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Raqqa, China, Los Angeles Dodgers: Your Wednesday Briefing

Fighters with the Syrian Democratic Forces watching what they believed were Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria. On Tuesday, the city was declared liberated, although pockets of fighting remain.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

“In my view, this agreement avoids chaos, and I don’t know a Democrat or a Republican who benefits from chaos.”

That’s Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican, summing up a deal he reached with Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, to try to stabilize health insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act. President Trump indicated support for the plan, which would fund subsidies to insurers for two years.

Separately, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is testifying at 10 a.m. Eastern today before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Here’s what to expect from the hearing, which we’ll cover live.

And the president’s third attempt to block travelers from several countries — most of them predominantly Muslim — was blocked on Tuesday just hours before it was to take effect.

“We have hot soup, we have bread: Come out and surrender,” one of the fighters said on a loudspeaker. “The ISIS members and their families who surrendered to us are safe.”

A photographer for The Times accompanied Kurdish fighters as they entered Raqqa, the Syrian city that had been a stronghold of the militant group.

Our correspondents Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad report: “With the fall of Raqqa, the Islamic State has lost the two most important cities of its self-declared caliphate in three months. It was pushed out of Mosul in July, and now holds only a fraction of the territory it once controlled.”

Other than Communist Party loyalists, few would consider Beijing’s internet controls a model for democratic societies. At the same time, China anticipated many of the questions now flummoxing governments from the U.S. to Germany to Indonesia.

Of the controversy over Russia’s influence in the American presidential election, an online “supervisor” for one of China’s biggest social media platforms said: “This kind of thing would not happen here.” (What gets censored? There are 68 categories of material.)

Today, President Xi Jinping opened the Communist Party congress with a 205-minute speech. Here’s what we learned from the president, who is all but certain to receive a second five-year term.

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President Xi Jinping at the Communist Party congress in Beijing today. His vision of the party’s rule centers on restoring China to greatness.
Credit...Aly Song/Reuters

Since the late 1990s, an estimated 16,000 people have enrolled in courses offered by Nxivm, an organization that says it offers a chance to achieve fulfillment by eliminating psychological and emotional barriers.

But scores of members are leaving, and interviews portray a group engaged in disturbing practices.

Our reporter in Albany, where the group is based, describes an initiation ritual in which women were required to submit naked photographs or other compromising materials. The women were then branded.

Several former members have asked the New York authorities to investigate the group’s practices, but officials have declined to pursue action.

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Sarah Edmondson left Nxivm after being branded as part of a secret ritual.
Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

In today’s show, we discuss how President Trump’s promise of “America First” has met the realities of manufacturing in the U.S.

Listen on a computer, an iOS device or an Android device.

• George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund manager and a major Democratic donor, has given $18 billion to his Open Society Foundations, which promotes democracy and human rights.

• The head of Amazon Studios, Roy Price, resigned days after a producer accused him of sexual harassment.

• Google placed ads linking to blatantly bogus stories on fact-checking sites created precisely to dispel falsehoods.

• U.S. stocks were mixed on Tuesday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

• Good relationships take commitment, compromise, forgiveness and, most of all, effort. Here’s some advice.

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Credit...Mark Conlan

• We see others’ failures as courageous. We see our own as shameful. Why?

• Recipe of the day: Midweek dinner can be as simple as pasta with burst cherry tomatoes.

• Feeding eight on scraps.

In today’s 360 video, food shortages and rising inflation in Venezuela have forced one woman to provide for her family from the garbage of a supermarket.

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Food shortages and rising inflation have made basic groceries unaffordable for many Venezuelans, over 80 percent of whom now live in poverty. After losing her job two years ago, Francia has been feeding her family from the garbage of a supermarket in Caracas.CreditCredit...The New York Times. Technology by Samsung.

• Innovation is all in the family.

In an effort to improve Americans’ diet, Kimbal Musk employs the same kind of ambition as his older brother, Elon.

“Food is this beautiful gift we give each other three times a day,” he’ll often tell a crowd, “but you couldn’t design a worse food system than what we have.”

• Of books ...

“Lincoln in the Bardo,” by George Saunders, won the Man Booker Prize, the second year in a row that Britain’s most prestigious literary award has gone to an American.

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George Saunders on “Lincoln in the Bardo”: “For me, the nice thing is that the book is hard, and it’s kind of weird and it’s not a traditional novel.”Credit...Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press

• ... and baseball.

In the major league playoffs, the Los Angeles Dodgers are one win away from the World Series after beating the Chicago Cubs, and the New York Yankees evened their series against the Houston Astros.

• Best of late-night TV.

Hey, it’s David Letterman!

• Quotation of the day.

“As women leaders in politics, in a state that postures itself as a leader in justice and equality, you might assume our experience has been different. It has not.”

Legislators, senior legislative aides and lobbyists, in a letter denouncing what they described as pervasive sexual misconduct by powerful men working in and with the California Legislature.

As the U.S. national anthem played, they bowed their heads and prayed they wouldn’t be shot.

It was this week in 1968 that two African-American sprinters raised gloved fists during a medal presentation at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, in a denunciation of racial discrimination.

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Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos were dropped from the U.S. Olympic team after their 1968 protest.Credit...Associated Press

The demonstration by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who won the gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter dash, drew a quick reaction.

Under pressure from the International Olympic Committee — which wanted to avoid the politicization of the Games — the U.S. team dropped the two runners, who received death threats.

The silver medalist, Peter Norman of Australia, knew of his fellow Olympians’ plans; on the podium, all three wore badges of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which was organized to protest racism in sports. Mr. Norman was ostracized after returning home.

In a memoir published in 2011, Mr. Carlos wrote: “If I shut my eyes, I can still feel the fire from those days. And if I open my eyes, I still see the fires all around me. I didn’t like the way the world was, and I believe that there need to be some changes about the way the world is.”

Thomas Furse contributed reporting.

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