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Pesh merga fighters and armed Kurdish civilians on Monday, as the offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State began. Bryan Denton for The New York Times
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Your Tuesday Briefing
By SEAN ALFANO
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| Good morning. |
| Here’s what you need to know: |
| • On the campaign trail. |
| With polls showing Hillary Clinton’s advantage over Donald J. Trump growing, and a recent infusion of cash to her campaign, she is trying to flip as many red states as possible and help elect more Democrats to Congress. |
| Mrs. Clinton’s push comes as new documents show sharp disputes between the State Department and the F.B.I. over whether some of her emails should be considered classified. |
| In an interview on Monday, Mr. Trump suggested that if he were to win on Election Day, he would consider meeting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia before being sworn in. Separately, Melania Trump is defending her husband against accusations that he sexually assaulted women, saying “they’re lies.” |
| • Media fallout from the race. |
| Billy Bush is officially out at NBC after a video from 2005 surfaced this month in which he and Mr. Trump had a vulgar conversation about women. And about 200 audience members left an Amy Schumer show in Florida after she criticized the Republican nominee. |
| • Battle for Mosul. |
| A fight to retake Iraq’s second-largest city from the Islamic State is underway and The Times has reporters and a photographer near the front lines. We also look at how the military campaign may define President Obama’s legacy as a wartime leader. |
| In preparation for the arrival of Iraqi and Kurdish forces, the militants filled trenches with oil, built tunnels and planted bombs along the roads into the city and on streets inside it. |
| • The other border. |
| The U.S.’s northern border is nearly three times as long as the one it shares with Mexico. The areas adjacent to Canada, sparsely populated and with comparatively few border agents, have become a haven for smugglers and criminal organizations. |
| “We can’t forget about this area,” said Senator Jon Tester of Montana. “If we take our eye off of that, they will go where the weakest link is.” |
| • Weather forecasts gone wrong. |
| In the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, a deadly storm whose force was underestimated by American meteorologists, we asked why they aren’t better at predicting extreme weather. |
| Technologies and methods that are woefully behind the times are two major factors. |
| • California Today. |
| We’ve just introduced a morning newsletter on the stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state). Sign up to get it right to your inbox. |
Business |
| • We’re used to stories about Wall Street traders swindling investors. But one deal maker and avid art collector claims that he was scammed by a professor and her son, who sold him forged paintings. |
| • A new challenger to Bloomberg L.P. has emerged. A former top executive at the company has joined Money.net to build a low-cost alternative to the data terminals that fuel Michael R. Bloomberg’s business empire. |
| • In memoriam: The engineer Dr. Leo L. Beranek, 102. A company he helped found built a computer network that became the precursor to the internet. |
| • U.S. stocks finished slightly down on Monday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. |
Noteworthy |
| • Special praise for the first lady. |
| “Michelle Obama will have her own legacy, separate from her husband’s. And it will be that she was the first first lady to show women that they don’t have to choose. That it’s okay to be everything.” |
| Those are words from a thank-you note the writer and actress Rashida Jones wrote to Mrs. Obama. She was joined by the feminist activist Gloria Steinem and the authors Jon Meacham and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. |
| • New reads. |
| We reviewed a pair of nonfiction releases that focus on the business of murder. One looks at the mobsters who carried out contract killings during the 1930s in New York City; the other retraces how two Texas teenagers became assassins for a Mexican crime syndicate. |
| For something far less grim, mark your calendars. On Oct. 25, a new Winnie the Pooh book will be released in the U.S. It features a story with a new friend for the honey-loving bear: Penguin. |
| • Recipes of the day. |
| For a different kind of quesadilla, use goat cheese and greens. Or try this version using wild mushrooms. |
Back Story |
| A black doctor was in the news last week after writing on Facebook that a flight attendant seeking help for a sick passenger refused to believe she was a physician. |
| Her experience touched a nerve with minority women who have faced skepticism about their credentials. |
| The episode also calls to mind the poet Phillis Wheatley’s ordeals nearly 250 years ago. |
| Kidnapped as a child in West Africa and sold into slavery, she was bought by the Wheatley family in Boston, who named her after the ship that brought her across the Atlantic. They taught her to read, and she channeled her intellect into poetry. Her work earned praise in the colonies as well as Europe. |
| Some of Boston’s most learned men, though, doubted that a slave could write so beautifully. |
| In October 1772, Wheatley successfully defended herself to an 18-member panel. She “is thought qualified to write them,” the men said of the poems. |
| The next year she toured England, where her book was released, “marking the beginning of an African-American literary tradition,” according to the historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. |
| A letter to an acquaintance on this day in 1773 indicates that her fame also won her freedom. “Since my return to America my Master, has at the desire of my friends in England given me my freedom,” she wrote. |
| But in one of her poems, she addressed the pain of slavery more directly: “And can I then but pray/Others may never feel tyrannic sway?” |
Your Morning Briefing is published weekdays at 6 a.m. Eastern and updated on the web all morning.
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