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Asia and Australia Edition

Rohingya, Zimbabwe, Same-Sex Marriage: Your Thursday Briefing

Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press

• China is sending a top diplomat to North Korea for the first time in two years.

There was no guarantee of a meeting with the leader, Kim Jong-un, but Chinese experts said the envoy would have been sent to urge the North to enter nuclear negotiations and to convey the discussions President Xi Jinping held with President Trump during his Beijing visit last week.

We also looked at the so-called truce village, above, where a North Korean defector on Monday made a bold dash through gunfire.

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Rex Tillerson, the U.S. secretary of state, speaking in Myanmar, called the Rohingya crisis “horrific” and said it involved “crimes against humanity.”

Mr. Tillerson urged the nation’s military leader and Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of its civilian government, to conduct a credible investigation into the violence that has driven more than 615,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh since late August.

He warned only of the possibility of targeted sanctions against individuals, saying he that did not support “broad-based economic sanctions.”

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Credit...Alexander Joe/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• The fate of Robert Mugabe, the strongman leader of Zimbabwe for nearly 40 years, appears to be in the hands of former allies and opposition officials negotiating his future.

Mr. Mugabe, shown above in 2008, is been under house arrest after the military carried out what appeared to be a coup to prevent his wife from succeeding him.

Mr. Mugabe, 93, is one of Africa’s last liberation leaders still in power. Here’s what we know about what happened, and a look at Mr. Mugabe’s public life over the past half century.

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Credit...James Alcock/Getty Images

“Australians upheld their end of the bargain by voting en masse. Now it’s time for Parliament to uphold its end of the same deal.”

That was Senator Dean Smith of the Liberal Party, speaking after the country’s decisive approval for same-sex marriage by postal survey.

Gay rights advocates celebrated, conservatives mourned, and lawmakers like Mr. Smith, who is gay, began preparing for the enactment of a gay-marriage law.

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A crown prince. An epic purge. A proxy war. Saudi Arabia's political crisis, explained.CreditCredit...Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s 32-year-old crown prince, has seemingly overnight established himself as the most powerful figure in the Arab world.

And the upstart prince, above center, is taking on all comers: the royal family, wealthy Saudis, Iran and Hezbollah. He has blockaded Qatar, accused Iran of acts of war and encouraged the resignation of Lebanon’s prime minister.

Our reporters examine the question: Is he ambitious or simply reckless?

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• President Xi Jinping has promised that China will take a “driving seat” in responding to climate change. Despite rising emissions, the coal-burning country is on track to meet its commitments under the Paris climate accord.

We’re also covering this week’s climate conference in Bonn, Germany. (And if you’d like climate news delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for our Climate Fwd: newsletter.)

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• U.S. lawmakers should prohibit the acquisition of domestic assets by Chinese state-owned entities, a panel said, which could hit the kinds of deals that might emerge from a $5 billion partnership announced last week between China’s sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation, and Goldman Sachs Group.

• Japan’s economy grew for a seventh consecutive quarter — the longest streak in nearly two decades. Here’s what drove the growth.

• European lawmakers passed a law to limit excessively cheap imports from China, set to go into effect before the end of the year.

• Airbus landed the biggest commercial plane deal in its history at the Dubai Air Show: an order for 430 planes worth nearly $50 billion from Indigo Partners, a U.S. investment firm, that will supply low-cost carriers.

• U.S. stocks were weaker. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

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Credit...Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, via Associated Press

• A radioactive cloud that drifted above Europe was composed of ruthenium 106, an element that does not occur in nature. European analysts concluded that it emanated from southern Russia or Kazakhstan. [The New York Times]

• In Iran, more than 40,000 properties were rendered unusable by Sunday’s earthquake, including newly built state hospitals, schools, apartment complexes and even army barracks. Blame fell on corrupt state organizations that allowed shoddy construction work. [The New York Times]

• U.S. senators clashed along party lines over late changes to the Republicans’ sweeping tax legislation. [The New York Times]

• North Korea’s state media condemned President Trump for insulting Kim Jong-un: “He should know that he is just a hideous criminal sentenced to death by the Korean people.” [Agence France-Presse]

• Three U.C.L.A. basketball players admitted shoplifting while in China and were suspended from the team indefinitely. “To President Trump and the United States government, thank you for taking time to intervene on our behalf,” one said. [The New York Times]

• Chinese students in Australia are challenging what they see as anti-China slights, raising censorship concerns. [The New York Times]

• The police in Tokyo arrested six people over a scam that may have bilked $52.8 million from senior citizens. [The Asahi Shimbun]

• Astronomers discovered an Earth-size planet near a small red star in our corner of the galaxy that could have conditions favorable for life. [The New York Times]

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

• Wealth can cause its own anxieties.

• That home office? Show it some love.

• Recipe of the day: rich, fudgy chocolate-hazelnut brownies.

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Credit...Matteo Gribaudi/Image Agency S.A.S

• An idiosyncratic arrangement between an Italian soccer school and the North Korean soccer federation has brought dozens of promising young players to a small medieval town in Perugia. Their talent is raising a question: Does signing them violate international sanctions?

• Meet the newest Barbie, who has dark skin, the muscular legs of an athlete, and a hijab. The Olympic fencer the doll was modeled after called it “revolutionary.”

India’s leaders have always made political use of traditional clothing, such as Gandhi’s adoption of the dhoti. But today’s state intervention and patronage of the fashion industry is at a new high.

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Credit...Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé!”

A sign bearing these words is hung today in restaurants and cafes across France and around the world, indicating that one of the year’s youngest wines has gone on sale on its traditional annual release date.

The practice has a long history. “It’s a time when great gourmets stop drinking the grand crus and revel in the simplicity of a Beaujolais,” the writer and wine expert Frank Schoonmaker told the Times more than half a century ago.

To this day, the young wine’s release offers an excuse to gather with friends to opine on the year’s harvest and savor its fruitiness.

(If you have some spare time, do read this essay by the writer Patricia Wells on the Beaujolais savored in Parisian wine bars in 1982.)

The Times first mentioned wine from the Beaujolais region in 1873. In 1955 we recommended it as “a good picnic companion.”

“The wines are as light on the wallet as they are in the glass,” our critic, Howard Goldberg, wrote in 1987. “This frivolity makes them ideal quaffing wines for parties until New Year’s Eve, when Champagne takes over.

“Besides, they are so short-lived they should be pretty much finished by then.”

Patrick Boehler contributed reporting.

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Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online. Browse past briefings here.

We have briefings timed for the Australian, Asian, European and American mornings. And our Australia bureau chief offers a weekly letter adding analysis and conversations with readers. You can sign up for these and other Times newsletters here.

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

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