Your Thursday Evening Briefing

Hurricane Michael, Saudi Arabia, Markets | View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Thursday, October 11, 2018 [NYTimes.com »]( [Your Thursday Evening Briefing]( By JEAN RUTTER AND VIRGINIA LOZANO Good evening. Here’s the latest. Eric Thayer for The New York Times 1. Hurricane Michael left the Florida Panhandle in tatters. A vast search and rescue operation is underway, with at least six people dead and 1.1 million homes and businesses without electricity. Times journalists are providing [live updates](. Above, Mexico Beach, Fla. At least 200 patients [had to be evacuated from a heavily damaged hospital]( in Panama City, Fla., and officials reported that four hospitals and a dozen nursing facilities were closed. [Images from the area]( showed splintered houses, toppled trees and hopelessly tangled power lines. We also found out [how death tolls are calculated]( for storms. Michael was downgraded to a tropical storm but continued to pack a punch as it blew [through the Carolinas]( which are still in recovery mode after Florence. _____ Eric Thayer for The New York Times 2. Michael exploded into a major hurricane in just two days, leaving little time to prepare. Our climate team explains [how it strengthened so quickly](. Above, Panama City, Fla. One factor was unusually low barometric pressure, which increases a storm’s intensity, scientists said. Only a half-dozen storms have struck the U.S. with lower pressure, the most recent being Katrina, Andrew and Camille — all “devastating storms,” according to one researcher. _____ Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 3. Congress and the White House were already divided over Saudi Arabia. Now the suspected murder of a dissident Saudi journalist has [deepened that growing rift]( with outraged lawmakers demanding an investigation — and President Trump calling relations “excellent.” Above, a protest at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. The pressure from Congress could force a change to Mr. Trump’s friendly foreign policy — including major arms sales and support for Saudi military efforts in the region. It also presents a conundrum for [Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner](. Mr. Kushner put Saudi Arabia at the center of his Middle East policy and made a big bet on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose liberal reformer sheen is starting to wear. _____ Behrouz Mehri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 4. Major U.S. indexes tumbled about 2 percent, continuing [a major sell-off around]( the world. The Standard & Poor’s 500, the market benchmark, dropped again, its sixth straight daily decline. Market damage was especially severe in China, where investors are anxious about a flagging economy and the trade war with the United States. Above, the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned that if trade tensions continued to escalate, “the global economy would take a significant hit.” _____ [A screenshot of Right Wing News’s Facebook page.]A screenshot of Right Wing News’s Facebook page. 5. Fake news, made in America. Social media disinformation campaigns were the specialty of Russian-linked operatives in 2016. But now, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, they’re increasingly being [created and spread at home](. Facebook said it would remove hundreds of accounts run by Americans for spreading false and misleading content, including Right Wing News, above. Earlier this month, Twitter took down a network of 50 fake accounts. But that may be only a temporary fix, according to one expert. “There is little to stop them from spawning off as a new page, or account, and just starting to build their network again,” she said. “They can just keep trying.” _____ Anna Dermicheva for The New York Times 6. We wondered what life was like for [18-year-old girls around the world]( so we set out to capture it in photographs. The photographers? Almost two dozen 18-year-old girls. The young women behind the lens documented the cusp of adulthood — awkward, hopeful, obsessed with the future, eager to meet and join the rest of the world — according to [the editor who coordinated the photography](. Above, one subject in Moscow. The project commemorates the International Day of the Girl, which is today, established by the U.N. to acknowledge the importance of issues girls face. Follow along on [Instagram]( and share a photo of yourself at 18 with the hashtag #ThisIs18 on your favorite social platform. What advice would you give to the girl in the photo? _____ MP/Leemage 7. She was a Swiss heiress who refused to be defined by gender conventions. Annemarie Schwarzenbach was an adventurous traveler whose writings, along with her androgynous glamour and troubled life, made her a gay cult figure after her death at 34 in 1942. She never received a New York Times obituary, [until now](. Her story joins [Overlooked]( a collection of obituaries of remarkable people whose deaths originally went unreported in The Times. _____  8. Respectful disagreement is the byword of “[The Argument]( our new Opinion podcast. Three Times Op-Ed columnists — Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and David Leonhardt — are the hosts. They hold strongly different beliefs, but they also respect one another and they enjoy talking about important issues facing the country. In the first episode, the hosts debate whether Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation broke the Supreme Court, and if Democrats should run on #MeToo in the midterm elections. [Give it a listen](. _____ Jan Thijs/Amazon 9. Matthew Weiner, the creator of “Mad Men,” is back. “The Romanoffs,” available Friday on Amazon Prime, is a collection of movie-length episodes telling the stories of contemporary characters somehow connected to the Russian royal family executed by Bolsheviks in 1918. [Our critic gives a mixed review]( calling the show beguiling but frustrating. There are echoes of the psychological darkness of “Mad Men,” he writes: “There’s a little Pete Campbell in each of these modern-day nobles.” _____ Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times 10. Finally, if Greece is on your travel bucket list, take a look at “36 Hours in Athens,” a fresh guide to the Greek capital’s [new monuments and changing neighborhoods](. A stop at the ancient Acropolis, above, and the excellent new Acropolis Museum are essential, and we offer suggestions for drinks and dining in the city’s lively neighborhoods. Have a good evening — or as they say in Athens, kalispera. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing. [Sign up here]( to get it by email in the Australian, Asian, European or American morning. Want to catch up on past briefings? [You can browse them here](. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at [briefing@nytimes.com](mailto:briefing@nytimes.com?subject=Evening%20Briefing%20Feedback). LIKE THIS EMAIL? Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up [here](. ADVERTISEMENT Sponsor a Subscription Inspire the future generation of readers by contributing to The Times’s [sponsor-a-subscription program](. For questions, email sponsor@nytimes.com or call [1-844-698-2677](. 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