Synagogue Gunman, Midterms, Merkel: Your Monday Evening Briefing

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Good evening. Here’s the latest.

1. The man accused of killing 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue appeared in federal court. Above, tributes outside the synagogue.

Robert Bowers faces 29 federal criminal charges, in addition to state charges. Federal authorities said they intended to pursue the death penalty.

As the country grieved, it also reckoned with hatred. Saturday’s attack did not come out of nowhere, experts said: anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise in the U.S. and Europe. The signs included the march in Charlottesville, Va., last year, where white nationalists chanted “Jews will not replace us.”

One thing that has changed, experts told us, is that bizarre claims about Jews that resonate with anti-Semites and white supremacists are being circulated by establishment sources.

Read more about the lives of the 11 victims. President Trump will visit Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

2. The country is grappling not only with the attack in Pittsburgh, but also the spate of pipe bombs sent to President Trump’s political opponents. Above, a rally in Murphysboro, Ill., last weekend.

“There is clear overlap,” our political reporter writes, “between the hatred and delusion that drove this lethal behavior and the paranoia and misinformation surrounding the caravan.”

He tracks the alarmist, conspiratorial warnings that President Trump and his conservative allies have pushed for the last two weeks about the migrant caravan moving north through Mexico — but still more than 2,000 miles from the border.

The latest development: The administration announced plans to deploy at least 5,200 active-duty troops to the southern border by the end of this week.

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4. There was only one thing missing.

David Price, the Red Sox starter, had won a Cy Young Award. He made five All-Star teams. He led his league in victories, earned run average, innings and strikeouts. He helped three teams reach the postseason. He even pitched in a World Series game as a rookie.

And now, after lasting into the eighth inning of Boston’s series-winning triumph over the Los Angeles Dodgers — longer than any Red Sox starter had gone all postseason — he is a champion at last.

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5. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, once considered the most powerful woman in Europe, announced she would give up leadership of her conservative party after disastrous losses in regional elections.

She vowed to serve out her term as chancellor until 2021 — but some analysts and politicians speculated that elections could come sooner.

Ms. Merkel, above, said her decision aimed to give her party time “to get ready for the time after me.”

Who will succeed her? We examine possible candidates positioning themselves to take the reins of the Christian Democrats.

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6. Brazil elected Jair Bolsonaro, a strident populist, as president on Sunday, in a dramatic shift to the far right. It’s the country’s most radical political change since it restored democracy more than 30 years ago.

Mr. Bolsonaro has praised the country’s former military dictatorship, advocated torture and threatened to destroy, jail or drive into exile his political opponents.

He won by tapping into deep resentment in Brazil, which has faced rising crime and two years of political and economic turmoil.

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7. He seemed to have made a breathtaking discovery, figuring out how to repair the human heart.

Other scientists couldn’t reproduce the results Dr. Piero Anversa, above, reported in the early 2000s, but his career continued to rise — until it started to unravel.

After a five-year investigation into his lab, Harvard and a Boston hospital have determined that 31 papers it produced should be retracted. Findings that would have revolutionized the treatment of heart attacks were based on falsified and fabricated data, investigators found.

Dr. Anversa stands by his work, and says he was sabotaged by a rogue colleague. “I have done nothing to deserve this,” he said.

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8. It’s a Chinese internet giant you’ve probably never heard of. But your nearest teenager is likely already obsessed with its products.

Bytedance, a start-up recently valued at $75 billion, is trying to conquer both Chinese and global networks. And it’s getting around different standards for content by creating separate entertainment products for the two markets.

Bytedance bought the video sharing platform Musical.ly for around $1 billion last year and folded it into its own service, TikTok. Users of a parallel video service in China, Douyin, are entirely walled off from users of TikTok — the better to manage the material people in China can see.

Bytedance says that more than half a billion people worldwide use its products every month.

“Frankly, it’s meaningless stuff,” said a college student in Beijing. He also said he uses Douyin every day.

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9. Years after a magical solo trip through Germany’s Black Forest, our Book Review editor returned to Germany with her three children to recreate the fairy tale, journeying to castles and barefoot parks and violin-making towns — not to mention a spa and a couple of amusement parks. Above, Castle Neuschwanstein.

What should you take read on a fairy tale vacation? She also compiled a dozen suggestions, for both classics and new takes.

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10. Finally, zonular was one of the words Nigel Richards used to clinch the World Scrabble Championships in London.

If you play the game, you know that was a high scorer.

Mr. Richards, above, who is from New Zealand and lives in Malaysia, is a repeat winner and seems unstoppable. He was previously the world Scrabble champion in 2007, 2011 and 2013. And he captured the French championship in 2015 and again this year — without speaking French.

And that word? Merriam-Webster defines “zonular” as “of, relating to, or affecting an anatomical zone.”

Have a winning evening.

Correction: Friday’s briefing incorrectly described the U.S. economy’s third-quarter growth. The figure is 3.5 percent at an annualized rate, not 3.5 percent for the quarter.

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Source : Nytimes