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Good morning.
Here’s the latest: Angela Merkel to give up party leadership, violence shakes the United States, a populist wins in Brazil.
• Angela Merkel to give up party leadership
The woman who was once Europe’s most powerful leader is preparing her long-expected departure from office.
Ms. Merkel, Germany’s chancellor for 13 years, said today that she would step down as the head of her conservative party, the Christian Democrats, which she has led for almost two decades. Ms. Merkel is pictured above at a party conference this year.
Ms. Merkel’s announcement came after a regional election on Sunday, the second in two weeks that resulted in slumping support for her coalition government.
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• Hate-fueled violence rocks the U.S.
A gunman shouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire at a synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday, killing at least 11 people — among them a 97-year-old woman and a couple in their 80s. It was one of the deadliest assaults ever on the Jewish community in the U.S. Above, a scene near the synagogue on Sunday.
A suspect, Robert Bowers, surrendered to the authorities and was charged with hate crimes and murder. An official said 21 guns were registered under his name.
The mass shooting came a day after the arrest of Cesar Sayoc, a Floridian seething with political rage. He was charged with sending at least a dozen explosive packages to prominent critics of President Trump, including former President Barack Obama.
Both cases reflect the country’s deep, bitter divisions a little more than a week before the midterm elections, which are widely considered a referendum on the Trump presidency.
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• Populism continues to surge around the world.
In Italy, Matteo Salvini, the populist government’s strongman and leader of the anti-immigrant League party, has used the arrests of African migrants in the death of a teenage girl in Rome to deepen his political inroads there.
Mr. Salvini’s support has grown so strong around Italy that he appears to have started thinking the unthinkable: conquering Rome with a League candidate for mayor. The incumbent, Virginia Raggi, is under fire for her failure to halt the city’s decline.
Meanwhile, the E.U. is concerned about how to handle Italy’s budget crisis, worrying that the bloc’s rejection of the country’s expansionary draft budget will further fuel a euroskeptic wave across the Continent before elections for a new European Parliament in May.
• Global challenges to the Catholic Church.
After a nearly monthlong international gathering at the Vatican, Roman Catholic bishops on Saturday presented a document to Pope Francis, above center, calling for a more inclusive role for women in church decision-making and greater participation of young people.
The appeal followed protests this month and a petition with more than 9,000 signatures asking that female religious superiors at the assembly, known as the Synod of Bishops, be allowed to “vote as equals alongside their brothers in Christ.”
Separately, the U.N. Committee Against Torture has agreed to hear allegations of systematic human rights violations from Elizabeth Coppin, 69, who says she endured years of abuse by nuns as a child in Ireland’s notorious industrial schools and Magdalene laundries.
And the U.S. Department of Justice has sent requests to every Roman Catholic diocese in the nation to retain documents related to the handling of child sexual abuse, suggesting that federal investigators are casting a wide net.
• IBM, seeking an edge in cloud computing, is acquiring Red Hat, the largest distributor of the popular open-source operating system Linux, for $34 billion.
• Coming this week: New figures on growth in the eurozone, third-quarter earnings at Apple and Facebook and a turnaround plan at General Electric.
• Disappointing earnings reports from the tech giants Amazon and Alphabet on Friday helped drag the benchmark S. & P. 500 stock market index briefly into a correction. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.
• The Thai billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, above, was killed Saturday night when his helicopter crashed outside the stadium of his Leicester City soccer team. The soccer club said no one on board survived. [The New York Times]
• A passenger plane flying over Indonesia with 189 people on board crashed into the sea on Monday. [The New York Times]
• Uighur Muslims who have managed to escape China’s omnipresent surveillance and arbitrary detentions in the western region of Xinjiang face increasing threats of being sent back from countries like Sweden. [The New York Times]
• Saudi Arabia rejected requests for a Turkish trial for suspects in the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and denounced international outrage over the episode as “fairly hysterical.” [The New York Times]
• In Greece, the decade-long financial crisis has left no profession unscathed, but it has been especially brutal on the sex trade. [The New York Times]
• Ireland re-elected its leftist president, Michael D. Higgins, despite a late surge by a former reality television star whose support grew after he criticized an ethnic minority group. [The New York Times]
Tips for a more fulfilling life.Smarter Living
“There must be some deeper meaning to this,” Vidkun Quisling, the deposed Norwegian “minister-president,” above left, wrote to his brother from prison, as he waited to face a firing squad in October of 1945. “In fact I am dying a martyr’s death.”
History disagreed.
Born in 1887, Quisling served in the military and did diplomatic and humanitarian work before starting to rise through the Norwegian government ranks. An ever more enthusiastic supporter of German National Socialism, in the 1930s he began collaborating with Hitler to put Norway under Nazi control.
Almost immediately, Quisling’s distinctive name became synonymous with “traitor.”
Winston Churchill, addressing delegates from Allied nations in 1941, spoke of the “vile race of Quislings — to use a new word which will carry the scorn of mankind down the centuries,” groveling before Hitler to curry favor.
After Germany’s surrender, Quisling was arrested. During his administration, nearly half of Norway’s small population of Jews had been deported to die in concentration camps.
He was executed on Oct. 24, 1945, in Oslo.
His last words: “I am innocent.”
Nancy Wartik wrote today’s Back Story.
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