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Asia and Australia Edition

Saudi Arabia, #MeToo in India, Skripal: Your Wednesday Briefing

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

Good morning. A U.S. official resigns, India’s #MeToo takes off, Google unveils new hardware. Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York Times

A high-profile departure.

Nikki Haley, the U.N. ambassador, said she would resign at the end of the year, catching the White House staff off guard.

“It was a blessing to go into the U.N. with body armor every day and defend America,” she said, seated next to President Trump in the Oval Office, above. Mr. Trump said she had let him know months ago, and that he’d name her replacement in coming weeks.

Ms. Haley, who was one of the few women in the cabinet, was an outspoken envoy for the U.S., overseeing its shifting relationship with the global body. She has also long been considered a potential presidential candidate — but she insists she isn’t running in 2020.

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Credit...Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• The chilling case of Jamal Khashoggi.

Investigators in Turkey are poring over the movements of Saudi officials who flew in and out of Istanbul the day the dissident journalist disappeared. And the authorities have been given permission to search the Saudi consulate where he was last seen.

Turkish authorities believe Mr. Khashoggi was killed at the consulate, or abducted from it. Saudi Arabia denies the claims, but international pressure to explain his disappearance is mounting. Above, a protest at the consulate on Monday drew international rights figures.

For Saudi dissidents living abroad, the case carries a frightening message: The Saudi leadership “can reach you wherever you are.”

But the episode also poses risks for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who cultivates an image as a liberal reformer abroad but quashes dissent at home.

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Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

• Traction for #MeToo in India.

After a year of fits and starts, India’s fight against sexual misconduct has leapt forward over the past week with concrete action in the entertainment industry and the news media.

First, Tanushree Dutta, a former Miss India, above right, filed a new complaint accusing the veteran actor Nana Patekar of sexually harassing her on a film set 10 years ago. That was followed by accusations against other men that led to the sudden dissolution of a production company and left a comedy troupe teetering on the brink of collapse.

Inspired by the impact in Bollywood, dozens of women in journalism came forward about inappropriate behavior by male colleagues, felling influential editors at The Hindustan Times and The Times of India.

But in a deeply patriarchal society with entrenched views of gender, it is unclear how far the movement will spread.

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A staff meeting at Rappler, which helps Facebook root out fake stories.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York Times

• On the front line of the disinformation war.

In the Philippines, where 97 percent of internet use is through Facebook, fake news is noxiously entrenched.

Rappler, the local news start-up pictured above, saw signs of today’s problem in 2016, when Rodrigo Duterte was running his presidential campaign.

So the company mustered an army of fact checkers to push back against the daily cascade of fake stories. But now they are overwhelmed and stretched.

“We kill one and another one crops up,” said one reporter.

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Credit...Cayce Clifford for The New York Times

• Google’s new gadgets: glass-bodied Pixel smartphones, a smart speaker with a built-in screen and a tablet that doubles as a personal computer.

• China holds more than a trillion dollars in U.S. debt. Economists are quietly asking whether an escalating trade war could tempt the country to wield its so-called nuclear option.

• European leaders are actively working to help Iran get around new sanctions, widening a rift with the U.S.

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

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Credit...Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press

• Kim Jong-un invited Pope Francis to visit North Korea. It is unlikely the pope will accept, given the country’s suppression of religious freedom. [The New York Times]

• A Bulgarian journalist who hosted an anticorruption TV show, Viktoria Marinova, was raped and killed, stunning the country and adding to European concerns on press freedom. [The New York Times]

• Hurricane Michael is on track to hit Florida over the next few days with powerful winds, torrential rains and potentially devastating storm surge. [The New York Times]

• A decades-old plastic bottle washed up on a beach in Britain almost unscathed, illustrating the lasting impact of plastic pollution. [The Guardian]

• Richard Branson said that his company Virgin Galactic would “be in space within weeks,” that he would go in “months” and that others would “not too long after that.” [BBC]

• Congestion in Sydney and Melbourne is growing so intense that the Australian government is considering barring immigrants from settling in either for five years after arrival. [ABC]

• The police in Norway accused several foreign nationals of attempted murder in a 1993 attack on Salman Rushdie’s publisher, keeping the case open ahead of a statute of limitations deadline. [France 24]

• Rick Gates, a top Trump campaign official, requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company for using fake online identities and social media manipulation to win the election. [The New York Times]

Tips for a more fulfilling life.

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Credit...Michael Kraus for The New York Times

• Recipe of the day: Keep dinner light and flavorful with a spicy shrimp salad.

• It’s time to get real about time management. Here’s how.

• Should you tip your Uber driver? If so, how much?

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Credit...Saurabh Das for The New York Times

• How do you capture a man-eating tiger? Seduce it with Calvin Klein men’s cologne, apparently. The authorities in India are trying to lure and trap an elusive man-eating tigress with the Obsession fragrance, which uses a compound said to make wildcats go gaga. “I know, it’s really funny,” said one official. “But what are we going to do?”

• On São Tomé and Príncipe, the dual-island nation that punctuates the Atlantic off Africa’s west coast, nature beats mankind. The sparse human population lives among rain forests, volcanoes and beaches — but our 52 Places traveler found that makes for a tight-knit community.

• Dr. Neri Oxman, a professor at the M.I.T. Media Lab, weaves together science, technology and art to create startling structures — from a mask made of facial tissue to 3D-printed glass. Her strange and wonderful discipline has captured the attention of Bjӧrk and Brad Pitt.

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Credit...Boris Roessler/EPA, via Shutterstock

Print isn’t dead.

In fact, it’s throwing its most significant annual party.

The Frankfurt Book Fair kicks off today, bringing hundreds of thousands of people in publishing and related fields together for days of wheeling, dealing, seeing and being seen.

The tradition dates back some 800 years — long before Johannes Gutenberg turned out Europe’s first printed page in 1454.

Frankfurt was a flourishing medieval commercial crossroads. In 1240, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II decreed that no one should harass travelers to its autumn fair, where wine, gold, horses and more were bought and sold.

Handwritten manuscripts began selling there, a forerunner to the book trade. Frankfurt held its earliest recorded book fair in 1462.

Then as now, it was a place where people mingled and ideas flowed.

Henri Estienne, a French man of letters, praised the fair in 1574 for bringing together so many scholars.

The effect, he said, was a modern-day Athens: “In reality, it should be happening in that city where once bloomed the most celebrated intellectual life in all of Greece.”

The Frankfurter Buchmesse’s 2018 guest of honor? The nation of Georgia, which saw more than 150 of its books translated into German this year.

Nancy Wartik wrote today’s Back Story.

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