Your Tuesday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/briefing/oil-trump-taxes-israel-election.html

Version 0 of 1.

Good morning.

We’re covering U.S. and Saudi officials’ response to the attacks on oil facilities, what looks like a close election in Israel and the “Jim Morrison of poets.”

Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are moving closer to blaming Iran for the weekend attack on Saudi oil facilities. But they appear to want to avoid military confrontation.

Asked if Iran was responsible, President Trump said, “It’s looking that way.” But he stopped short of a definitive accusation.

Mr. Trump also said that he would “like to avoid” a military conflict with Tehran, but warned that the U.S. was prepared for war if necessary.

While the Saudis said they would “forcefully respond to these aggressions,” they also stopped short of directly blaming Iran and did not call for immediate retaliation.

Go deeper: We analyzed satellite photos, comparing them to independent sources, to determine what they show about the attack and what they leave unclear.

Impact: Oil prices jumped faster than at any time in over a decade. The attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq plant, which accounts for 5 percent of global oil supplies, and a nearby facility took 5.7 million barrels a day of production offline for at least a few days.

State prosecutors subpoenaed President Trump’s accounting firm, demanding eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

It is part of a criminal investigation into the role of the president and his family business in hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. (He has said there was no affair.)

What happened? Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer, paid $130,000 to Ms. Daniels before the election and was reimbursed by Mr. Trump and his company. He later pleaded guilty to breaking federal campaign finance laws.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is examining whether the reimbursements violated New York state laws.

But... Even if prosecutors obtain the tax records, the documents will be covered by secrecy rules governing grand juries, meaning they would not become public unless they were used as evidence in a criminal case.

Voting begins today in the country’s second election in five months. Early results may come late tonight.

The first election ended inconclusively, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to stitch together a coalition government — a first for Israel.

Even though Mr. Netanyahu is facing possible indictment on accusations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, polls indicate a tight race between his conservative Likud party and the Blue and White party, led by a former military chief, Benny Gantz. Another deadlock is possible.

Go deeper: Mr. Netanyahu failed to form a government after the last election because his longtime ally Avigdor Liberman refused to join forces with him. It was an ugly breakup for an odd political couple.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s first meeting with Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, to discuss potential plans for Britain’s withdrawal from the E.U. on Oct. 31 ended — surprise, surprise — with no breakthrough.

Mr. Johnson skipped a scheduled news conference after protesters booed him, leaving an opening for a dramatic speech from his counterpart in Luxembourg. (“You can’t hold people’s future hostage for party political gains,” Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said, gesturing to the empty podium.)

Behind the scenes: Mr. Johnson was put off by the bad optics of the protesters outside the gates, diplomats said in interviews.

Substance: Despite Mr. Johnson’s claims that he may have an acceptable alternative to his predecessor’s Brexit plan, European officials, including Mr. Bettel, say they have yet to see anything concrete.

The poet Arthur Rimbaud was long dismissed because of his flouting of traditional values and his homosexuality, and he was shunned in his hometown in northern France after describing it as “stupid” and “hideous.”

But more than a century after his death, his reputation has flourished, and his grave is now a tourist attraction in his hometown, Charleville-Mézières. Fans send letters from as far away as South Korea and Japan.

Spain: The national court ordered the release of Hugo Carvajal, a former intelligence chief of Venezuela, after it rejected an American request to extradite him to the U.S. to stand trial. He was accused of facilitating drug trafficking, as well as providing illegal support to Colombia’s FARC rebels.

Airbus: The World Trade Organization ruled in a 15-year-old case over European subsidies that the U.S. could impose tariffs on the plane manufacturer, a move likely to exacerbate trans-Atlantic trade tensions.

Brett Kavanaugh: A Democratic senator expressed concern last year that the F.B.I. was not following up on allegations against the Supreme Court nominee. Separately, our deputy editorial page director, James Dao, answered questions about how The Times handled an essay on Mr. Kavanaugh and a third accusation of sexual misconduct against him.

Guantánamo Bay: It costs about $13 million per prisoner to house detainees on the remote naval base, set up 18 years ago as part of the war on terrorism.

FIFA: A report financed by the global soccer body, two of its confederations and several top European leagues traced the signal of a large-scale piracy operation to a Saudi Arabia-backed satellite provider. Hundreds of soccer matches and other sporting events were stolen and aired.

Snapshot: Above, “Devolved Parliament” by Banksy. The painting will be offered at Sotheby’s in London on Oct. 3 with a valuation of about $1.9 million to $2.5 million, a year after one of his iconic “Girl With Balloon” paintings shredded itself moments after selling at Sotheby’s in the artistic prank of the century.

Champions League: Liverpool, the defending champion, will play Napoli today at 8 p.m. G.M.T. And for Red Bull Salzburg, also playing, just reaching the group stage is a pleasure and a vindication for a vision, our correspondent writes.

Beauty in broken places: In our At War column, veterans shared moments in war zones when natural beauty took their breath away. They saw starry skies that enveloped them, colorful birds that calmed them and booming storms that propelled them back in time.

What we’re reading: This essay in The Cut by Tavi Gevinson, arguably one of the original influencers. Kevin Roose, our culture/tech columnist, writes: “This is good, and it’s very revealing that the winners of social media’s engagement sweepstakes are the ones speaking out against it now.”

Cook: Creamy lemon pasta is delicious and surprisingly easy to make. (Our Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter has more recommendations.)

Read: Benjamin Moser’s biography of Susan Sontag explores the life and work of the vaunted writer and public intellectual, including her long-term relationship with the photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Listen: “Eye in the Wall” is a throbbing, swirling, disorienting, mesmerizing nine-minute excursion from Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas) and the choreographer Kate Wallich, our critic says.

Watch: The new film adaptation of “The Goldfinch” is inauthentic without being completely fake. It looks and sounds like a movie without quite being one, our critic writes in a thought-provoking review.

Smarter Living: There may be more to video games than meets the eye. Skeptics may see them as drains on young men’s brains — and maybe even their humanity, as Eve Peyser writes in an Op-Ed. But joining her boyfriend to fight alien invaders changed her mind: “I was playing a video game with somebody who loved me, who wanted to teach me how it all worked. All so we could have more fun together.”

And if you’re feeling wrung out from saving the world, here are five methods of cheap(ish) self-care that will take only 15 minutes a day.

If you’re following the U.S. presidential election, you’ve probably stumbled repeatedly over the word “stump.”

Campaigning politicians go out “stumping” and deliver “stump speeches,” or standard addresses that they repeat over and over. The state of South Carolina has a 143-year tradition, the Galivants Ferry Stump, that is inviting Democratic presidential candidates for the first time this year.

The term goes back to frontier days, when candidates headed out to the hinterlands and addressed crowds from atop an actual tree stump.

There would have been an awful lot to choose from. The U.S. Forest Service says the U.S. was hugely deforested between 1630, at the start of European settlement, and 1907.

Trees once covered an estimated 46 percent of the land area of what is now the U.S., versus just 34 percent now. While there are large-scale tree-planting campaigns in the country — as there are around the world — the current global leader in reforestation is China.

That’s it for this briefing.

Update from the Gordon Bennett Cup, the gas balloon race we told you about yesterday: Seven of the 20 teams are still flying, and Team Swiss-1 leads, logging nearly 1,300 kilometers. See you next time.

— Melina

Thank youAlisha Haridasani Gupta helped compile this briefing. Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford wrote the break from the news. Andrea Kannapell, the Briefings editor, 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 extraction of a C.I.A. spy inside the Kremlin. • Here’s today’s Mini Crossword puzzle, and a clue: Cheapest section of a plane (five letters). You can find all our puzzles here. • J. Kenji López-Alt is joining The Times as a monthly columnist for the Food department, exploring the intersection of home cooking and science. (Here’s his recipe for vodka pie crust.)