Your Friday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/briefing/truss-britain-resign-ukraine-europe.html

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Liz Truss has quit after six weeks as Britain’s prime minister. Her agenda had floundered, her own party turned on her, and commentators speculated on whether she could outlast a head of lettuce. She couldn’t.

Truss departs as the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. Her resignation came just days after her new finance minister reversed virtually all of her planned tax cuts, in a stark repudiation of her leadership and one of the most dramatic turnabouts in Britain’s recent history.

In her resignation speech, Truss — who is eligible for a taxpayer-funded, lifelong allowance of 115,000 pounds ($129,000) a year — said she would remain in office until a successor was chosen. “Given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” Truss said, a day after declaring in Parliament, “I’m a fighter, not a quitter.”

What’s next: Conservatives plan to replace Truss by the end of next week, an extraordinarily short time frame. The opposition Labour Party called for a general election. Potential successors include cabinet members, former rivals and even Boris Johnson, who was forced to resign in July.

Reaction: Britons expressed relief, resignation and uncertainty as the country faced multiple crises. “Whoever is going to replace her, I don’t think they will make a difference,” a gas engineer said.

Ukrainians recently liberated from Russian occupation are sharing accounts of detentions, torture and missing relatives.

Police officers who have returned to towns and villages in the Kharkiv region — much of which Ukraine recaptured a month ago — have been overwhelmed by accounts. Some people have complained of theft and property damage. Others told of torture.

Signs of abuse are already apparent in some of the 534 bodies recovered across the region, the region’s police chief said. “There are bodies that were tortured to death,” he said. “There are people with tied hands, shot, strangled, people with cut wounds, cut genitals.”

Scale: Officers said the scale of abuse of the population in eastern Ukraine was most likely greater than that seen in Bucha and other areas around Kyiv.

Other updates:

The E.U. and Britain imposed new sanctions on Iran for supplying Russia with drones. This morning, E.U. leaders also agreed to measures to bring down energy prices.

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s former leader, was caught on tape blaming Ukraine’s president for forcing Russia to invade.

Russian-backed authorities in the Kherson region have begun relocating civilians, a possible prelude to their withdrawal.

U.S. intelligence officials believe that Ukraine has a six-week window to make gains before fall mud spreads.

A plan to revitalize the shrinking French town of Callac has become an emblem of France’s anxiety over its identity and future.

Callac, a 2,200-person town in rural Brittany, shows signs of decline. Some buildings have been empty for decades. Around half the remaining residents are retirees. The biggest employer is the nursing home.

Initially, the town council was enthusiastic about a program that would recruit refugees to renovate buildings and fill much-needed jobs such as nurses’ aides and builders, while also helping them assimilate and learn the language. A deputy mayor said the program saw “refugees not as charity, but an opportunity.”

But some residents saw the project as evidence of a “great replacement” of native French people, an idea that has caused anger and anxiety, particularly on the hard right. Competing protests have taken place in the town, which is now at the center of national debates about immigration and declining rural areas.

Reaction: A retired teacher who opposes the project said: “We aren’t lab rats. We aren’t here for them to experiment on.” She said she feared the plan would bring “radical Islam” to the community.

Both Myanmar’s junta and the pro-democracy opposition are investigating a bombing at the notorious Insein Prison. The unprecedented attack on Wednesday killed eight people.

An undersea cable broke yesterday, disconnecting the Scottish archipelago of Shetland from the world.

Taiwan, under threat from China, is pursuing a creative, nontraditional approach to diplomacy.

A jury cleared Kevin Spacey of a battery claim in a lawsuit brought by Anthony Rapp, an actor who had accused Spacey of making an unwanted sexual advance when Rapp was 14.

An American pleaded guilty yesterday to causing the death of a British teenager by careless driving in 2019.

Donald Trump made bigoted remarks about Jews and Persians at an event last year, including asking if someone was “a good Jewish character.”

Climate activists in London threw soup on Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and then glued themselves to the wall. (The painting was unharmed.)

The National Library of France has reopened after an extensive 12-year renovation.

Masks will no longer be required at New York City Ballet or the Metropolitan Opera.

The Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar has reopened ahead of the World Cup with an expanded historical focus. “You want to know your past when you look to the future,” its director said.

Crush, a South Korean singer, apologized for a “misunderstanding” after he did not high-five Black fans. The exchange highlighted K-pop’s tense relationship with Black culture.

Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has long built his personal brand on creating controversy. “The very act of consuming public oxygen has been a centerpiece of his art for two decades,” my colleague Jon Caramanica writes in an analysis.

But as Ye’s offensive comments, especially about Jews, push away even his most loyal supporters, Ye risks losing his audience — and the platform provided to him by mainstream media outlets.

How a soccer painting sold for $8.75 million: L.S. Lowry’s “Going to the Match” is the most famous football painting in history. On Wednesday, it sold for a stunning amount. How did soccer become the subject of such a massive fine art sale? We can explain.

The damning reality of Cristiano Ronaldo’s protest: By now you know the Manchester United legend watched his team beat Tottenham, walked down the tunnel before the full-time whistle and then left the stadium rather than heading to the dressing room. It was a spectacle, and a reminder of how much his status has changed. And Ronaldo should know this situation well. He’s seen it before.

Stars like Dolly Parton, Madonna and Whitney Houston inspired a generation of American drag queens to take the stage. In the drag scene of Beirut, Lebanon, too, pop icons are the muses.

With their outfits and performances, Beirut’s drag queens evoke sequin-clad singers like Haifa Wehbe, Sabah and Sherihan, who have embodied camp and glamour across the Arab world for decades. Their stage looks ensure “Arab representation in drag culture,” Anya Kneez, a drag queen, said.

Anya gets messages from aspiring drag queens all over the Arab world. “This is what I want to see,” she said. “I want to see young Arab queers coming out and doing their thing.”

Candy apples make for a kid-friendly weekend treat.

“The Escape Artist,” by Jonathan Freedland, tells of Auschwitz’s horrors — and the multitudes who refused to listen.

How to spend 36 hours in Milan.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Studio Ghibli product (five letters).

And here are today’s Wordle and the Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. Thanks for joining me. — Amelia

P.S. The Guggenheim Museum opened 63 years ago today. The Times called it “the most controversial building ever to rise in New York.”

The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the U.S. midterm elections.

You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.