California, Harvey Weinstein, Boy Scouts: Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/briefing/california-harvey-weinstein-boy-scouts.html

Version 0 of 1.

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

1. “If you have a place to go, go.”

A sheriff in Northern California said rising winds could fan the wildfires that have already consumed more than 70,000 acres in wine country and more than 140,000 acres across the length of the state. At least 23 people are dead, and many more are missing.

Here are updated maps and before-and-after photographs, and drone footage from Santa Rosa, above, showing block after block reduced to ash.

_____

2. President Trump said it was “possible” that the U.S. would pull out of Nafta, despite urgings to the contrary from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. Above, the two leaders with their spouses.

The pact appears to be edging toward collapse as negotiators from Canada, Mexico and the U.S. gather for another round of talks in Washington. Nafta’s demise would send shock waves throughout the global economy, inflicting damage on manufacturing, agriculture and energy.

_____

3. Also at the White House today:

Administration officials said President Trump had chosen Kirstjen Nielsen, above, an aide to the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, to run the Department of Homeland Security.

And Mr. Trump threatened to challenge NBC’s license in response to a report that he called for a huge buildup of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Curious how we cover the Trump administration? You can submit questions here for a TimesTalk Thursday at 6:30 p.m. with our executive editor, Dean Baquet, the White House correspondents Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, and our media columnist Jim Rutenberg. We’ll be livestreaming the event on our site, YouTube and Facebook. (And we’ll remind you tomorrow.)

_____

4. “The perverse, insistent, matter-of-factness of male sexual predation and assault — of men’s power over women.”

Our film critic Manohla Dargis reflected on the pileup of allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

In our podcast “The Daily,” the actress Katherine Kendall, above, talks about what happened to her in Mr. Weinstein’s apartment in 1993.

_____

5. Our South Asia bureau chief visited refugee camps in Bangladesh, where Rohingya Muslims described the horrific campaign of slaughter and rape being carried out by Myanmar’s military.

“Much of the violence was flamboyantly brutal, intimate and personal,” he writes. The young woman above told of her infant son being ripped from her arms and thrown into a fire before she herself was brutally attacked.

Human rights groups said the government troops had one goal: to erase the Rohingya in Myanmar. Times correspondents discuss the crisis in this video.

_____

6. The Boy Scouts of America will accept girls, marking a historic shift for the century-old organization.

The group cited the desire to nurture female leaders as a reason for the decision, to the chagrin of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., which is vehemently opposed to the move.

Starting next year, girls will be allowed into the Cub Scout program. A separate program for older girls will be announced next year.

_____

7. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain has a question for Catalonia: Did you declare independence, or not?

Mr. Rajoy, above, said the Catalan leader, Carles Puigdemont, had sown “deliberate confusion” in his latest speech on the matter.

Pending the response, Mr. Rajoy said he was asking his government to suspend Catalan lawmakers and take charge of the region’s administration.

_____

8. Supereruptions — rare events that could blanket the earth with ash — are believed to occur every 100,000 years.

Scientists are trying to predict the next one by studying a supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park. And they have been stunned to discover that the conditions for the eruptions can emerge in a single human lifetime.

_____

9. The U.S. men’s soccer team is not going to the World Cup in Russia next summer, after a disastrous match last night against Trinidad and Tobago.

“It was a perfect storm kind of a night, where everything that could have possibly went wrong did,” said the captain, Michael Bradley.

Here’s how the team missed its chance, minute by agonizing minute.

_____

10. Finally, the MacArthur Foundation named its 2017 “genius grant” fellows. The group of 24 includes the musician Rhiannon Giddens, above; the novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen and the Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones.

The fellowship comes with a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000. Few honors are as wrapped in mystery — there’s no application, and candidates are suggested by a network of hundreds and then chosen by an anonymous committee.

“We hope that when people read about the fellows, it makes them think about how they might be more creative in their own lives,” the program’s director said. “It does something for the human spirit.”

Have a great night.

_____

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 catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.

If photographs appear out of order, please download the updated New York Times app from iTunes or Google Play.

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