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Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s headlines. If you’d like to receive this briefing by email, sign up here.

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Top story: Trump’s ‘racist ploy’ to play on immigration fears

Ramping up his anti-immigration message yet further in the final days of the midterm campaign, Donald Trump has said he will send as many as 15,000 troops to the Mexican border to see off a caravan of Central American migrants. The caravan in question is thought to number about 3,500 people and remains 1,000 miles and several weeks from the US. 15,000 is more than the number of US troops deployed in Afghanistan.

Nonexistent crisis. Shaw Drake, policy counsel for the ACLU’s Border Rights Center, said a troop increase “for a nonexistent crisis is a racist ploy and an irresponsible waste of resources”.

Seeking asylum. US aid groups are preparing to go head to head with the Department of Homeland Security to ensure asylum seekers at the border have their cases heard.

Dems unify on healthcare, Republicans hammer immigration

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Arizona Republican Martha McSally says she is getting her ‘ass kicked’ in her US Senate race over her votes to scrap Obamacare. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

With the midterms less than a week away, the two major parties are sticking in their policy comfort zones, with the Democrats unifying around healthcare and Republicans hammering the immigration issue, as Chris McGreal reports from Kansas City, Missouri.

Climate plan. Emily Holden finds the Democrats lacking a coherent climate change strategy, despite painting the GOP as the party of polluters.

Latino vote. Amanda Holpuch and Tom Dart ask whether the Democrats are doing enough to get out the Latino vote.

Bolsonaro merges key ministries, raising fears for rainforest

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Deforestation in the western Amazon region of Brazil. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images

Brazil’s far-right president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, will merge his government’s agriculture and environment ministries, raising concerns among conservationists that he intends to accelerate the conversion of the Amazon into farmland. Yet the decision will be welcomed by Brazil’s agribusiness and mining lobbies, who backed Bolsonaro in hopes of opening up protected rainforest areas.

Wilderness survival. A new map of the world’s remaining intact ecosystems has revealed that just five countries hold 70% of Earth’s untouched wilderness areas, including Brazil, the US, Canada, Australia and Russia.

Lion Air plane’s black box retrieved from Indonesian waters

Play Video 0:33 Divers retrieve black box from Lion Air plane – video

Indonesian navy divers have retrieved the black box from a Lion Air plane that crashed into the Java Sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta on Monday, killing all 189 people on board. It is hoped the black box can explain why the aircraft, a nearly new Boeing 737 Max, went down so soon after takeoff, and whether the crash was related to technical problems recorded on its previous flight.

First victim. Police named the first victim of the crash as Jannatun Cintya Dewi, 24, a civil servant for Indonesia’s energy ministry. She was identified using fingerprints after searchers found her right hand.

Listen to Today in Focus: the tropical Trump

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brazil’s president-elect: Jair Bolsonaro. Photograph: Pilar Olivares/Reuters

The Guardian’s new daily podcast is going behind the headlines to get a deeper understanding of the news. Today, Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips tells host Anushka Asthana about his run-in with Brazil’s populist, pro-torture president-elect Jair Bolsonaro, and the fallout from his election.

Crib sheet

At least 15 people have died and dozens are missing after Typhoon Yutu struck the Philippines, with heavy rains causing landslides.

Officials in the UK have expressed outrage after a Republican congressional candidate used an image of an English village , Jaywick Sands, in a campaign ad, apparently to illustrate how rundown the US might look under Democratic governance.

Harvey Weinstein has been accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Polish model in 2002, as part of a lawsuit targeting the disgraced film producer. Weinstein denies all allegations of nonconsensual sex.

Lee Child, the author of the bestselling Jack Reacher thrillers, has joined other writers including Margaret Atwood in offering the chance to name a character in his next book, as part of a charity auction in aid of survivors of torture.

Must-reads

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Trump supporter at a rally in Montana. Photograph: Fred R Conrad/The Guardian

A week in the cauldron of Trump’s wild rallies

With the midterms fast approaching, Ed Pilkington criss-crossed the US to attend five of Donald Trump’s remarkable campaign rallies, searching for the key to the president’s appeal – and watching as he warms up for 2020.

A tiny frog takes a giant leap for endangered species

Scientists in South Africa have boosted the tiny population of Pickersgill’s reed frogs with captive breeding. Tony Carnie asks how far conservationists should go in manipulating the populations and living conditions of the species they are trying to save.

The most disgusting food in the world

A Museum of Disgusting Food has opened in Sweden, showcasing repulsive-seeming cuisine from around the world, including grilled guinea pig, mouse wine and maggot cheese.

Loneliness is a modern illness of the body, not just the mind

More and more people report heightened levels of loneliness. Fay Bound Alberti says this 21st-century epidemic is not just a condition of the mind, but of the body, too – and that “engaging the body and its senses appears to bring people back to social connectedness”.

Opinion

The producers of The Simpsons may be preparing to axe the show’s controversial Indian-American stalwart, Apu. But, when he was growing up, Bhaskar Sunkara considered the character a hero.

It felt nice as a member of tiny minority in a mostly white and Christian country to be reminded that there were almost a billion other people on Earth who had to learn bhajans, suffer through seemingly interminable pujas, or touch their elders’ feet as a sign of respect.

Sport

The World Anti-Doping Agency faced a barrage of criticism at a White House summit on Wednesday, where the organisation was accused of “bullying” clean athletes and being soft on Russian cheating. Sean Ingle reports.

It is 25 years since the Montreal Canadiens won the last of their 24 Stanley Cup trophies. Paul Logothetis asks how a sports franchise that once ranked alongside the Yankees or the Lakers became an also-ran.

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