Download - THAT MAY JOLT WEB IN ANTITRUST SUIT U.S. FIGHTS GOOGLE · 21/10/2020 · About four dozen states and juris-dictions, including New York and Texas, have conducted parallel in-vestigations

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For years, right-wingmedia have embraced aconspiracy theory abouta Democratic plot to spyon the 2016 Trumpcampaign. But a JusticeDepartment inquiryturned up no evidence,and the theory is nowfizzling. PAGE A18

DISTORTIONS

Russia tried cyberattacks against the2018 Olympics in South Korea and hastargeted the postponed Tokyo Games,U.S. and British officials said. PAGE B9

SPORTSWEDNESDAY B8-10

The Olympics as a TargetLake Charles, La., slammed by twohurricanes, wants America to know thatthings are not OK. PAGE A13

NATIONAL A13-21

Ruined, and Feeling Forgotten

The new iPhone has an improved de-sign, but it’s undermined by the wire-less industry’s messy rollout of super-speedy 5G networks. A review. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-7

IPhone 12 Is Ultrafast, in Places Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn and aband of agency scientists have eked outa few victories after months of yieldingto White House pressure. PAGE A7

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-7

How the F.D.A. Stood Firm

A racial awakening has unfolded in awhite-dominated brotherhood known forits veneration of Robert E. Lee. PAGE A21

Fraternal Disorder

Inspired by the Black Lives Mattermovement, a Los Angeles art dealer isaiming to help people who have been“left out of the conversation.” PAGE C1

ARTS C1-8

A More Diverse Gallery

Thomas L. Friedman PAGE A22EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23A battle over the lobster industry in

Nova Scotia pits commercial fishermenagainst Indigenous people. PAGE A8

INTERNATIONAL A8-12

Claws Out in Canada

WASHINGTON — The strangesound came at night: a crack like amarble striking the floor of theapartment above them.

Mark Lenzi and his wife hadlightheadedness, sleep issues andheadaches, and their childrenwere waking up with bloody noses— symptoms they thought mightbe from the smog in Guangzhou,

China, where Mr. Lenzi workedfor the State Department. But airpollution could not explain hissudden memory loss, includingforgetting names of work tools.

What began as strange soundsand symptoms among more thana dozen American officials andtheir family members in China in2018 has turned into a diplomaticmystery covering multiple coun-tries and involving speculationabout secret high-tech weapons

and foreign attacks.One of the biggest questions

centers on whether Trump admin-istration officials believe that Mr.Lenzi and other diplomats inChina experienced the same mys-

terious affliction as dozens of dip-lomats and spies at the AmericanEmbassy in Cuba in 2016 and 2017,which came to be known as Ha-vana Syndrome. American em-ployees in the two countries re-ported hearing strange sounds,followed by headaches, dizziness,blurred vision and memory loss.

But the government’s treat-ment of the episodes has been rad-ically different. The State Depart-

As U.S. Diplomats Fell Sick, Washington Minimized the DangerThis article is by Ana Swanson,

Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes. Cases Seem Similar to‘Havana Syndrome’

Continued on Page A10

TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Pantries like this one at a Manhattan church are bringing hope to New Yorkers’ kitchens. Page D4.Food for Souls, and Stomachs

MIAMI — Most states have theoccasional problems runningtheir elections. Not Florida. Flor-ida has debacles.

2018: Three statewide recounts.2016: Russian hacking. 2012: Vot-ing lines seven hours long. 2006:Malfunctioning electronic votingmachines. And, of course, thegranddaddy of all election fiascos:Bush v. Gore in 2000.

More than two decades of scan-dals and blunders have madeFlorida the nation’s electionspunch line, the state that kept theworld at the edge of its seat whilevotes for president were manuallyrecounted. The shadows of Flor-ida elections past seem to lurk ev-

erywhere.“I feel like I’ve seen this movie

before,” Judge Mark E. Walker ofthe Federal District Court in Talla-hassee said in a ruling this monthafter the state’s voter registrationwebsite crashed under the weightof thousands of last-minute appli-cations.

Now the state, like the rest ofthe nation, faces perhaps the mostdaunting test yet: a 2020 electionconducted in the midst of a pan-demic, amid unsubstantiated

fraud claims spread by the presi-dent and others. Reasonable pre-dictions suggest that the legalwrangling over the results couldstretch far beyond election night.

Is Florida ready?Elections officials say yes. With

the problems of years past, theysay, have come lessons that pre-pared the state to process a crushof mail ballots and juggle the logis-tics of the coronavirus, such as se-curing drop boxes and distribut-ing hand sanitizer.

But this is Florida, perhaps thenation’s biggest presidential bat-tleground and a mirror of Ameri-can polarization, where winningan election by more than a per-centage point is considered alandslide. And here, to crib Faulk-

Election Day in Florida: What Could Go Wrong?By PATRICIA MAZZEI

and FRANCES ROBLESA State Is Hopeful, but

Haunted by Ghostsof Hanging Chads

Election workers in Largo, Fla., opening envelopes for mail-in ballots. This week, the start of early voting set a Florida record.EVE EDELHEIT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES


Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a nine-point lead over President Trumpamid widespread public alarmabout the trajectory of the corona-virus pandemic and demandamong voters for large-scale gov-ernment action to right the econ-omy, according to a national poll oflikely voters conducted by TheNew York Times and Siena Col-lege.

With just two weeks left in thecampaign, Mr. Trump does nothold an edge on any of the mostpressing issues at stake in theelection, leaving him with littleroom for a political recovery ab-sent a calamitous misstep by Mr.Biden, the Democratic nominee,in the coming days. The presidenthas even lost his longstanding ad-vantage on economic matters:Voters are now evenly split onwhether they have more trust inhim or Mr. Biden to manage theeconomy.

On all other subjects tested inthe poll, voters preferred Mr. Bi-den to Mr. Trump by modest orwide margins. Mr. Biden, the for-mer vice president, is favoredover Mr. Trump to lead on the co-ronavirus pandemic by 12 points,and voters trust Mr. Biden overMr. Trump to choose SupremeCourt justices and to maintain lawand order by six-point margins.Americans see Mr. Biden as morecapable of uniting the country bynearly 20 points.

Over all, Mr. Biden is backed by50 percent of likely voters, the pollshowed, compared with 41 per-cent for Mr. Trump and 3 percentdivided among other candidates.

Most of all, the survey makesclear that crucial constituenciesare poised to reject Mr. Trump be-

Biden FavoredOn Key Issues,

Poll Indicates

By ALEXANDER BURNSand JONATHAN MARTIN


WASHINGTON — The JusticeDepartment accused Google onTuesday of illegally protecting itsmonopoly over search and searchadvertising, the government’smost significant challenge to atech company’s market power in ageneration and one that could re-shape the way consumers use theinternet.

In a much-anticipated lawsuit,the agency accused Google oflocking up deals with giant part-ners like Apple and throttlingcompetition through exclusivebusiness contracts and agree-ments.

Google’s deals with Apple, mo-bile carriers and other handsetmakers to make its search enginethe default option for users ac-counted for most of its dominantmarket share in search, theagency said, a figure that it put ataround 80 percent.

“For many years,” the agencysaid in its 57-page complaint,“Google has used anticompetitivetactics to maintain and extend itsmonopolies in the markets forgeneral search services, search

advertising and general searchtext advertising — the corner-stones of its empire.”

The lawsuit, which may stretchon for years, could set off a cas-cade of other antitrust lawsuitsfrom state attorneys general.About four dozen states and juris-dictions, including New York andTexas, have conducted parallel in-vestigations and some of them areexpected to bring separate com-plaints against the company’sgrip on technology for online ad-vertising. Eleven state attorneysgenerals, all Republicans, signedon to support the federal lawsuit.

Attorney General William P.Barr had spoken publicly aboutthe investigation for months. Heurged the agency to file a case bythe end of September, promptingresistance from some of its law-yers who wanted more time andcomplained of political motiva-tions.

Google called the suit “deeplyflawed.” But the agency’s actionsignaled a new era for the technol-ogy sector. It reflects pent-up andbipartisan frustration toward ahandful of companies — Google,Amazon, Apple and Facebook in

U.S. FIGHTS GOOGLEIN ANTITRUST SUITTHAT MAY JOLT WEB

Biggest Test for Tech Power Since 1990s Could Change Consumer Habits

This article is by Cecilia Kang, Da-vid McCabe and Daisuke Wakaba-yashi.


President Trump and his allieshave tried to paint the Democraticnominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., assoft on China, in part by pointingto his son’s business dealingsthere.

Senate Republicans produced areport asserting, among otherthings, that Mr. Biden’s son Hunt-er “opened a bank account” with aChinese businessman, part ofwhat it said were his numerousconnections to “foreign nationalsand foreign governments acrossthe globe.”

But Mr. Trump’s own businesshistory is filled with overseas fi-nancial deals, and some have in-volved the Chinese state. He spenta decade unsuccessfully pursuingprojects in China, operating an of-fice there during his first run forpresident and forging a partner-ship with a major government-controlled company.

And it turns out that China isone of only three foreign nations— the others are Britain and Ire-land — where Mr. Trump main-tains a bank account, according toan analysis of the president’s taxrecords, which were obtained byThe New York Times. The foreignaccounts do not show up on Mr.Trump’s public financial disclo-sures, where he must list personalassets, because they are held un-der corporate names. The identi-ties of the financial institutionsare not clear.

The Chinese account is con-trolled by Trump InternationalHotels Management L.L.C., whichthe tax records show paid $188,561in taxes in China while pursuing li-censing deals there from 2013 to2015.

The tax records do not includedetails on how much money mayhave passed through the overseasaccounts, though the InternalRevenue Service does require fil-

Trump’s TaxesShow Own PastCourting ChinaThis article is by Mike McIntire,

Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.


UBIQUITOUS Google used to be just for Googling. Now, the brand domi-nates a great many aspects of our lives, both online and off. PAGE B1

WASHINGTON — SenatorMitch McConnell, the majorityleader, privately told Republicansenators on Tuesday that he hadwarned the White House not tostrike a pre-election deal withSpeaker Nancy Pelosi on a newround of stimulus, moving to headoff an agreement that PresidentTrump has demanded but most inhis party oppose.

Mr. McConnell’s remarks, con-firmed by four Republicans famil-iar with them, threw cold water onMr. Trump’s increasingly urgentpush to enact a new round of pan-demic aid before Election Day.They came just as Ms. Pelosi of-fered an upbeat assessment of hernegotiations with StevenMnuchin, the Treasury secretary,telling Democrats that their latestconversation had yielded “com-mon ground as we move closer toan agreement.”

The cost of their emerging com-promise on a new round of aid tohard-pressed Americans andbusinesses has steadily climbedtoward $2 trillion, inching closerto Ms. Pelosi’s demands even as itfar exceeds what most Senate Re-publicans have said they can ac-

McConnell ActsTo Shelve ReliefTill the Election

By EMILY COCHRANEand NICHOLAS FANDOS

Senator Mitch McConnell op-poses a push to pass an aid bill.

ANNA MONEYMAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES


The United States is on pace to recordthe most new daily cases of the entirepandemic in the coming days. PAGE A4

Third Surge Takes Hold

Late Edition

VOL. CLXX . . . . No. 58,853 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2020

Today, fog and mist, clouds and peri-odic sunshine, high 71. Tonight,mostly cloudy, mild, low 62. Tomor-row, partly sunny, warm, high 74.Weather map appears on Page A20.

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