Your Monday Evening Briefing

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October 14, 2019

Your Monday Evening Briefing

By andrea kannapell and hiroko masuike

Good evening. Here's the latest.

Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

1. Syrian forces streamed into the country's northeastern region for the first time in years.

They filled a vacuum opened by President Trump's decision to abandon the United States' former Kurdish allies there. The Kurds then made a deal with the Syrian government to try to drive back Turkey's incursion.

The beneficiaries: Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president (and in the view of the U.S. a war criminal), along with Iran and Russia.

President Trump, who essentially greenlighted the Turkish operation last week, took a harsher line today, raising tariffs on Turkey's steel and suspending trade deal negotiations with the country.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

2. House impeachment investigators spent the day in a closed-door session, listening to the testimony of Fiona Hill, above, the administration's former top adviser on Russia and Europe.

She is the first person who worked in the White House to be deposed in the inquiry, which promises to be heading into an active week.

We're trying to get a readout from the session, but our reporters learned that she was expected to testify that she and other officials objected to the removal of the ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who had been targeted by President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and others pressing Ukraine to investigate Mr. Trump's Democratic rivals.

Bridget Bennett for The New York Times

3. Democrats are preparing to face off in the biggest primary debate ever.

Twelve presidential candidates will share the stage Tuesday night, with Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren again at the center. Recent polls have established Ms. Warren as a clear front-runner, but she still lacks the endorsement of a single governor, big-city mayor or fellow senator outside Massachusetts. Above, she marched in Las Vegas's Pride parade last week.

Ahead of the debate — which The Times is hosting, along with CNN — get to know the reporters covering this crucial election, and meet our National editor, Marc Lacey, who will be one of the event's moderators.

Jake Bleiberg/Associated Press

4. The Fort Worth police officer who shot and killed a 28-year-old black woman, Atatiana Jefferson, in her home was identified as Aaron Dean, who is white.

Ed Kraus, the interim Fort Worth police chief, said that Mr. Dean had resigned hours before he could be fired and that he was not cooperating with investigators. Chief Kraus also said he had asked the F.B.I. to review the shooting for possible civil rights violations. Above, flowers have piled up at Ms. Jefferson's home.

In a separate case in Georgia — one that has dragged on for years — a white police officer, Robert Olsen, was found guilty of several lesser charges, but not of murder, for the killing of Anthony Hill, an unarmed black man he encountered wandering naked outside an apartment complex in 2015.

And a sheriff's deputy in Missouri, Lauren Michael, has been charged and is under further investigation after using the same excuse in two fatal shootings: that the person had been reaching for her Taser.

5. The macabre video shown at a weekend conference for President Trump's supporters has raised many questions. We're tracking down who made it.

An edited clip of a church massacre scene from the movie "Kingsman: The Secret Service," it shows Mr. Trump's head superimposed on the body of a man who shoots, stabs and brutally assaults members of the news media and political opponents.

Our article about the video has drawn a staggering number of readers, and hundreds have left comments.

The White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, tweeted in the morning that Mr. Trump would see the video shortly, but that "based upon everything he has heard, he strongly condemns" it.

Pool photo by Leon Neal

6. Queen Elizabeth II reopened the British Parliament.

In a dramatic ceremony that involves hostage-taking, heaps of jewels almost too heavy to wear and a search for explosives, she set out the government's agenda for the new term. We have a guide to the wacky, centuries-old traditions.

Beyond all of the fanfare, negotiators were scrambling in a pivotal week for Brexit (this time for real). Prime Minister Boris Johnson has until Saturday to come up with a plan that both pleases the E.U. and passes Parliament if he wants Britain to leave the bloc by Oct. 31.

Source: Documents compiled in internal Deutsche Bank investigation. By Guilbert Gates

7. Deutsche Bank lavished gifts on members of China's political elite and hired scores of their relatives, in a brazen — and successful — campaign to win business and become a major player in the country.

The bank's rule-bending rise was chronicled in confidential documents prepared by the company and its outside lawyers covering a 15-year period, which include spreadsheets, emails, internal investigative reports and transcripts of interviews with senior executives.

The documents were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with The New York Times.

Separately, the Nobel Prize in economics went to three researchers — Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of M.I.T. and Michael Kremer of Harvard — for their experimental approach toward alleviating poverty.

8. Raise a glass to winemakers.

Around the world, smart producers are working on ways to keep their vineyards flourishing despite hotter summers, warmer winters, droughts and the sometimes violent expressions of climate change, like freak hailstorms, spring frosts, flooding and wildfires.

In the first of a four-part series, The Times's wine critic, Eric Asimov, teases out the major themes: new technologies, experiments with different grapes, a shifting map for viticulture, higher-altitude vineyards, and planting to limit rather than maximize exposure to sunlight.

Jeremy Dennis for The New York Times

9. Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples' Day?

It depends on where you live. This year alone, at least five states and numerous cities have joined a long list of places officially recognizing the latter of the two. Some cities are having unofficial, elaborate celebrations to counter Columbus Day, including New York, where Taino dancers and singers performed.

And from Opinion, another piece of Columbus Day's fraught history: Its creation was instrumental in moving Italian immigrants "from racialized pariah status in the 19th century to white Americans in good standing in the 20th."

Brian Finke for The New York Times

10. And finally, Fortnite has gone dark. (If you're a teenager, this is probably old news.)

The massively popular multiplayer video game surprised players when it interrupted battles around the world on Sunday with a black hole that consumed everything in the game.

The game has been inaccessible since, and its social media channels have gone quiet, save for a live video feed of the swirling black hole. Players are speculating that when Fortnite returns, it could feature major changes — like a new setting altogether.

Have a victorious evening (Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo certainly are).

Melina Delkic and Tom Wright-Piersanti helped compile this briefing.

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