Tuesday, Sep 10, 2019 | View in browser

Good morning.

A pilots’ strike has grounded British Airways, our reporters got the inside story of the canceled Taliban meeting and Big Tech is in regulators’ crosshairs.

By Andrea Kannapell and Chris Stanford

Grounded planes at Heathrow's Terminal 5 on Monday. Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pilots’ strike grounds British Airways

Some 1,700 canceled flights on Monday and Tuesday, 195,000 rescheduled or refunded passengers, a deserted terminal in Heathrow.

“After many months of trying to resolve the pay dispute, we are extremely sorry that it has come to this,” British Airways said by email on Monday.

The airline may owe disrupted passengers hundreds of pounds in compensation. Here’s what travelers need to know.

The numbers: The airline is offering salary increases totaling 11.5 percent over three years, taking the average pilot from 167,000 pounds in salary and other payments and allowances annually, or about $205,000, to more than £200,000.

The pilots say that they are asking for slightly more — and that the strike will cost the airline around £40 million a day. They plan another strike for Sept. 27.

Advance planning: British Airlines said it had contacted customers two weeks ago to offer a choice of full refunds or alternative flights, even on different airlines. It was not exactly a seamless process.

The rise and fall of the Trump Taliban plan

Our team of White House reporters and international correspondents reconstructed the sudden failure of Mr. Trump’s secret effort to end 18 years of grinding, bloody war in Afghanistan.

What they found: Mr. Trump’s idea of bringing the Taliban to the illustrious Camp David retreat — days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, which set off the war — was just as spur of the moment as his abrupt cancellation of those talks over the weekend.

Excerpt: “On display were all of the characteristic traits of the Trump presidency — the yearning ambition for the grand prize, the endless quest to achieve what no other president has achieved, the willingness to defy convention, the volatile mood swings and the tribal infighting.”

Quotable: Talks with the Taliban are “dead, as far as I’m concerned,” President Trump declared.

Protesters in Khartoum, Sudan, in June. That month, soldiers massacred dozens demonstrating in favor of civilian rule. Ashraf Shazly/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

When hashtags are weapons

Covert influence campaigns have become a favored tool in countries like China and Russia, where the manipulation of social media accompanies strong-arm tactics on the streets.

That’s especially true in the Middle East, where similar tactics are used to bolster authoritarian rule and tamp down the kind of protests that led to the Arab Spring in 2011. We looked at an obscure Egyptian company that racked up millions of followers with social media posts praising Sudan’s military.

The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, at the microphones with his counterparts from many other states on Monday. Michael Reynolds/EPA, via Shutterstock

Scrutiny of tech giants intensifies

The attorneys general from more than four dozen states and territories announced investigations into the market power and corporate behavior of big tech companies.

Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are often lumped together, but their business models differ. The growing grievances against them, however, have one thing in common: fear that the companies are amassing too much power.

Here is the case against Big Tech — and what the companies have argued in response.

Go deeper: A Times analysis shows that Apple’s own apps often dominate its App Store search results, at the expense of competitors like Spotify.

If you have 13 minutes, this is worth it

She, Tina

Charlie Gates for The New York Times

Tina Turner, 79, became a star with Ike Turner in her 20s, escaped his abuse in her 30s, fought her way up the pop charts in her 40s and toured the world through her 60s. Now she would like to sleep in.

“I don’t sing. I don’t dance. I don’t dress up,” she told Amanda Hess, our critic at large, as she discussed “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” which is based on her life and scored with her hits — and coming to Broadway next month.

Here’s what else is happening

Brexit: It was a bad day for Prime Minister Boris Johnson. A measure requiring Britain to seek another extension if there is no withdrawal agreement by Oct. 19 became law. And lawmakers voted to force the government to publish private correspondence about the no-deal Brexit. Here’s the latest.

Nissan: The Japanese automaker’s chief executive, Hiroto Saikawa, will step down, the company announced, less than a year after its former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, was arrested over allegations of financial misconduct.

Iran: A tanker in the Mediterranean that Western nations sought to bar from delivering its oil has unloaded its cargo, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry said. Recent satellite images suggested the recipient was the Syrian government, which would violate European sanctions.

Japan: At least one person was killed and dozens wounded after Typhoon Faxai made landfall in the city of Chiba, east of Tokyo.

Bahamas: The latest official death toll from Hurricane Dorian is 44, but the damage is so great and the Bahamian government so overwhelmed that a full accounting of the missing and dead may not be known for weeks or months. Our correspondent is there.

Australia: The Binna Burra Lodge, one of the country’s oldest nature resorts, was destroyed by a bushfire. Officials warned that climate change and drought threatened to bring Australia its worst fire season on record.

Sam Falk/The New York Times

Snapshot: Above, workers took a lunch break during the construction of the Pan Am (now MetLife) Building in 1962. With a collection of photographs, The Times retraces the golden age of skyscrapers in New York City.

Viral Trump feud: In President Trump’s latest social-media tangle, he attacked the musician John Legend as “boring” and Mr. Legend’s wife, the model Chrissy Teigen, as “filthy mouthed."

Tennis: Our reporter muses on the lessons from the U.S. Open and, more broadly, the “logic-defying dominance” of the sport’s Big Three — Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer.

What we’re watching: This video from the Missouri Farm Bureau. Ana Swanson, our Washington-based trade reporter, calls it “a triumph of low-budget production and farmers’ tans” aimed at passing the revised U.S. trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

Now, a break from the news

Julia Gartland for The New York Times

Cook: Turkey chili is healthy and can be ready in about a half hour. (Our Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter has more recommendations.)

Watch: “Chhichhore,” the director Nitesh Tiwari’s follow-up to “Dangal,” has a sweetly bland message and not much fizz.

Listen: The sound of Los Wembler’s de Iquitos hasn’t changed a lot since 1968. But there’s enough depth and delirium in this music for it to stay fresh, our critic writes.

Go: Book your tickets to Belgrade, Lagos, London, Paris and São Paulo: Our art critic recommends 28 shows worth traveling for.

Smarter Living: Sometimes we all need an honorary auntie. Many kids are lucky to have involved extended family, but if they don’t, they still deserve to have special, supportive people in their lives. One woman recruited a fellow mother who became a “constant presence” for her children and “a gift that many blood families aren’t blessed with.”

And guess what? Skin care masks aren’t just for faces anymore. (They are also for your derrière.)

And now for the Back Story on …

The N.B.A. logo

Jerry West, the former Los Angeles Lakers star, was awarded the Medal of Freedom in a White House ceremony last week, the second retired basketball star President Trump has honored.

Mr. Trump simply called him Jerry, but around the N.B.A. he’s universally known as The Logo.

In 1969 J. Walter Kennedy, the N.B.A.’s commissioner, asked a brand consultant, Alan Siegal, to come up with a new logo modeled after Major League Baseball’s minimalist red-and-blue one. Mr. Siegel combed through the SPORT magazine photo archive and seized on a photo of Mr. West dribbling. He traced it.

See the resemblance? Stephen Lam/Reuters

Fifty years later the result endures — though the N.B.A. has never acknowledged it, possibly to avoid having to pay the player royalties.

Mr. West, who boasts only one N.B.A. championship as a player but eight as an executive, would really prefer to not have the attention, or the logo.

“It’s flattering,” he said on ESPN a couple of years ago. “But if I were the N.B.A., I would be embarrassed about it. I really would.”

That’s it for this briefing. And apologies, we had a fact wrong in yesterday’s Back Story. The discovery that yeast extract could be made into a spread came in 1800s, not 1902. Just for the record.

— Andrea and Chris

Thank you
Melina Delkic helped write today’s briefing. Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford gave us the break from the news. Kevin Draper, our sports business reporter, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about the challenges facing Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain.
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: What many a pointless meeting really should have been (five letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, both Times reporters, appeared on the CBS show Sunday Morning to discuss their new book about Harvey Weinstein, “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.”