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Good evening. Here’s the latest.
1. It was Day 3 of Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and the issue of abortion took center stage.
A leaked email from his time in the George W. Bush administration showed Judge Kavanaugh questioning whether the Roe v. Wade decision should be regarded as “settled law of the land.”
Democrats, including Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, jumped on the statement, and abortion rights activists immediately raised concerns.
The release of new documents also fortified Democrats’ questions about his views on affirmative action and government surveillance.
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2. President Trump continued to lash out over an anonymous Op-Ed essay in The New York Times, written by a senior Trump official. Top administration officials were quick to deny writing the piece, including Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet members Mike Pompeo, Jim Mattis and Steven Mnuchin.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration moved to skirt limits on the detention of migrant children. The proposed rule would allow officials to hold migrant families in custody beyond the current limit of 20 days.
3. Burt Reynolds, the wry, self-mocking Hollywood heartthrob, is dead at 82.
In films like “Smokey and the Bandit,” “Deliverance” and “Boogie Nights,” he delighted audiences, most often playing a good-hearted good ol’ boy seemingly not that different from his offscreen self.
His long love affair with moviegoers lasted decades, even though his performances were often more memorable than the films that contained them. He was the first to admit it: “I think I’m the only movie star who’s a movie star in spite of his pictures, not because of them; I’ve had some real turkeys.”
Read our full obituary of the star.
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4. A historic day for gay rights in India:
The Supreme Court unanimously struck down the country’s colonial-era ban on consensual gay sex, with its chief justice calling the law “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary.”
The court said that gay people were now entitled to all constitutional protections under Indian law and that any discrimination based on sexuality would be illegal.
5. The Justice Department charged a North Korean spy in the hacking of Sony Pictures in 2014, an attack that wiped out 70 percent of the company’s computer capability.
The spy, Park Jin-hyok, appeared to be working for North Korea’s equivalent of the C.I.A. The Justice Department accused the North of a broad conspiracy that caused hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of economic damage over the past five years in the United States and around the world.
And a day after the Justice Department said it would investigate whether tech giants were suppressing free speech, Twitter announced that it had permanently suspended Alex Jones and his InfoWars site for violating its policy against abusive behavior. The network was the last holdout after other tech platforms blocked him. Republicans and conservatives have accused tech giants of anti-conservative bias.
6. New York and New Jersey began investigations into whether Roman Catholic institutions had covered up the sexual abuse of children by priests.
Attorneys general in Illinois, Missouri and Nebraska also announced that they intend to investigate sex abuse by Catholic priests in their states.
The inquiries come weeks after an explosive report detailing the abuse of children in dioceses across Pennsylvania, drawing outrage from Catholics worldwide and a condemnation from Pope Francis.
“Victims in New York deserve to be heard as well — and we are going to do everything in our power to bring them the justice they deserve,” New York’s attorney general, Barbara Underwood, above, said in a statement.
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7. The N.F.L. season starts tonight, with the Philadelphia Eagles hosting the Atlanta Falcons. Our pick? Eagles -1.5. (Find our full list of this week’s schedule, odds and picks here.)
But regardless of the outcome, everyone will be thinking about Colin Kaepernick.
Nike will air its commercial featuring him as a face of its “Just Do It” campaign, a move certain to aggravate the league.
Also new this season: a rule prohibiting any player from lowering his head to make contact with an opponent. Players aren’t sure what to make of it.
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8. What to watch from the U.S. Open:
Serena Williams will face off against Anastasija Sevastova in the semifinals this evening. And later, Madison Keys will play Naomi Osaka. Ms. Keys is the only one of last year’s all-American women’s semifinalists to book a return trip, and tonight is Ms. Osaka’s first Grand Slam semifinal.
Check back for updates and results.
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9. A new approach to polling from The Upshot: Follow results in real time as The New York Times and Siena College survey voters in the battlegrounds for Congress.
Starting tonight, our reporters will publish their results in real time. You’ll see the poll results at the same time they do.
In the process, they hope to give you a sense of what polling is really about: talking to real people, one by one, in every corner of a district.
Today, look for findings from the last two days of interviews with voters in California’s 48th District and Illinois’s Sixth and 12th. And tonight, we start polling in Kentucky’s Sixth, where the Democratic challenger, Amy McGrath, above, has put a conservative district into play.
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10. And finally, something to think about when you make your coffee in the morning:
Melitta Bentz was tired of finding coffee grounds in her cup. So in 1908, she patented a solution that many of us now rely on daily: the coffee filter. It was easy to clean, hygienic — and led to “perfect coffee enjoyment.”
Ms. Bentz’s obituary is the latest in our Overlooked series, and you can learn more about her life here.
Have a wonderful evening.
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Source : Nytimes
