Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Asia and Australia Edition

Syria, Facebook, Xi Jinping: Your Monday Briefing

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

Good morning. Mark Zuckerberg’s charm offensive, India’s bold #MeToo moment and Russell Crowe has an auction. Here’s what you need to know:

Image
Credit...Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets, via Associated Press

A suspected chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of Syrians and sickened hundreds in Douma, the rebel-held Damascus suburb, increased international tensions and raised the possibility of a U.S. missile strike. Above, a video image of toddlers being treated.

President Trump, on Twitter, directly blamed President Vladimir Putin of Russia as well as Iran for backing the Syrian president (“Animal Assad”), and pledged a “big price to pay.” Russia and Iran contend that the reported attack was bogus.

Almost exactly a year ago, after a sarin gas attack in Syria killed more than 80 civilians, the U.S. military struck a Syrian airfield, on Mr. Trump’s orders, just 63 hours later.

_____

Image
Credit...Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

Mark Zuckerberg faces Congress.

Facebook’s chief executive, embarks on a two-day marathon of testifying before U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday. To prepare, experts gave him a crash course in humility and charm.

He’ll have a lot of ground to cover: apologizing for recent missteps, offering reassurances that foreign powers will be stopped from using Facebook to meddle in U.S. elections and explaining plans to better protect users’ data.

Facebook has already announced a string of new privacy and anti-abuse measures, seeking to transform its image from a defiant and secretive behemoth into a contrite paragon of openness.

_____

Image
Credit...Lee Jin-Man/Associated Press

• “We South Koreans peacefully unseated a sitting president for corruption and had her convicted in a court of law. How many countries in the world can do that?”

That was an anticorruption campaigner after Park Geun-hye was sentenced on Friday to 24 years in prison, more than a year after she was ousted from the presidency.

Still, the country’s most enduring power is the handful of family-controlled conglomerates known as chaebol, and few expect fundamental change until they, too, are held to account for corrupt practices.

_____

Image
Credit...The New York Times

In one of India’s boldest #MeToo-type moments, an actress publicly disrobed to draw attention to sexual harassment in the country’s film industry.

After videos and pictures of a topless Sri Reddy, 28, spread quickly on the internet, the question turned to whether this was about changing society or a publicity stunt.

Separately, the Indian government is scanning the fingers, eyes and faces of its 1.3 billion residents for an ID mandatory for many services. Opponents see the program, called Aadhaar, as Orwell’s Big Brother brought to life. Above, identity card applicants in New Delhi.

_____

Image
Credit...Ben Rushton/EPA, via Shutterstock

• Russell Crowe’s leather jockstrap from the 2005 boxing movie “Cinderella Man” went for 7,000 Australian dollars, or $5,370. The maroon Doc Martens that Mr. Crowe wore in the 1992 movie “Romper Stomper” sold for 10,000 Australian dollars.

In all, hundreds of items belonging to the Oscar-winning Australian actor, above, were auctioned at Sotheby’s Australia on Saturday under the title “The Art of Divorce.”

The proceeds, more than $3.7 million Australian, will benefit a Sydney charity that provides music education and instruments to disadvantaged and indigenous children and at-risk youth.

• Open revolt: The Denver Post, the 125-year-old Colorado newspaper, publicly slammed its New York-based hedge-fund owner, describing its executives as “vulture capitalists.”

• Among the headlines to watch for this week: President Xi Jinping is expected to unveil further reform measures, including economic ones, at the Boao Forum in the southern Chinese island province of Hainan on Tuesday.

• Japan signed a $90 million grant and loan deal with Cambodia for economic and electricity projects in Phnom Penh.

• Two of China’s most popular video platforms disappeared from app stores after CCTV, the state broadcaster, accused them of promoting underage pregnancy.

• Australia’s coal miners won their highest supply contract with Japan since 2012, up 18 percent from 2017.

Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

Image
Competitors crossed the start line of the the annual Pyongyang marathon at Kim Il Sung stadium in Pyongyang on Sunday.Credit...Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• The annual Pyongyang marathon drew about 400 runners from around 43 countries and territories, less than half last year’s numbers. [A.P.]

• In London, an additional 300 police officers have been deployed to help stop a wave of knife attacks. There were six stabbings in 90 minutes on Thursday. [The Telegraph]

• Texas became the first state to deploy National Guard troops to the southern border after President Trump announced he would order the military there. [The New York Times]

• Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, dissolved Parliament and released a manifesto of pledges for ethnic Malays, his key voting bloc, ahead of national polls expected in early May. [Reuters]

• Paul Le Roux, one of the world’s least known but most prodigious criminals, confessed to an astonishing array of crimes, including shipping guns from Indonesia, trafficking methamphetamines out of North Korea and taking part in at least five murders. [The New York Times]

• The police in Japan arrested a 73-year-old man after they were alerted that he had kept his mentally ill son, 42, confined in a wooden cage for as long as 20 years. [The Asahi Shimbun]

• Prince Charles, while on a weeklong tour in Australia, was reunited with a woman who made headlines 40 years ago, when she was 14, for kissing him at Cairns Airport in Queensland. [BBC]

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

• How to start working out.

• Which is better during exercise: bananas or sports drinks? (It may not be what you think.)

• Recipe of the day: Ease into weeknight cooking with oven-baked miso tofu over rice.

Image
Credit...Brian Rea

• Modern Love: A divorced woman seeking no-strings-attached liaisons learned a sobering lesson about matrimony — by sleeping with married men.

• In memoriam. Daniel Akaka, 93, a former U.S. senator from Hawaii and a World War II veteran who fought for the belated recognition of Asian-American servicemen; Isao Takahata, 82, a film director who co-founded Japan’s premier animation studio, Studio Ghibli.

• And Japan’s new gleam of prosperity has rekindled an interest in the 1980s, a so-called Lost Decade that was “a time of Champagne, garish colors and bubbly disco dance-floor anthems.”

Image
Credit...The Print Collector/Getty Images

Before March fades too far from our memories, we wanted to follow up on a back story that appeared recently in the versions of our Morning Briefing in Asia and Europe.

In it, we explained to our international audience the history of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, which acquired the nickname “March Madness” in the 1980s.

As it relates to basketball, March Madness can be traced to 1939, when it was used by the Illinois High School Association to describe a statewide high-school basketball tournament: “A little March madness may complement and contribute to sanity and help keep society on an even keel.”

One of our erudite readers, however, pointed out that the link between March and madness is much older: The old English phrase “mad as a March hare” stretches back to the 1500s.

The idiom, used to describe someone who is crazy or irrational, derives its meaning from the behavior of hares at the beginning of breeding season.

In Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” from 1865, the March Hare famously attends the Mad Hatter’s tea party, before which Alice thinks: “The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May, it won’t be raving mad — at least not so mad as it was in March.”

Claire Moses contributed reporting.

_____

Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online. Sign up here to get it by email in the Australian, Asian, European or American morning. You can also receive an Evening Briefing on U.S. weeknights.

And our Australia bureau chief offers a weekly letter adding analysis and conversations with readers.

Browse our full range of Times newsletters here.

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

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT