arnished by grisly rt eport saudi prince s showcase · 14/10/2018  · reliance on oil by 2030....

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She grew up picking ginseng and collecting butterflies in a remote Chinese village. She moved to Saipan, where she ran a successful restaurant with her husband. Now she was crumpled outside the massage parlor where she toiled along 40th Road in Flushing, Queens, her blood pooling on the pavement. Her clients knew her as SiSi. The police called her Jane Doe Ponytail. But her real name was Song Yang. By Dan Barry and Jeffrey E. Singer. SPECIAL SECTION THE CASE OF JANE DOE PONYTAIL TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES DUBLIN, Ohio — Robert Pe- ters and George Fidelibus walked off the 18th green at the Golf Club of Dublin, then carried pints of beer to the patio overlooking the course, which was framed by $500,000 homes. Their conversation quickly turned to the president. “I’m feeling better and better about him all the time,” said Mr. Peters, 63, a retired engineer. Mr. Fidelibus, 75, a retired banker, had also once been skepti- cal of the president. “I’m a supporter of Trump now,” he said “He may not always say things the way most presidents before him said them, but what does it matter? They didn’t get the job done.” As a divided nation heads into a crucial election, much of the atten- tion is focused on the anti-Trump animus of suburban women. Much less examined are their male counterparts. While recent polls show that white women with a college degree favor Democratic House candidates by 20 points or more, white college-educated men — who focus more singularly on economic issues, according to surveys — are a potential bulwark for the president and his party. It is especially true in suburban bat- Suburban Men ‘Feeling Better’ About Trump By TRIP GABRIEL Continued on Page 16 WASHINGTON — The partici- pants nicknamed it “Davos in the Desert,” which captures the lofty ambitions of the annual investor conference scheduled to convene in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this month. Initially planned as an intimate gathering, it grew quickly in size and scope, and the inaugural meeting last year reflected the de- termination of its host, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to be a player on the world stage. In keeping with Muslim prac- tice, no alcohol was served. Wait- ers roamed the vast, opulent Ritz- Carlton Hotel, offering pale Saudi coffee and exotic fruit drinks. Out- side the hotel, female executives kept their arms and legs covered. But the gathering was an extrava- gant embodiment of Crown Prince Mohammed’s dream to modern- ize Saudi Arabia and wean it off its reliance on oil by 2030. Speaking on stage to the Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo, the prince said Saudi Arabia “and all of its projects and programs can reach new horizons in the world.” Then he presented his blueprint for Neom, a $500 bil- lion planned city that would rise from the sands — a futuristic Xan- adu of high-tech jobs and robot workers. Last week, that vision collided with the brutal realities of the Middle East — a swirl of allega- tions that Crown Prince Moham- med’s family ordered the murder of a Saudi journalist in Turkey. The ensuing furor has tarnished the future king’s reputation and left his conference in tatters, as for- eign investors confront the dark side of his Arabian dreams. If last year’s conference served as a grand coming-out party for Crown Prince Mohammed, this year’s gathering is a symbol of the West’s deepening disillusionment with the young leader. No longer the bold reformer bent on mod- ernizing his kingdom — a favorite of President Trump and his son- in-law, Jared Kushner — he is now regarded as an impulsive, unreli- able autocrat who falls back on crude tactics to crush dissent. The grisly, if unconfirmed, re- ports about the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, have prompted a growing list of attendees and sponsors to bail out of the Riyadh meeting. By week’s end, The New York Times and every major Western news organization, ex- cept Fox Business Network, had canceled its participation. The chief executive of Uber, Saudi Prince’s Showcase Tarnished by Grisly Report Global Conference in Tatters as Suspicions About Critic’s Fate Shadow Monarch Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. ALASTAIR GRANT/ASSOCIATED PRESS Continued on Page 8 By MARK LANDLER and KATE KELLY JOHNNY MILANO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Whipped up by Hurricane Michael, the Gainer Bayou surged into the Panama City, Fla., home of Bill and Marie Duke. Inland, in some unlikely places, the devastation was just as bad. Page 24. Florida Is Turned Inside Out SCHOHARIE, N.Y. — It was supposed to be a surprise. Axel Steenburg had been plan- ning a birthday party for his wife, Amy, for a while. But the ever ex- citable Mr. Steenburg was notori- ously bad at keeping secrets and, somehow, she found out. “He would try to hide it from you and then you would see him biting his cheek. It was so obvi- ous,” his mother, Janet Steenburg, said. “And then he would say, ‘You’re not going to believe what I have for you.’” Mr. Steenburg coordinated a passel of friends through a group chat, arranging for a tour and tast- ing at a popular upstate brewery and renting a party bus to make sure that anyone drinking would not be driving. He even set aside two spare bedrooms in his home in Amsterdam, N.Y., a small city northwest of Albany, in case someone was not sober enough to drive home. But the bus broke down before picking them up, so he booked whatever he could find at the last-minute: a white stretch limousine. It fit 18. They were 17. That would do. Behind the wheel of the 2001 limousine was a husband holding down a part-time job as a driver for a company whose vehicles made him worry for his safety. About 25 miles to the south, a professor and his father-in-law were out celebrating a family wed- ding and pulled over at a roadside country store to take a break from driving. All 20 would soon be dead. Their lives were cut short in a violent limousine crash in Schoharie, N.Y., this month, that has left in its wake a collection of mourning families, a clutch of young orphans and state and fed- eral officials trying to piece to- gether what went wrong. On Wednesday, the operator of the limousine company, Nauman Hussain, was arrested by the State Police and charged with criminally negligent homicide as a result of renting out a vehicle — a hulking 2001 Ford Excursion — even though it had repeatedly failed inspections, including of its brakes, and had been deemed not road worthy by state officials. Mr. Hussain, 28, pleaded not A Birthday Bash, 17 Friends and a Ragged Limo This article is by Jesse McKinley, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Kristi Berner. How Trip to Celebrate Ended in Deadliest Crash in Decade Continued on Page 18 Over the past decade, Jared Kushner’s family company has spent billions of dollars buying real estate. His personal stock in- vestments have soared. His net worth has quintupled to almost $324 million. And yet for several years run- ning, Mr. Kushner — President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser — appears to have paid almost no federal in- come taxes, according to confi- dential financial documents re- viewed by The New York Times. His low tax bills are the result of a common tax-minimizing ma- neuver that, year after year, gen- erated millions of dollars in losses for Mr. Kushner, according to the documents. But the losses were only on paper — Mr. Kushner and his company did not appear to ac- tually lose any money. The losses were driven by depreciation, a tax benefit that lets real estate invest- ors deduct a portion of the cost of their buildings from their taxable income every year. In 2015, for example, Mr. Kush- ner took home $1.7 million in sala- ry and investment gains. But those earnings were swamped by $8.3 million of losses, largely be- cause of “significant depreciation” that Mr. Kushner and his company took on their real estate, accord- ing to the documents reviewed by The Times. Nothing in the documents sug- gests Mr. Kushner or his company broke the law. A spokesman for Mr. Kushner’s lawyer said that Mr. Kushner “paid all taxes due.” In theory, the depreciation pro- vision is supposed to shield real estate developers from having their investments whittled away by wear and tear on their build- ings. In practice, though, the allow- ance often represents a lucrative giveaway to developers like Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner. Forms Suggest Kushner Paid Tax Bills of $0 By JESSE DRUCKER and EMILY FLITTER Continued on Page 23 BEIJING — Rukiya Maimaiti, a local propaganda official in Chi- na’s far west, warned her col- leagues to steel themselves for a wrenching task: detaining large numbers of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. The Chinese government wanted to purge the Xinjiang re- gion of “extremist” ideas, she told her co-workers, and secular Ui- ghurs had to support the cam- paign for the good of their people. “Fully understand that this task is in order to save your relatives and your families,” Ms. Maimaiti wrote. “This is a special kind of ed- ucation for a special time.” Her warning is one piece of a trail of evidence, often found on obscure government websites, that unmasks the origin of China’s most sweeping internment drive since the Mao era and establishes how President Xi Jinping and other senior leaders played a deci- sive role in its rapid expansion. Speeches, reports and docu- ments online offer a clearer ac- count than previously reported of how China’s top leaders set in mo- tion and escalated an indoctrina- tion campaign aimed at eradicat- ing all but the mildest expressions of Islam and any yearning for an independent Uighur homeland. Xi Began Drive To All but Erase Islam in China By CHRIS BUCKLEY Continued on Page 11 “Their tents were destroyed and the dead bodies were scattered,” a police spokesman said of the victims, includ- ing a world-record holder. PAGE 10 INTERNATIONAL 4-12 8 Climbers Die in Nepal Storm It’s tough for any Republican to win statewide office in California. In his run for governor, John Cox figures the first step is telling people his name. PAGE 14 NATIONAL 14-25 The California Campaign Trail At the Marriott credit union, which has unusually high fees, service workers find further stress on thin paychecks while their bosses get deals. PAGE 1 SUNDAY BUSINESS Banking Fees for Lowest Paid Patrick Mahomes, the 23-year-old quar- terback who is electrifying the N.F.L. as the leader of the unbeaten Chiefs, has Kansas City smitten. PAGE 1 SPORTSSUNDAY ‘The Coolest Thing’ in Sports Susan Chira PAGE 1 SUNDAY REVIEW U(D547FD)v+&!#!_!=!: PASTOR MEETS TRUMP The presi- dent received the Rev. Andrew Brunson, who had been detained by Turkey for two years. PAGE 19 Late Edition VOL. CLXVIII . . . No. 58,115 © 2018 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2018 Today, mostly sunny, cool, high 59. Tonight, becoming cloudy, low 52. Tomorrow, mostly cloudy, some brief showers, breezy, milder, high 67. Details, SportsSunday, Page 12. $6.00

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Page 1: arnished by Grisly RT eport Saudi Prince s Showcase · 14/10/2018  · reliance on oil by 2030. Speaking on stage to the Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo, the prince said

C M Y K Nxxx,2018-10-14,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

She grew up picking ginseng and collecting butterflies in a remote Chinese village. She moved to Saipan, where she rana successful restaurant with her husband. Now she was crumpled outside the massage parlor where she toiled along

40th Road in Flushing, Queens, her blood pooling on the pavement. Her clients knew her as SiSi. The police called herJane Doe Ponytail. But her real name was Song Yang. By Dan Barry and Jeffrey E. Singer. SPECIAL SECTION

THE CASE OF JANE DOE PONYTAIL

TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

DUBLIN, Ohio — Robert Pe-ters and George Fidelibus walkedoff the 18th green at the Golf Clubof Dublin, then carried pints ofbeer to the patio overlooking thecourse, which was framed by$500,000 homes.

Their conversation quicklyturned to the president.

“I’m feeling better and betterabout him all the time,” said Mr.Peters, 63, a retired engineer.

Mr. Fidelibus, 75, a retiredbanker, had also once been skepti-cal of the president.

“I’m a supporter of Trump now,”he said “He may not always saythings the way most presidentsbefore him said them, but whatdoes it matter? They didn’t get thejob done.”

As a divided nation heads into acrucial election, much of the atten-tion is focused on the anti-Trumpanimus of suburban women.

Much less examined are theirmale counterparts. While recentpolls show that white women witha college degree favor DemocraticHouse candidates by 20 points ormore, white college-educatedmen — who focus more singularlyon economic issues, according tosurveys — are a potential bulwarkfor the president and his party. Itis especially true in suburban bat-

Suburban Men‘Feeling Better’

About TrumpBy TRIP GABRIEL

Continued on Page 16

WASHINGTON — The partici-pants nicknamed it “Davos in theDesert,” which captures the loftyambitions of the annual investorconference scheduled to convenein Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, thismonth.

Initially planned as an intimategathering, it grew quickly in sizeand scope, and the inauguralmeeting last year reflected the de-termination of its host, CrownPrince Mohammed bin Salman, tobe a player on the world stage.

In keeping with Muslim prac-tice, no alcohol was served. Wait-ers roamed the vast, opulent Ritz-Carlton Hotel, offering pale Saudicoffee and exotic fruit drinks. Out-side the hotel, female executiveskept their arms and legs covered.But the gathering was an extrava-gant embodiment of Crown PrinceMohammed’s dream to modern-ize Saudi Arabia and wean it off itsreliance on oil by 2030.

Speaking on stage to the FoxBusiness Network anchor MariaBartiromo, the prince said SaudiArabia “and all of its projects andprograms can reach new horizonsin the world.” Then he presentedhis blueprint for Neom, a $500 bil-lion planned city that would risefrom the sands — a futuristic Xan-adu of high-tech jobs and robotworkers.

Last week, that vision collidedwith the brutal realities of theMiddle East — a swirl of allega-tions that Crown Prince Moham-med’s family ordered the murderof a Saudi journalist in Turkey. Theensuing furor has tarnished thefuture king’s reputation and left

his conference in tatters, as for-eign investors confront the darkside of his Arabian dreams.

If last year’s conference servedas a grand coming-out party forCrown Prince Mohammed, thisyear’s gathering is a symbol of theWest’s deepening disillusionmentwith the young leader. No longerthe bold reformer bent on mod-ernizing his kingdom — a favoriteof President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — he is nowregarded as an impulsive, unreli-able autocrat who falls back oncrude tactics to crush dissent.

The grisly, if unconfirmed, re-ports about the journalist, JamalKhashoggi, have prompted agrowing list of attendees andsponsors to bail out of the Riyadhmeeting. By week’s end, The NewYork Times and every majorWestern news organization, ex-cept Fox Business Network, hadcanceled its participation.

The chief executive of Uber,

Saudi Prince’s ShowcaseTarnished by Grisly Report

Global Conference in Tatters as SuspicionsAbout Critic’s Fate Shadow Monarch

Crown Prince Mohammed binSalman of Saudi Arabia.

ALASTAIR GRANT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued on Page 8

By MARK LANDLER and KATE KELLY

JOHNNY MILANO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Whipped up by Hurricane Michael, the Gainer Bayou surged into the Panama City, Fla., home ofBill and Marie Duke. Inland, in some unlikely places, the devastation was just as bad. Page 24.

Florida Is Turned Inside Out

SCHOHARIE, N.Y. — It wassupposed to be a surprise.

Axel Steenburg had been plan-ning a birthday party for his wife,Amy, for a while. But the ever ex-citable Mr. Steenburg was notori-ously bad at keeping secrets and,somehow, she found out.

“He would try to hide it fromyou and then you would see himbiting his cheek. It was so obvi-ous,” his mother, Janet Steenburg,said. “And then he would say,‘You’re not going to believe what Ihave for you.’”

Mr. Steenburg coordinated apassel of friends through a groupchat, arranging for a tour and tast-ing at a popular upstate breweryand renting a party bus to makesure that anyone drinking wouldnot be driving. He even set aside

two spare bedrooms in his home inAmsterdam, N.Y., a small citynorthwest of Albany, in casesomeone was not sober enough todrive home. But the bus brokedown before picking them up, sohe booked whatever he could findat the last-minute: a white stretchlimousine.

It fit 18. They were 17. Thatwould do.

Behind the wheel of the 2001limousine was a husband holdingdown a part-time job as a driverfor a company whose vehiclesmade him worry for his safety.

About 25 miles to the south, aprofessor and his father-in-law

were out celebrating a family wed-ding and pulled over at a roadsidecountry store to take a break fromdriving.

All 20 would soon be dead.Their lives were cut short in a

violent limousine crash inSchoharie, N.Y., this month, thathas left in its wake a collection ofmourning families, a clutch ofyoung orphans and state and fed-eral officials trying to piece to-gether what went wrong.

On Wednesday, the operator ofthe limousine company, NaumanHussain, was arrested by theState Police and charged withcriminally negligent homicide asa result of renting out a vehicle —a hulking 2001 Ford Excursion —even though it had repeatedlyfailed inspections, including of itsbrakes, and had been deemed notroad worthy by state officials.

Mr. Hussain, 28, pleaded not

A Birthday Bash, 17 Friends and a Ragged LimoThis article is by Jesse McKinley,

Luis Ferré-Sadurní and KristiBerner.

How Trip to CelebrateEnded in Deadliest

Crash in Decade

Continued on Page 18

Over the past decade, JaredKushner’s family company hasspent billions of dollars buyingreal estate. His personal stock in-vestments have soared. His networth has quintupled to almost$324 million.

And yet for several years run-ning, Mr. Kushner — PresidentTrump’s son-in-law and a seniorWhite House adviser — appearsto have paid almost no federal in-come taxes, according to confi-dential financial documents re-viewed by The New York Times.

His low tax bills are the result ofa common tax-minimizing ma-neuver that, year after year, gen-erated millions of dollars in lossesfor Mr. Kushner, according to thedocuments. But the losses wereonly on paper — Mr. Kushner andhis company did not appear to ac-tually lose any money. The losseswere driven by depreciation, a taxbenefit that lets real estate invest-ors deduct a portion of the cost oftheir buildings from their taxableincome every year.

In 2015, for example, Mr. Kush-ner took home $1.7 million in sala-ry and investment gains. Butthose earnings were swamped by$8.3 million of losses, largely be-cause of “significant depreciation”that Mr. Kushner and his companytook on their real estate, accord-ing to the documents reviewed byThe Times.

Nothing in the documents sug-gests Mr. Kushner or his companybroke the law. A spokesman forMr. Kushner’s lawyer said that Mr.Kushner “paid all taxes due.”

In theory, the depreciation pro-vision is supposed to shield realestate developers from havingtheir investments whittled awayby wear and tear on their build-ings.

In practice, though, the allow-ance often represents a lucrativegiveaway to developers like Mr.Trump and Mr. Kushner.

Forms SuggestKushner PaidTax Bills of $0

By JESSE DRUCKERand EMILY FLITTER

Continued on Page 23

BEIJING — Rukiya Maimaiti, alocal propaganda official in Chi-na’s far west, warned her col-leagues to steel themselves for awrenching task: detaining largenumbers of ethnic Uighurs andother Muslim minorities.

The Chinese governmentwanted to purge the Xinjiang re-gion of “extremist” ideas, she toldher co-workers, and secular Ui-ghurs had to support the cam-paign for the good of their people.

“Fully understand that this taskis in order to save your relativesand your families,” Ms. Maimaitiwrote. “This is a special kind of ed-ucation for a special time.”

Her warning is one piece of atrail of evidence, often found onobscure government websites,that unmasks the origin of China’smost sweeping internment drivesince the Mao era and establisheshow President Xi Jinping andother senior leaders played a deci-sive role in its rapid expansion.

Speeches, reports and docu-ments online offer a clearer ac-count than previously reported ofhow China’s top leaders set in mo-tion and escalated an indoctrina-tion campaign aimed at eradicat-ing all but the mildest expressionsof Islam and any yearning for anindependent Uighur homeland.

Xi Began Drive To All but Erase

Islam in ChinaBy CHRIS BUCKLEY

Continued on Page 11

“Their tents were destroyed and thedead bodies were scattered,” a policespokesman said of the victims, includ-ing a world-record holder. PAGE 10

INTERNATIONAL 4-12

8 Climbers Die in Nepal StormIt’s tough for any Republican to winstatewide office in California. In his runfor governor, John Cox figures the firststep is telling people his name. PAGE 14

NATIONAL 14-25

The California Campaign TrailAt the Marriott credit union, which hasunusually high fees, service workersfind further stress on thin paycheckswhile their bosses get deals. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

Banking Fees for Lowest PaidPatrick Mahomes, the 23-year-old quar-terback who is electrifying the N.F.L. asthe leader of the unbeaten Chiefs, hasKansas City smitten. PAGE 1

SPORTSSUNDAY

‘The Coolest Thing’ in Sports Susan Chira PAGE 1

SUNDAY REVIEW

U(D547FD)v+&!#!_!=!:

PASTOR MEETS TRUMP The presi-dent received the Rev. AndrewBrunson, who had been detainedby Turkey for two years. PAGE 19

Late Edition

VOL. CLXVIII . . . No. 58,115 © 2018 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2018

Today, mostly sunny, cool, high 59.Tonight, becoming cloudy, low 52.Tomorrow, mostly cloudy, somebrief showers, breezy, milder, high67. Details, SportsSunday, Page 12.

$6.00