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Your Thursday News Briefing: Donald Trump, China, Mark Cuban

President Trump visited New Bern, N.C., and other areas affected by Hurricane Florence on Wednesday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

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.”

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.

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Trump Says Kavanaugh Has Been Treated ‘Very, Very Tough’

Before boarding Marine One for a visit to North Carolina, President Trump again defended Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford, a university professor.

They’re hurting somebody’s life very badly. And it’s very unfair, I think to — as you know, Justice Kavanaugh has been treated very, very tough, and his family — I think it’s a very unfair thing what’s going on. So, we’ll see. But I do think this: They’ve given it a lot of time. They will continue to give it a lot of time, and really it’s up to the Senate. I’d really want to see her. I really would want to see what she has to say. I think he’s an extraordinary man. I think he’s a man of great intellect, as I’ve been telling you. And he has an unblemished record. If she shows up, that would be wonderful. If she doesn’t show up, that would be unfortunate. Well, the F.B.I. has been very involved with respect to Justice Kavanaugh — they know Justice Kavanaugh very well. They’ve investigated him, I guess, six times and they’ve investigated him for this hearing. Look, if she shows up and makes a credible showing, that will be very interesting and we’ll have to make a decision. But I can only say this: He is such an outstanding man — very hard for me to imagine that anything happened.

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Before boarding Marine One for a visit to North Carolina, President Trump again defended Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford, a university professor.CreditCredit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

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.

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Christine Blasey Ford was reluctant to come forward with her accusation that Judge Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her.
The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: A High School Assault

The allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh prompted Caitlin Flanagan, a writer for The Atlantic, to share her own story.

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.

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.

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Aerial footage from North Carolina shows the scale of flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence.CreditCredit...Niko Koppel/The New York Times

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.

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.

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.

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All of the pleasure of apple pie with less of the fuss.Credit...Linda Xiao for The New York Times

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.

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Inside Restoration Hardware’s new 90,000-square-foot store in Manhattan.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times

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.”

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.”

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The mangosteen is a tropical fruit that gave its name to a typhoon.Credit...David Karp for The New York Times

“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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