Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Asia and Australia Edition

China, North Korea, Pope Francis: Your Tuesday Briefing

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

Good morning. China’s hard bargaining, risks over North Korea and a death on Mount Everest. Here’s what you need to know.

Image
Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• China called President Trump’s bluff.

Mr. Trump promoted his administration’s trade talks with China as a success on Monday, saying China would end up buying more American agricultural goods.

But though Washington’s suspended tariffs on $150 billion in Chinese goods, Beijing has held its line, rebuffing demands and avoiding specific pledges. (Or as China’s propaganda machine tells it, the Chinese government “never compromised.”) Above, a steelworker in Nantong, China.

A photo from the talks, showing Chinese delegates sitting across from much older American lawmakers, has gone viral in China, where social media users saw it as a symbol of an aging United States in retreat.

And in our Opinion section, a Hong Kong journalist examines the inner workings of China’s vast global influence machine.

_____

Image
Credit...Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

President Trump is worried that his planned meeting with North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un, next month could turn into an embarrassment.

High on the agenda when Mr. Trump meets with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea at the White House on Tuesday will be the North’s recent about-face, in which it rejected offers of economic aid to denuclearize. Above, the leaders in Seoul in November.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a remarkably hard-line speech about Iran, offering no concessions to European leaders who want to do business with Tehran.

Separately, John Bolton, President Trump’s new national security adviser, has been quietly taking advice from a limited circle of associates, some of whom have business interests that overlap with the National Security Council.

_____

Image
Credit...Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

• “We feel at home here.”

For Part 2 in our series on how rural Australian communities are dealing global changes, we have a story of rebirth.

An influx of Filipinos has turned Pyramid Hill, a one-pub town of around 500 people, 240 kilometers (about 149 miles) from Melbourne, into a model for integration and revival.

New homes are going up for the first time in a generation — and both the newcomers and lifelong residents say they have found the answer to rising concerns that immigrants strain resources in cities: small-town living.

“It’s the only way to survive,” said Tom Smith, a pig farmer who spurred the town’s revival by sponsoring four workers from the Philippines in 2008.

(Part 1: the boom that left Australia’s small farmers behind.)

_____

Image
Credit...Jason Holley

• We are all mosaics.

We’re accustomed to thinking of our cells as sharing an identical set of genes. But the genome — all the DNA in our cells — not only varies from person to person, it can also vary from cell to cell, even within the same individual.

The implications are enormous. For some, that can mean developing a serious disorder like a heart condition. But scientists have discovered that even healthy people are more different from one another than they had imagined.

_____

Image
Credit...Whitney Curtis for The New York Times

• Banks are adopting military tools and techniques, like “fusion centers,” windowless bunkers and combat drills, to battle cybercrime.

US stocks closed sharply higher after American and Chinese negotiators appeared to de-escalate trade tensions.

• Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia blamed the country’s $251 billion debt on the government of his former protégé, Najib Razak, the subject of intensifying graft investigations.

• More than 200 apps and services offer stalkers a variety of electronic capabilities to monitor their targets, including the abilities to track locations, harvest texts and secretly record video.

• U.S. stocks were up. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. (The Hong Kong exchange is closed.)

Image
Credit...Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• A Chilean survivor of sexual abuse said Pope Francis told him that being gay was “not a problem” and that “God made you this way and loves you this way, and the pope loves you this way.” The Vatican declined to comment on what would be a remarkable expression of Roman Catholic inclusion. [The New York Times]

• A Japanese climber became the third person to die on Mount Everest this month. Nobukazu Kuriki had lost nine fingers to frostbite on a previous attempt to reach the summit of the world’s highest peak. [The New York Times]

• A U.S. envoy reassured Taiwan that it was not a pawn in President Trump’s plan for winning concessions from China, but also dismissed suggestions that American Marines would be posted at his mission’s new offices in Taipei, a move that would raise tensions with Beijing. [South China Morning Post]

• China launched a satellite to prepare for a lunar rover mission that will explore the dark side of the moon, state media said. The country aims to become a major space power by 2030. [Reuters]

• China is planning to scrap all limits on the number of children a family can have, a historic end to a policy that spurred countless human-rights abuses and left the world’s second-largest economy short of workers. [Bloomberg]

• Around 50 competitors have remained in Australia illegally after this year’s Commonwealth Games, and nearly 200 others are applying for refugee status, a government official said. [BBC]

• Nicolás Maduro won a second term as president of Venezuela, in a contest that critics said was heavily rigged in his favor and which many voters shunned. [The New York Times]

• President Trump swore in Gina Haspel as head of the C.I.A., amid his assault on what he perceives as the intelligence community’s improper actions as part of investigations into his campaign. [The New York Times]

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

Image
Credit...Jessica Emily Marx for The New York Times

• Recipe of the day: Into weeknight project cooking? Order delivery and make a delicious black bean soup.

• Smoking cessation, stress management and exercise can decrease the size of atherosclerotic plaques.

• Our wine critic selected these 20 great wines for under $20, ready for the summer.

Image
Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

• Hawaii’s volcanic ghost town: Our reporter provides an inside look at an island outpost devastated by lava and shaken by the jet-engine roars of the Kilauea volcano.

An asteroid that shares orbital space with Jupiter but goes around the sun in the opposite direction came from outside our solar system.

• Meet Paolo Borrometi, one of nearly 200 Italian journalists who live under police protection because their reporting angered the mafia. “That doesn’t happen in other countries,” a press freedom advocate says.

Image
Credit...Fox Photos/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

Sherlock Holmes is “the most famous fictional character of the past two centuries, rivaled only by Dracula and James Bond,” a reviewer for The Times once argued.

Even so, his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, above, couldn’t wait to kill him off. Doyle was born in Edinburgh on this day in 1859.

Although Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring the great detective and his companion, Dr. John Watson, by 1893 he had become bored of his creation.

In “The Final Problem,” Doyle sent his protagonist plunging over the Reichenbach Falls with his archnemesis, Professor James Moriarty, seemingly to their deaths. (More than 20,000 outraged readers canceled their subscriptions to The Strand Magazine when the story was published.)

Doyle later said of Holmes, “I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards pâté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much.”

Although he eventually resurrected Holmes, Doyle also had time for pursuits worthy even of his eccentric sleuth: He helped popularize skiing, tried his hand unsuccessfully at politics and was knighted for his report on the Boer War.

He also had a deep interest in the supernatural and helped popularize a famous hoax of the early 20th century: a series of photographs of garden fairies.

Charles McDermid wrote today’s Back Story.

_____

This briefing was prepared for the Asian morning. You can also sign up to get the briefing in the Australian, European or American morning. Sign up here to receive an Evening Briefing on U.S. weeknights.

Browse our full range of Times newsletters here.

What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes.com.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT