Priti Patel, Angela Merkel, Catalonia: Your Thursday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/briefing/priti-patel-angela-merkel-catalonia.html

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Let’s start with good news: Doctors in Germany and Italy saved the life of a 7-year-old boy with an innovative form of gene therapy.

A genetic disease had destroyed two-thirds of his skin, but doctors managed to replace it with artificially grown sheets of healthy skin like the sheet above.

“When he woke up,” a doctor said, “he realized he had a new skin.” The boy is now leading a normal life and even plays soccer.

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• In Britain, the shaky government of Prime Minister Theresa May has suffered yet another setback as it grapples with critical decisions on the country’s departure from the European Union. Negotiations with Brussels resume today.

The international development secretary, Priti Patel, above, became the second cabinet minister to quit in a week. She resigned after breaching ministerial rules by holding a dozen unauthorized meetings with Israeli officials.

Meanwhile in Germany, our correspondent looked at the challenges that Chancellor Angela Merkel faces in forming a coalition government that spans the political spectrum. (One analyst gave Ms. Merkel a 2-to-1 chance of success.)

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• Catalonia’s independence movement is showing some signs of strain, our correspondent reports from Barcelona.

A general strike on Wednesday had relatively limited impact, and the two main Catalan parties said that they would not campaign together in next month’s election.

As expected, Spain’s Constitutional Court nullified separatist lawmakers’ Oct. 27 declaration of independence.

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• In the United States, Democratic victories in state and local elections on Tuesday have shaken the Republican tax push.

It was largely voters in socially moderate, multiethnic communities surrounding major cities who embraced Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere, in an election that could foreshadow next year’s midterms.

We collected reactions from writers on the right and the left. And in this video, we talked to Trump voters about how they feel about the president one year on.

(Above, Danica Roem, the first transgender person to be elected to the Virginia legislature.)

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• Vehicles in Europe would have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by almost a third by 2030 under new proposals unveiled by E.U. regulators.

Critics said that failing to set more ambitious targets could make European carmakers vulnerable to faster moving competitors like Tesla or emerging Chinese conglomerates.

Our magazine devoted its entire new issue to the question of autonomous cars and the future they could usher in. Can the car decouple from its history as a status symbol?

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• Finally, our Cooking team debuted an interactive guide to Thanksgiving.

It shows you how to cook an entire T-Day dinner in about eight hours, using one oven, four burners, and great recipes.

• Dara Khosrowshahi, above, will give his first public interview at the helm of Uber, the embattled ride-hailing giant, at our DealBook annual conference today. Check our site for live coverage in the European afternoon.

• The Trump administration is said to have called on Time Warner to sell assets, potentially including CNN, as a condition of its AT&T merger.

• We need to talk about the tsunami of money from the world’s dictators and oligarchs that is flooding Silicon Valley, our tech columnist writes. (Just consider Snap’s new backer: Tencent of China.)

• TripAdvisor started putting symbols next to hotels identified as locations of sexual assault.

• Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

• Germany must create a third, neutral gender category, the country’s constitutional court ruled, to ensure individuals’ privacy rights. [The New York Times]

• Humanitarian relief groups expressed growing alarm over Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Yemen, warning that the action had imperiled lifesaving assistance to millions. [The New York Times]

• President Xi Jinping of China showered President Trump with hospitality, but experts said that the personal contact may not alter their divisions on pressuring North Korea. [The New York Times]

• Russia has helped Venezuela avert a default by restructuring some loans. Meanwhile, E.U. member states agreed to impose an arms embargo on the Latin American country over human rights violations. [BBC]

• The massacre at a Texas church was captured on video. The images, according to an official, show the gunman methodically shooting his victims for seven terrifying minutes. [The New York Times]

• Facing sexual assault allegations, Kevin Spacey was dropped from the coming movie “All the Money in the World.” [The New York Times]

• The latest revelations from the Paradise Papers, a leaked trove of documents from offshore accounts: Universities are also using secretive overseas investments. [The New York Times]

• Pope Francis has a message for Catholics: Put down your smartphone during Mass. [The New York Times]

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

• Here’s our guide to this holiday season’s biggest video games and consoles. (Above, a screenshot of Star Wars Battlefront II.)

• Want to give to charity? Do your research first.

• Recipe of the day: Forget the usual side dishes and make sweet-and-sour cauliflower.

• Italy is trying to strike a balance between preservation and tourist money with a plan to divert bigger cruise ships from Venice.

• Patti Smith walked us through parts of the Paris Photo fair in this Facebook Live video.

• Our Cairo bureau chief discussed the gadgets and apps he’s using. (“Sometimes, the old-fashioned tech is best,” he said of his alarm clock.)

• A travel writer ventured to Cognac to explore the French region’s storied brandy makers and found some pleasantly devoid of commercialism.

• Ball-stealing baboons are an added challenge at a European Tour golf tournament that starts in South Africa today.

• And researchers found a grasshopper that had been embedded in a Vincent van Gogh painting for more than a century.

News of a butter shortage in France spurred newsroom chatter about one of the country’s signature treats: the croissant (kwah-SAHN if you want to be French about it).

The last time we discussed the subject at such length may have been 2013, when the Cronut burst onto the scene, fresh from the New York bakery of Dominique Ansel. (It’s a “Frankenpastry” hybrid that is half croissant, half doughnut.)

But the croissant, it turns out, was always a hybrid. According to local lore and “Larousse Gastronomique,” it was created in Budapest in 1686, or Vienna in 1683, to celebrate the defeat of the Ottomans, and was later adopted by the French. The crescent shape, the story goes, was inspired by the Ottoman flag.

We asked the head of our Cooking department, Sam Sifton, for a recipe — but it turns out, we’re still working on one. “We haven’t yet developed one that’s really, truly accessible to the home cook,” he told us. “Croissants are hard!”

Here’s his advice: “We find the best ones we can at the bakery, eat a few and let the rest go a little stale, so we can use them in Melissa Clark’s incredible recipe for a buttery breakfast casserole. It may be the highest use of a croissant in the world.”

Karen Zraick contributed reporting.

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