Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
Good morning.
Here’s what you need to know:
• Myanmar’s national leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, will not attend the upcoming U. N. General Assembly because of the crisis that has forced about 400,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh in just weeks.
International leaders and rights groups have denounced Myanmar for ethnic cleansing — some have called it genocide — and castigated her inaction. Here are the basics on the roots and history of the strife.
Al Qaeda militants, meanwhile, urged Muslims around the world to support the Rohingya with aid, weapons and “military support.”
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• Satellite images show that North Korea has resumed work at its underground nuclear testing site, a group of defense analysts reported, as the North insisted that the latest U. N. sanctions would only strengthen its nuclear resolve.
The analysts also said that revised assessments of a far larger blast from the Sept. 3 test — as much as 250 kilotons — appeared to confirm Pyongyang’s claim to have set off hydrogen bomb. Above, ribbons in South Korea carrying wishes for reunification.
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• Russia and Belarus are about to attack Veishnoriya. Luckily, that’s a fictional state. It’s the focus of a six-day joint military exercise starting today, likely the biggest display of Russian military power since the end of the Cold War. NATO members are wary.
“The Daily» podcast spoke with our media columnist, Jim Rutenberg, about a parallel effort — the information war that the Kremlin is waging against the West, in part through its RT news outlet. Read his full story in the Times Magazine. Above, President Vladimir Putin speaking with RT in 2013.
And U. S. agencies are dropping antivirus software made by a Russian technology company, Kaspersky Lab, whose executives are suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence.
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• The Trump administration is considering reducing the number of refugees admitted to the U. S. to below 50,000 over the next year. That would be the lowest number since at least 1980. Above, Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
The Supreme Court will hear challenges to the administration’s ban on refugees next month, but in the meantime, is allowing the administration to bar many refugees .
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• China’s Communist Party has tapped Chen Min’ er, 56, a former Chinese literature student and propaganda worker, for promotion into its top tiers, making him a potential candidate to one day succeed President Xi Jinping .
In the jockeying for advancement, he starts with advantages. A Xi protégé, he ran one of China’s poorest provinces, Guizhou, above, giving him the gritty experience expected of an aspiring national leader.
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• And as Australia’s debate over same-sex marriage becomes increasingly hostile — including an assault on former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s godson — some the country’s roughly 6,800 same-sex child-rearing couples are balancing daily routines with activism.
