Friday, Oct 18, 2019 | View in browser

Good morning.

We’re covering Mick Mulvaney’s comments about quid pro quos, and the attempted arrest of a son of the Mexican drug lord El Chapo. And it's Friday, so there’s a new news quiz.

By Chris Stanford

When asked whether he had admitted on Thursday to a quid pro quo, Mick Mulvaney said, "We do that all the time with foreign policy." Leigh Vogel for The New York Times

Mick Mulvaney admits, then denies, quid pro quo

The acting White House chief of staff said on Thursday that the U.S. had withheld nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine to further President Trump’s political interests, effectively confirming a key premise of the impeachment inquiry.

Mr. Mulvaney later tried to reverse his comments, saying that “there was absolutely no quid pro quo.” Read his conflicting statements.

His initial remarks, which undercut a popular Republican talking point about Ukraine, came during a briefing that our White House correspondent Maggie Haberman called “jaw-dropping by any metric.”

Mr. Mulvaney also announced that Mr. Trump would host a Group of 7 meeting next year at the Trump National Doral near Miami, prompting questions about a conflict of interest.

Another angle: Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told House investigators on Thursday that Mr. Trump had delegated Ukraine policy to his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a directive that Mr. Sondland said he disagreed with but nonetheless followed.

Related: Rick Perry, the energy secretary who has become entangled in the Ukraine affair, said he would resign.

The Daily: Today’s episode is about testimony this week in the impeachment inquiry.

Turkish-backed Syrian fighters in the Syrian border town of Tel Abyad on Thursday. Bakr Alkasem/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Fighting casts doubt on cease-fire in Syria

Hostilities in northern Syria today came hours after the announced start of a five-day pause to allow Kurdish fighters to withdraw from areas occupied by Turkey.

The cease-fire was part of an agreement on Thursday between Turkey’s leader and Vice President Mike Pence, under which the Turkish military would maintain a presence in northern Syria.

News analysis: The deal “amounts to a near-total victory for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who gains territory, pays little in penalties and appears to have outmaneuvered President Trump,” our correspondents write.

Related: At a campaign rally on Thursday, Mr. Trump said he was right to let Turkey attack the Kurdish fighters once allied with the U.S. “Sometimes you have to let them fight like two kids,” the president said. “Then you pull them apart.”

Perspective: In an Op-Ed, Adm. William McRaven, a former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, writes that military values are under attack from the White House.

Brexit’s fate falls to U.K. Parliament

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, having secured a withdrawal agreement with the European Union, is trying to sell it to British lawmakers, who are to vote on it on Saturday.

The deal faced an immediate hurdle when the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland refused to support it. But Mr. Johnson appears to be betting that enough lawmakers are fed up with the process to view this deal, however imperfect, as better than any alternative.

Another angle: From Brussels, our chief diplomatic correspondent sums up the European leaders’ sentiment: Just leave already.

What’s next: Even if Mr. Johnson loses Saturday’s vote, he can argue in an election that he did all he could to make Brexit happen by Oct. 31, as promised.

Facebook defends its hands-off stance

With his company under fire for enabling the spread of disinformation, Mark Zuckerberg fought back on Thursday against the idea that the social network needed to be an arbiter of speech.

“People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world,” Mr. Zuckerberg said during a speech in Washington in which he invoked Frederick Douglass, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Vietnam War and the First Amendment.

Background: Facebook announced last month that it wouldn’t moderate politicians’ speech or fact-check their political ads because the content, even if false, was in the public interest.

What’s next: Mr. Zuckerberg will make his case in an interview with Fox News to be broadcast today. He’s scheduled to testify in Congress next week about Facebook’s cryptocurrency project.

If you have some time this weekend, this is worth it

The Greats

From left: Craig McDean; Renée Cox; Nobuyoshi Araki; Pieter Hugo

Above, from left: the actress Rachel Weisz, the artist Nick Cave, the architect Shigeru Ban and the fashion designer Nicolas Ghesquière.

The four are featured in the annual Greats issue of T: The Times’s style magazine, which celebrates those who have changed their fields — and culture at large.

Here’s what else is happening

A void in the House: The death of Representative Elijah Cummings set off a quiet but consequential contest among Democrats to succeed him as leader of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

Attempted arrest of El Chapo’s son: Gun battles broke out in the Mexican city of Culiacán after soldiers arrested and then released a son of the drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera.

From The Times: Debatable, from the Opinion section, provides a range of perspectives on the most talked-about disagreements. Today’s topic: the fight over Medicare.

NASA, via Associated Press

Snapshot: Above, Jessica Meir, left, and Christina Koch aboard the International Space Station. They’re scheduled to conduct the first all-female spacewalk today, after an earlier attempt was canceled because of a lack of spacesuits that fit properly. You can watch live on NASA’s website from 7:50 a.m. Eastern.

Baseball playoffs: The Astros can advance to the World Series tonight after beating the Yankees, 8-3, in the American League Championship Series.

News quiz: Did you follow the headlines this week? Test yourself.

Modern Love: For 15 years, the column has shared personal essays about love, loss and redemption. It has also inspired an Amazon Prime Video series, which arrives today.

Late-night comedy: With most of the hosts in reruns this week, Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah were left to sort out the news.

What we’re watching: If you’re confused about why the Irish border issue is a roadblock in Brexit negotiations, try a few episodes of “Derry Girls” on Netflix. “It’s a profound look at the history of the violent sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland,” says Melina Delkic, on the briefings team. “And it adds a light (and hilarious) touch to the story of coming of age in a conflict zone.”

Now, a break from the news

Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Carla Gonzalez-Hart.

Cook: This weekend, make sinigang, a comforting Filipino soup with pork, vegetables and a tamarind broth.

Listen: Vagabon’s songs feature mixed, elusive emotions: longing and ambivalence, displacement and stability, fear and hope. Her second album is out today.

Watch: HBO’s “Watchmen,” based on the 1980s comics series, premieres on Sunday and is first-class entertainment right out of the gate, our critic writes.

Read: New novels by Deborah Levy, Monique Truong and Martin Walser are among 12 books we recommend this week.

Smarter Living: The CBD industry is projected to hit $16 billion in the U.S. by 2025. CBD, or cannabidiol, is a component of the marijuana plant, and claims are rampant that it can ease depression, anxiety, sleeplessness and chronic pain. Our “Scam or Not” series finds that it has some real promise.

“Scam or Not” also takes on myths about turmeric, kombucha, celery juice and activated charcoal.

And now for the Back Story on …

‘The Ring’

Don’t watch the tape.

That was the takeaway for moviegoers who saw the horror film “The Ring,” starring Naomi Watts and directed by Gore Verbinski, which opened on this day in 2002.

A scene from "The Ring." Merrick Morton/DreamWorks Pictures

A remake of the 1997 Japanese film “Ringu,” the movie made more than $249 million worldwide, a haul that encouraged more English-language remakes of Asian horror films — and two more American “Ring” movies.

The plot centers on a mysterious videotape that curses its viewers, leaving them with seven days to live.

The Japanese original, directed by Hideo Nakata, was based on a famous ghost story set at Himeji Castle. Declared one of the first Japanese Unesco World Heritage sites in 1993, the castle is open to the public, but the well that figures in the story is sealed shut.

Mr. Nakata’s most recent film revisits the fable, this time drawing on social media as the curse’s source.

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Chris

Thank you
Melina Delkic helped compile today’s briefing. Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford provided the break from the news. Nadav Gavrielov wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Today’s episode is about diplomats’ testimony in the impeachment inquiry.
• Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Something too fast to see (four letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• A panel including Times journalists will discuss the future of local news at an event in Minneapolis on Sunday.