Wednesday: Suspects' ties to the Saudi crown prince

Saudi Arabia, Brexit, Anna Burns | View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Wednesday, October 17, 2018 [NYTimes.com »]( Europe Edition [Your Wednesday Briefing]( By PENN BULLOCK Good morning. President Trump defends the Saudis, Emmanuel Macron picks a loyalist and a Northern Irish author wins the Man Booker Prize. Here’s the latest: Pool photo by Leah Millis • All the crown prince’s men. At least four of the suspects named by Turkey in the purported murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul have [links to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince]( Mohammed bin Salman. Those connections would undercut a defense the Saudis were said to be considering: that Mr. Khashoggi died in a botched interrogation, not a planned killing approved at the highest levels. But President Trump [pushed back forcefully against condemnation]( of the crown prince. “Here we go again with you’re guilty until proven innocent,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. Saudi Arabia has less leverage than it once did over the U.S., which is [far less dependent on Saudi oil]( than in the past. Still, the White House is planning to impose harsh sanctions on Iran, and it [needs the Saudis to keep the oil market stable](. In Riyadh, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with the crown prince, pictured above, and with King Salman. He said the Saudis had promised a “transparent” investigation of Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and had emphatically denied being involved. _____ Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images • France’s leader closes ranks. His approval ratings on the slide, President Emmanuel Macron [named a staunch, sometimes fulsome loyalist]( as the new interior minister. Christophe Castaner, above center, has declared an “aspect of love” for the “fascinating” Mr. Macron, and once spoke in awed terms of his “vivacity, even his physical strength.” The pick was criticized by some, because Mr. Castaner has little experience in what is now his portfolio: the country’s police and counterterrorism operations. _____ James Beck for The New York Times • Could Brexit cause a crisis at the checkout line? [Some people aren’t taking any chances](. Fearing chaos if Britain leaves the E.U. in March without negotiating a graceful exit, “Brexit preppers” have been stockpiling everything from couscous to toilet paper. Nevine and Richard Mann, above, have planted crops in their garden in Cornwall, England. Prime Minister Theresa May has sounded hopeful ahead of her European summit meeting today, and the government has waved away alarm. But it has also appointed a minister for food supplies for the first time since the 1950s. _____ Andreas Meichsner for The New York Times • The Trump family’s European roots. We visited the remote corners of Europe [from where the president’s family hails](. First stop: the Isle of Lewis, a Scottish island in the North Atlantic, closer to Iceland than to London. It’s the birthplace of Donald Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod. Next was the German winemaking town Kallstadt, above, once home to Mr. Trump’s paternal grandparents. And finally: Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, a charming, bikeable Italian city in miniature from which the first lady, Melania, departed for the U.S. when she was 19. Business Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters • A big fine for Audi: Admitting to wrongdoing, the luxury division of Volkswagen [agreed to pay a fine]( of 800 million euros, or about $930 million, in Germany to resolve civil claims over an emissions-cheating scandal. • Google adjusts: In response to a European antitrust ruling this year, the company said it would [begin charging handset manufacturers]( to install Gmail, Google Maps and other popular applications for Android in the European Union. • The green rush: As Canada legalizes cannabis, companies are [hoping to cash in]( on a bonanza with shades of the dot-com boom of the 1990s. • State prosecutors in New York [are investigating industry groups]( over whether they submitted millions of fraudulent public comments in support of annulling U.S. internet regulations known as net neutrality, which federal regulators ultimately voted to do. • Here’s a snapshot of [global markets](. In the News Yonhap, via Reuters • Officials from North and South Korea, above, started discussions about disarming the truce village of Panmunjom that straddles their border. It would become a neutral zone where military personnel and tourists could move freely across the demarcation line. [[The New York Times]( • “Horseface”: That was President Trump’s tweeted insult for Stormy Daniels, the pornographic actress who says she had an affair with him. She responded, “Game on, Tiny.” [[The New York Times]( • The death toll from Hurricane Michael rose to at least 29, but dozens of people are still unaccounted for. [[The New York Times]( • As the Indonesian city of Palu mourns the untold thousands of dead from an earthquake and tsunami on Sept. 28, there is growing evidence that the crisis was both natural and man-made. [[The New York Times]( • “Humane” job-training centers: That’s how China is describing its network of indoctrination camps in which hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been detained. [[The New York Times]( • Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” will undergo several years of exhaustive restoration at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, in public view. [[The New York Times]( • Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, are in Australia, a country whose relationship with the royal family is a complicated one. [[The New York Times]( • The Ecuadorean Embassy in London has admonished Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who has been holed up there since 2012, to take better care of his cat. [[BBC]( Smarter Living Tips for a more fulfilling life. Linda Xiao for The New York Times • Recipe of the day: [Roasted cauliflower with feta, almonds and olive]( improves practically any meal. • The time to buy holiday travel tickets is [now](. • Lost faith in Facebook? [Here’s how to delete Facebook and Instagram forever](. Noteworthy Alessandra Sanguinetti/Magnum Photos • “Game of Thrones” is, by many measures, the most popular TV show on earth. But just as impressive is how [George R. R. Martin]( above, its almighty creator, has transformed a genre — and how fans engage with it. “I do think a society needs heroes,” he told The Times. • The Man Booker Prize went to [t]( Northern Irish author Anna Burns]( for “Milkman,” a novel set during “the Troubles,” in which a young woman is coerced into a relationship with a stalker. • 24 hours in America: Our reporters and photographers fanned out across the country to tell [stories of daily life]( and its unannounced moments of joy, struggle and hope. Back Story Barton Silverman/The New York Times “The poet and warrior,” Pauli Murray once wrote, “grapple in my brain.” The warrior side of that equation is largely responsible for the recent surge of interest in Murray (1910-85), an African-American civil rights activist and lawyer who fought for racial justice and women’s equality. Murray, above, also came to think of herself as a man, which makes her story even more resonant today. [T]( [biographies]( of Murray have been published since 2016. But Murray was also a poet, and today is Black Poetry Day, observed by many schools and libraries in the U.S. Orphaned young and raised by an aunt in Durham, North Carolina, Murray grew up reading [Paul Laurence Dunbar]( one of the first famous African-American poets. Later, as a student at Hunter College in New York, she befriended [Langston Hughes]( [Countee Cullen]( and other key figures of the Harlem Renaissance. [Her own poems]( collected in the 1970 volume “Dark Testament” (recently reissued, with an introduction by Elizabeth Alexander), grapple with her family’s and her nation’s complicated legacy of oppression. They also unabashedly imagine a country that lives up to its ideals. “I sing of a new American / Separate from all others,” she writes in [“Prophecy.”]( It concludes: “I seek only discovery / Of the illimitable heights and depths of my own being.” Gregory Cowles wrote today’s Back Story. _____ Correction: [Tuesday’s Morning Briefing]( misspelled the name of a city in Northern Ireland. It is Londonderry, not Londonberry. Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online. [Check out this page]( to find a Morning Briefing for your region. (In addition to our European edition, we have Australian, Asian and U.S. editions.) [Sign up here]( to receive an Evening Briefing on U.S. weeknights, and [here’s our full range of free newsletters](. 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