Here\u2019s what you need to know to start your day.<\/b>
\nGood morning.
Here\u2019s what you need to know:
\u2022 President Trump, on the Israeli leg of his nine-day foreign tour, presented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with what our reporting team describes as an unexpectedly blunt message: Solve the decades-old standoff with the Palestinians if you want peace with Arab nations.
Mr. Trump is expected to meet today with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, before leaving for Rome. Here\u2019s his full travel schedule, which we\u2019 re covering with traveling White House correspondents and foreign bureau chiefs.
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\u2022 Our analysts see President Trump\u2019s declaration of commitment to Arab countries on his earlier stop, in Saudi Arabia, as a return to an American policy built on alliances with Arab autocrats \u2014 at the expense of Iran, whose president dismissed Mr. Trump\u2019s visit as meaningless theatrics.
Social media users were obsessed with the mysterious glowing orb, above, that Mr. Trump, King Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt gathered around. (Spoiler: It\u2019s just an illuminated globe.)
Back in the U. S., a letter from a top Democrat revealed that Mr. Trump\u2019s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, lied to Pentagon investigators about his income from Russian companies and contacts with Russian officials when he applied for a top-secret security clearance last year.
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\u2022 South Korea said North Korea\u2019s most recent missile test, using a solid-fuel rocket, may have provided data that could advance the North\u2019s weapons program.
Our science reporter looked to the history of the U. S. nuclear program for insights into North Korea\u2019s \u2014 and the possibility that it is seeking to build a hydrogen bomb.
\u201cI can\u2019 t imagine they\u2019 re not working on true thermonuclear weapons, \u201d one expert told him.
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\u2022 The police in Indonesia didn\u2019 t just arrest 141 men for a \u201csex party\u201d in a sauna in Jakarta \u2014 they also outed many of them with photographs released to news organizations.
Analysts said a recent spate of crackdowns appeared to be in preparation for the holy month of Ramadan, which begins this weekend.
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\u2022 And in India, our correspondent is tracking one of the country\u2019s most hopeful narratives \u2014 the spread of the internet to vast multitudes of rural people.
She followed Babulal Singh Neti, above center, a convert to the wonders of the smartphone who is trying to convince his reluctant neighbors that \u201cthe whole world rests inside the mobile.\u201d
\u2022 \u201cI hope I have the chance to be a big boss.\u201d But work is tough in Myanmar\u2019s unregulated oil fields, where thousands of wildcat prospectors cluster, some lucky to collect even a barrel a day.
\u2022 Ford Motor replaced its chief executive with the head of its self-driving effort, after shares dropped 40 percent over three years.
\u2022 A Chinese wind-turbine maker is expanding into Wyoming and seeking the state\u2019s ex-coal miners for permanent jobs.
\u2022 Defense stocks hit a high on news of the $110 billion U. S.-Saudi Arabia weapons deal, and Wall Street was higher. Here\u2019s a snapshot of global markets.
\u2022 The corruption trial of the former South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, begins today. A judge is expected to decide whether to try Ms. Park and her confidante, Choi Soon-sil, separately. [Associated Press]
\u2022 China defended its right to protect its national security and interests in the first official response to a New York Times report on the dismantling of C. I. A. espionage operations in the country. A spokeswoman did not confirm or deny The Times\u2019s report that more than a dozen C. I. A. sources were killed or imprisoned. [The New York Times]
\u2022 Monica Lewinsky wrote what she called \u201can obituary for the culture\u201d that Roger Ailes created at Fox News. Many Americans first found the network because of its blanket coverage of her relationship with former President Bill Clinton. [The New York Times]
\u2022 A Thai general lashed out at unknown perpetrators over the bombing of a military-owned hospital in Bangkok that wounded 24 people, saying that even insurgents don\u2019 t \u201cchoose a hospital as a target.\u201d [The New York Times]
\u2022 AlphaGo, Google\u2019s artificial intelligence player, begins a three-game series of Go with Ke Jie, the world\u2019s 19-year-old top-ranked player, in Wuzhen, China. [Phys.org]
\u2022 A U. N. special rapporteur raised questions about whether counterterror legislation Japan\u2019s lower house is likely to pass today would encourage the police to ignore civil liberties. [Reuters]
\u2022 \u201cMadama Butterfly\u201d redux. A radically revised version of Puccini\u2019s classic opera seeks to address the Asian stereotypes the work helped perpetuate. [The New York Times]
\u2022 Melbourne\u2019s \u201cavolatte.\u201d A cafe that serves lattes in the hollowed-out skin of an avocado is suffering the slings and arrows of social media. One post: \u201cWe have to stop these fads for the sake of humanity.\u201d [Evening Standard]
\u2022 Don\u2019 t despair. You can find reliable, affordable child care on the road.
\u2022 Embrace change in your marriage; it\u2019s unrealistic to expect your spouse to remain the same person.
\u2022 Recipe of the day: Give New York strip steak a kick with a horseradish-mint glaze.
\u2022 In India\u2019s Chettinad region, once-grand palaces disrupt the country\u2019s rambling, rural charm. Our writer found mansion after mansion in various states of opulence and elegant decay.
\u2022 In memoriam. Stanley Greene was a leading war photographer who captured brutally honest images of conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya. One of few African-American photojournalist in the field, he was 68.
\u2022 A team of scientists identified 52 genes linked to human intelligence \u2014 an \u201cenormous success\u201d in a field that remains mostly a mystery.
\u2022 F rom China with love? The Communist Party\u2019s propaganda wing is sending Germany a superhero-size statue of Karl Marx. Our Beijing correspondent follows the debate over why: an attempt to reignite Marxism? A symbolic returning of defective goods? A joke?
If you\u2019 re reading this with bifocals, you can thank Benjamin Franklin. He announced the creation of multifocal lenses on this day in 1785.
Like more than 200 million of the world\u2019s current population, he had to squint to see clearly. Later in life, he carried two pairs of eyeglasses: one for distance, another for reading.
The American overachiever solved his vision problem by piecing together two lenses, cut in half, into a single frame. \u201cBy this means, as I wear my spectacles constantly, I have only to move my eyes up or down, \u201d he wrote to a friend .
Franklin, who is long credited (although debated) as the inventor of the split-lens spectacles, also sketched his D. I. Y. fix. It can be found in the Library of Congress.
Bifocal contacts came into clinical use in the 1950s, but it was decades before they were widely prescribed. In 1986, bifocal lenses cost upward of $400 \u2014 almost $900 in today\u2019s dollars. Now, they can run $50 for a six-week supply.
Other advances to help those suffering presbyopia, or age-related farsightedness, include the ring-like corneal inlay, which is implanted under the eye\u2019s outer surface.
And the tech-obsessed can look forward to the developing bionic eye .
Danielle Belopotosky contributed reporting.
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This briefing was prepared for the Asian morning. We also have briefings timed for the Australian, European and American mornings.
Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online.
What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes.com .<\/p>\n

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