Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.
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Good evening. Here’s the latest.
1. Hurricane Michael roared onto land as a Category 4 storm, lashing the Florida Panhandle with winds topping 155 miles an hour. Our reporters in the region are providing live updates. Above, Panama City, Fla.
About 375,000 people live in areas covered by evacuation orders, but it was not clear how many had left. Here’s where to find shelter.
Officials are particularly worried about a storm surge, which they said could reach 13 feet in some areas. “This is going to be bad,” Gov. Rick Scott of Florida told dozens of workers managing the state’s response.
The storm is already starting to pound southern Georgia. It is expected to cross the Carolinas on Thursday before moving off the Mid-Atlantic coast on Friday.
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2. A top forensics expert. A special forces officer. A spy.
The men were among 15 Saudi operatives who Turkish authorities said flew to Istanbul to pursue the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who has not been seen since Oct. 2, when he entered the Saudi consulate, pictured above. Many on the list have close ties to Saudi leadership, including to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Turkish officials said the men killed Mr. Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate, pictured above, then dismembered his body using a bone saw and carried his remains out of the building — all on the orders of the Saudi royal court. The Saudi government vehemently denies the allegations.
The men’s identities were the latest details to leak from Turkey’s investigation, adding to international pressure on Saudi Arabia.
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3. Government investigators needed just a few hours to hack through Pentagon security and take control of the U. S. military’s newest weapons systems — and the military was often oblivious to the attacks.
“In one case, the test team took control of the operators’ terminals,” the investigators’ report said. “They could see, in real time, what the operators were seeing on their screens and could manipulate the system.”
Congress is receiving the classified version of the report. But even the declassified review paints a terrifying picture of the vulnerability of a range of emerging weapons, from new generations of missiles and aircraft to prototypes of new delivery systems for nuclear weapons.
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4. A Chinese intelligence officer, Yanjun Xu, was arrested in Belgium and handed over to the U. S., where he is accused of trying to steal trade secrets from GE Aviation.
The extradition — a first — “exposes the Chinese government’s direct oversight of economic espionage against the United States,” said an F. B. I. official. Above, the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
The Trump administration also announced that Chinese investment deals with American companies would get greater scrutiny for possible rejection on national security grounds.
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5. U. S. stocks suffered their steepest drop in eight months because of the growing tensions with China.
Investors continued to digest rising interest rates, and previously high-flying tech shares tumbled. Above, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index dropped 3.3 percent, bringing the broad equity benchmark down 4.4 percent for the month.
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6. Big insurers and big pharmacy managers are joining up to get even more of your health care dollars.
The Justice Department approved the $69 billion merger of Aetna, one of the nation’s largest insurers, with CVS Health, the last free-standing drugstore and pharmacy giant.
Consumers should see coordinated care and better cost controls, CVS’s chief executive said.
But critics worry that consumers could end up with far fewer options and higher expenses.
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7. A safe space for newborns became a bloody crime scene when, the New York police said, a Chinese nanny stabbed three babies, two adults and then herself last month in one of the city’s biggest Chinese immigrant neighborhoods. Above, a news conference outside the day care center after the episode.
The victims all survived. But the episode illuminated an underground network of maternity centers providing two major services: Helping mothers recuperate after childbirth and hosting Chinese mothers who want to give birth in the U. S. so their children will have citizenship.
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8. Will Vinton, a revolutionary animator who helped develop Claymation, died last week at age 70.
Early on, Mr. Vinton won an Oscar for a short film. But stop-motion is a time-consuming process. “It took about 18 months to shoot,” his sister recalled, “and it was only eight minutes long.”
Mr. Vinton had been refining his technique for more than a decade in film, TV and commercial work when a trade group asked him for help with an ad campaign.
The result was a sensation: The California Raisins, a grooving group in high-top sneakers who marched out of a box singing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”
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9. The National Book Awards finalists include books about the AIDS epidemic, George Washington’s relationship with Native Americans and the stormy underside of life in Florida.
Finalists for young people’s literature included a novel in verse about a Dominican teenager and a graphic memoir that deals with heroin addiction.
The National Book Foundation opened the awards to works in translation this year, marking the first time in decades it has recognized international authors and translators.
The winners for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young people’s literature and translated literature will be announced on Nov. 14.
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10. Finally, ever wish you could be inside your own real-life horror film?
Turns out, you can.
“Extreme haunts” first became popular as Halloween events, but companies have begun offering them year-round.
The immersive horror experiences put their participants in intense physical and psychological situations. (A safe word lets them opt out.) Above, aparticipant.
“The only rules are don’t kill them and don’t physically scar them,” one “scare actor” said.
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.
