina voluntarily went to hospitals this week seeking mental health care. They were committed and were being transported to a health facility in a sheriff’s van when it was overtaken by floodwaters after Hurricane Florence.
The women’s bodies were recovered Wednesday night. The two sheriff’s deputies who were in the van escaped and have been put on administrative leave pending an investigation.
• On tour: President Trump visited flooded areas of the Carolinas on Wednesday, deploying sardonic humor, pep-rally enthusiasm and a talent for always finding a silver lining.
• Video: Watch aerial footage of the flooding in North Carolina, taken by a drone.
Benedict rebukes Francis’ critics
In private letters, Benedict XVI, the pope emeritus, has said that the “anger” expressed by his supporters risks tarnishing his legacy.
In 2013, Benedict became the first pope in almost 600 years to resign, and some of his conservative supporters have privately expressed frustration with him for allowing the election of Francis, who they think is ruining the church.
• The letters: They were published today by the German newspaper Bild, which provided them in their entirety to The Times.
Business
• The editor of The New York Review of Books, Ian Buruma, left his position after an uproar over the magazine’s publication of an essay by a Canadian radio broadcaster who had been accused of sexual assault.
• Mark Cuban, the owner of the N.B.A.’s Dallas Mavericks, will pay $10 million to women’s leadership and domestic-violence organizations to address sexual harassment and other improper conduct in the team’s front office.
• As many print publications struggle to survive, the largess of a wealthy owner can seem like a godsend. After the sale of Time magazine this week, our columnist explains concerns that these buyers are assuming too much influence.
• More screen, more speed, more fitness capability — and more money. We review the new Apple watch.
• U.S. stocks were mixed on Wednesday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets today.
Smarter Living
Tips for a more fulfilling life.
• Try giving a wedding gift that will help the couple relax.
• The right lighting can lift your spirits and increase productivity.
• Recipe of the day: Apple pie bars deliver all the pleasure of apple pie without rolling out dough.
Noteworthy
• In memoriam
Arthur Mitchell, one of ballet’s first black stars, founded the groundbreaking Dance Theater of Harlem. He was 84.
• Bob Woodward’s best seller
“Fear,” an inside look at the Trump White House by the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is No. 1 on both our hardcover nonfiction and combined print and e-book best-seller lists. You can find all of our best-seller lists here.
• Baseball’s chase for the playoffs
Here’s where the teams stand after Wednesday’s games.
• A chain that restored itself
Restoration Hardware seemed doomed. Now, the chain of home goods is a vast and booming bricks-and-mortar empire.
Here’s more from this week’s Style section.
• Best of late-night TV
On “Full Frontal,” Samantha Bee lamented the treatment of Christine Blasey Ford: “It’s been 27 years since Anita Hill. Can we please try to be less horrendous about it this time? We’ve had enough of these ’90s reboots. We’re good.”
• Quotation of the day
“We’re a cross section of New York. We got yeshiva kids, madrasa kids. We have Jesus, Moses and Muhammad, all playing on the same court.”
— Gerard Papa, who has run the Flames youth basketball program in Brooklyn for 44 years. School security rules may threaten the group’s future.
• The Times, in other words
Here’s an image of today’s front page, and links to our Opinion content and crossword puzzles.
• What we’re reading
Alan Henry, a Smarter Living editor, recommends this article from HuffPost’s Highline magazine: “An amazing breakdown of how shamefully obesity is handled in America, from its roots in our food production system to the traumatic ways individuals and our medical system interact with people who are overweight.”
Back Story
The typhoon that battered parts of Asia in the past week is named Mangkhut. What does the name mean, and why did the Philippines call the storm Ompong instead?
“Mangkhut” is Thai for mangosteen, a reddish-purple fruit native to Southeast Asia. The longtime New York Times journalist and food writer R. W. Apple Jr. once wrote that he would “rather eat one than a hot fudge sundae.”
“Words can no more describe how mangosteens taste than explain why I love my wife and children,” he wrote in 2003.
The mangosteen, which has a hard shell and white flesh inside, is cheap and plentiful in Asia but rarer and more expensive in the West, where it is nonetheless growing in popularity.
The task of naming typhoons falls to the Japan Meteorological Agency, which uses names from a list suggested by different countries. But when typhoons enter the Philippine “area of responsibility” for monitoring storms, they are assigned different names by the national meteorological agency there, which has issued its own list each year since it was established in 1972. Thus, Mangkhut became Ompong in the Philippines.
Local names, the country’s agency reasons, are easier for residents to remember and make the storms feel more immediate, increasing the chance that people will take them seriously.
Jennifer Jett wrote today’s Back Story.
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