Donald Trump, Samsung, Chicago Cubs: Your Wednesday Evening Briefing



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Good evening. Here’s the latest.

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Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

1. Some Republicans who deserted Donald Trump over his lewd comments about women in a recording that surfaced last week are now doubling back, and his campaign is keeping up the pressure on them to do so.

He’s claimed that his crude words have never turned into actions, but we spoke with two women who said Mr. Trump touched them inappropriately. He denied the allegations.

Mr. Trump may have fallen behind by double digits in some national surveys, but until today, he had held the lead in one poll. Now it’s clear why: one 19-year-old black man in Illinois who was supporting him. The unusual weight given to the man’s response allowed him to distort national polling averages.

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Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times

2. It’s been eight years since Suleiman Abdullah Salim, above, was released from one of the C.I.A.’s secret prisons in Afghanistan, where he was held for five years without charges. But the beatings and other harsh tactics he was subjected to in what he calls “The Darkness” continue to haunt him.

Exactly why he was detained remains murky, but he was eventually found not to be a terrorist threat. Now he’s a plaintiff in a lawsuit against two C.I.A. contractors. “I want the people who did this to be judged,” he said.

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Credit Al Drago/The New York Times

3. Wells Fargo’s embattled chief executive, John Stumpf, above, has abruptly decided to step down.

The announcement comes just over a month after the bank was handed a $185 million fine for a long-running scandal in which employees opened fake accounts in clients’ names. Complaints about the fraudulent accounts date back 2005.

Mr. Stumpf will be immediately replaced by Timothy Sloan, the bank’s president and chief operating officer.

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Credit Joni Gantz Barwick, via Associated Press

4. Samsung has not said what caused its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones to catch fire, but it is expecting a $2.3 billion loss from its decision to kill the model.

The full price the company will pay for the faulty phones may be harder to quantify, however. Its response to the crisis has drawn criticism for being overly “bureaucratic,” and the public’s frustration was starting to show.

One research company estimated that Samsung could lose more than $10 billion because of the phone’s troubles.

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Credit Yuya Shino/European Pressphoto Agency

5. The Islamic State is using weaponized drones — including some models that you can buy on Amazon (without the weapons), which they attach explosives to.

Two Kurdish fighters were killed in northern Iraq this month when a drone that they shot down blew up. The terror group had been known to use drones for surveillance, but that was believed to be the first time it successfully used one as a weapon to kill troops.

American advisers fear the group will expand its use of drones in the fight for Mosul, and they say the Pentagon needs to do more to counter the threat.

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Credit James Hill for The New York Times

6. In Russia, the military appears to be increasing its arsenal of inflatable tanks, jets and missile launchers. The company that makes them also makes bouncy castles.

Their use is part of a military strategy, called maskirovka, to mislead its enemies. The hope is that the decoys will draw attacks that might have otherwise hit real weapons systems.

The inflatable tank costs about $16,000. If you’d also like fake tank tracks stamped in the ground, that device is sold separately.

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Credit Mike Segar/Reuters

7. The parent of Snapchat has made its first big step toward making what may be the most eagerly awaited new internet stock offering since Twitter.

It picked banks — Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs — to handle the offering, according to people briefed on the matter. Snap Inc., as the company recently renamed itself, was most recently valued by private investors at about $19 billion.

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Credit JB Reed/Bloomberg

8. One of our best-read stories is written by a woman who became addicted to Adderall as a college student and wasn’t able to stop using it until she was 30.

The drug is prescribed to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, but is often taking by students without a prescription who believe it will help them study. Very little is known about the drug’s long-term effects.

“In a sense, then, we are the walking experiment,” she writes. “Sometimes I think of us as Generation Adderall.”

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Credit Mike Blake/Reuters

9. Wonder Woman is about to embark on a new role, but it’s not in the pages of a comic book.

She’s being made the United Nations’ new honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls.

The new title will become official at an event in New York on Oct. 21, which is also the character’s 75th anniversary.

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Credit Chicago History Museum, via Getty Images

10. Could the Chicago Cubs, contenders for the National League Championship, go all the way? The team last won the World Series when the last century was dawning, above, and tales of jinxes related to a dead goat that purported to explain those dark decades are floating around again.

Jon Lester, the Cubs’ veteran ace, isn’t having any of it. “Nobody really cares in there about a curse or a goat or anything else, you know what I mean?” he said. “It’s almost better to play naïve and just go out and worry about us and not anything else or, like I said, any animals.”

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a.m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a.m. Sundays.

Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing.

What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.

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