Bavaria, Saudi Arabia, Brexit: Your Monday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/briefing/bavaria-saudi-arabia-brexit.html

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Good morning. An election upset in Bavaria, international turmoil over Saudi Arabia and a beach house that took nature’s worst.

Here’s the latest:

• A political earthquake in Bavaria.

When the German state on the front lines of the 2015 migrant crisis went to the polls on Sunday, voters were widely expected to abandon the conservative allies of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

They did, but with a twist: Bavarians gave the biggest lift to the Greens, who ran on open borders and the fight against climate change.

The Greens doubled their haul to 17.2 percent, which makes them the second-biggest political force in Bavaria and Germany. It was another sign of the collapse of entrenched political parties in Europe.

Above, Ludwig Hartmann and Katharina Schulze, leading Greens, celebrating the returns.

The Christian Social Union, allies of Ms. Merkel, lost a long-held absolute majority, adding to doubts about the stability of her coalition.

Voters also defected to the anti-immigrant, far-right Alternative for Germany party, giving it about 10 percent — enough to enter Bavaria’s Parliament for the first time.

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• A U.S.-Saudi clash over Jamal Khashoggi.

Turkey’s assertion that the dissident Saudi journalist was tortured, killed and dismembered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has created an international crisis.

Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement demanding a “credible investigation,” and President Trump warned of “severe punishment” if the Saudi royal court was found to be responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance. But he has resisted pressure to postpone or cancel arms sales to Saudi Arabia, arguing that it would cost Americans money and jobs.

Saudi Arabia, which denies any role in the disappearance, warned that any punitive American response would be met “with greater action,” backed by the kingdom’s economic might.

With the Saudi crown prince’s image as a reformer falling apart, so is his glittering investor conference in Riyadh this month. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, is the latest participant to back out.

Mr. Khashoggi had both an affinity for Islamist political movements and close ties to the Saudi royal family — until the crown prince cut those ties.

In Opinion: Mr. Khashoggi’s fiancée describes the journalist as a fierce patriot, passionate about democracy, human rights and freedom of expression.

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• A reversal by President Trump on foreign aid.

Mr. Trump, who has harshly criticized foreign aid, quietly signed a bill this month to provide $60 billion in financing to companies willing to do business in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

The shift is driven by a desire to counter China’s infrastructure investments in those regions, which are part of a plan to gain greater global influence. Above, a project in Sri Lanka financed by a Chinese company.

Separately, we followed a trail of online evidence that unmasks the origin of China’s sweeping detention of Uighur Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang, with President Xi Jinping and other senior officials playing a decisive role.

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• The aftermath of Hurricane Michael.

The storm, which caught forecasters off guard, killed at least 19 people in four states and left parts of Florida without power, potentially for weeks. Rescue teams are looking for the tiniest signs of life amid the debris.

One beach house in Mexico Beach, Fla., above, proved a rare match for the storm.

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• A New York story.

Millions of immigrants come to the U.S. dreaming of opportunity, only to be confronted with harsh reality.

So it was with a woman named Song Yang.

Our reporters pieced together the layers upon layers of her story, from her starting point in China to her last breath in the borough of Queens.

• President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, above, saw his net worth climb to $324 million over the past decade. Yet he paid close to no federal income taxes, according to a Times investigation. Here’s how he did it.

• Facebook said two Russian companies were “scraping” its user data, some of which was used for facial recognition tools.

• Sears, the American retail chain that pioneered the strategy of selling everything to everyone, has filed for bankruptcy as part of a reorganization plan.

• Coming this week: economic snapshots from major banks and China.

• Global stocks partly rebounded at the end of last week after sharp declines. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

• Pope Francis canonized seven new saints, including Archbishop Óscar Romero, in portrait above left, who was gunned down in El Salvador by a right-wing death squad 38 years ago, and Pope Paul VI, above right, who is credited with modernizing the church in the 1960s. [The New York Times]

• Meanwhile, the pope expelled two retired Chilean bishops accused of child sexual abuse. [The New York Times]

• It’s a crucial week for negotiations over Britain’s withdrawal from the E.U., with the two sides deadlocked ahead of a planned summit meeting between the British prime minister, Theresa May, and her European counterparts. [The New York Times]

• A snowstorm in the Himalayas killed at least eight climbers in Nepal, including a world-record holder. [The New York Times]

• Soliciting murder: A British man pleaded guilty to that and 13 other offenses for sending racist letters to, among many others, mosques and Queen Elizabeth, urging violence against Muslims. [The New York Times]

• Canada on Wednesday will become only the second country in the world to legalize cannabis. How will that change Canadian culture? [The New York Times]

• Greece banned “overweight” tourists from riding donkeys up the steep slopes of Santorini after activists complained that the creatures were suffering spinal injuries. [CNN]

Tips for a more fulfilling life.

• Our best decorating tips — whether it’s your first home or a new one.

• Following your passions is good, and good for you. Here’s how to get started.

• Recipe of the day: Try braised tofu in caramel sauce, a vegetarian take on a Vietnamese classic.

• Chinese and South Korean tourists are flocking to the Seven Sisters cliffs in England to seek out the perfect shot for social media.

• The Humboldt Forum, a new museum in Berlin, has ignited a debate about Germany’s colonial past. And in Stockholm, the Nationalmuseum has reopened after an eye-catching renovation that vaults it into the 21st century.

• What if masculinity were literally toxic? That’s the question a new novel, “The Water Cure,” tries to answer, joining a growing wave of dystopian feminist fiction. And the Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé won an alternative to this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, which was not awarded because of a sexual misconduct scandal.

In October 1990, the United States was fretting about an invasion across the Mexican border — but it was one that no wall could stop.

The interlopers? “Killer bees,” a particularly aggressive honeybee whose arrival in the United States was first recorded near the border town of Hidalgo, Tex.

The bees, bred in Brazil from African and European stock in hopes of increasing honey production, had escaped decades before and had been breeding and moving northward ever since.

While swarms occasionally attack people, with gruesome and even fatal results, one place has embraced them: Hidalgo.

The town celebrates its brush with fame with an enormous killer bee statue and is getting a local hockey team known as the Killer Bees. (It has had other Killer Bees teams in the past, but they left the hive.)

By the way, their sting isn’t any more potent than a European bee’s; it’s just that they tend to sting in swarms.

Today’s Back Story was written by John Schwartz, a native of Texas.

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