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Asia and Australia Edition

North Korea, Angela Merkel, N.F.L.: Your Monday Briefing

Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press

A week of threatening exchanges between the U.S. and North Korea left China and South Korea on the sidelines and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, effectively in his preferred position: dealing directly with the U.S. Above, Mr. Kim’s image on TV in Seoul on Friday.

Over the weekend, American warplanes flew close to North Korea’s coast, and Pyongyang held a large anti-U.S. demonstration.

We assessed the likelihood that North Korea could, or would, follow through on its threat to detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific.

Starting next month, most citizens of North Korea, and six other countries, will be indefinitely banned from entering the U.S., the White House announced.

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Credit...Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

• In Germany’s elections, Angela Merkel won a diminished mandate for a fourth term as chancellor. Alternative for Germany, or AfD, became the first far-right party to enter parliament in more than 60 years.

The results suggest that populism — and anxieties over security and national identity — are far from dead in Europe. The shape and policies of a new governing coalition will involve weeks of painstaking negotiations.

But Ms. Merkel, and the country she leads, now have a major role around the world.

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Credit...Michael Reaves/Getty Images

President Trump engaged in a war of words with the country’s largest sports leagues, making the N.F.L.’s game day one of the country’s most political events of the year.

Teams and owners presented a united front against Mr. Trump’s criticism over the role athletes play in the country’s race and social justice issues. Check here for the latest as Sunday games play out. Above, players knelt for the national anthem, the exact protest action Mr. Trump demanded players be fired for.

Among his barbs, Mr. Trump revoked a White House invitation to Stephen Curry and his Golden State Warriors to the White House. “It’s kind of beneath the leader of a country to go that route,” the star player responded.

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Our correspondent reports from a sprawling makeshift city that houses hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people, driven from their homes by Myanmar's military.CreditCredit...Ben C. Solomon/The New York Times

• Our videographer goes inside the chilling reality of a refugee camp for Rohingya Muslims who fled what rights officials have called “textbook” ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

His video captures a sprawling makeshift city in southern Bangladesh that now houses more than 400,000 Rohingya. For the families who made it this far, the first challenge is food and water.

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Credit...Rebecca Marshall for The New York Times

• The telling problems of an oil middleman: We took a close look at Unaoil, a go-to agent for multinationals operating in the biggest oil patches on earth. Above, its chief operating officer, Saman Ahsani.

It’s under investigation by Australia, Britain and the U.S. for possibly paying bribes in resource-rich countries, like Iraq and Libya, on behalf of a long list of companies.

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Credit...Muhammad Hamed/Reuters

The Pentagon introduced a $700 million program to destroy the Islamic State’s increasingly lethal fleet of drones. Above, one of the drones recovered in Iraq in January.

It also used drones against an Islamic State training camp in Libya, killing 17 militants in the first U.S. airstrikes there since January.

And, in what appears to be a first, a Singaporean ISIS fighter appeared in a recruitment video. He challenged Britain’s Prince Harry to fight.

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Credit...Christie Hemm Klok for The New York Times

• Uber has successfully barreled into the cutthroat business of food delivery. UberEats sometimes eclipses Uber’s main ride-hailing business in markets like Tokyo, Taipei and Seoul. Above, the service’s San Francisco headquarters.

• Facebook’s response to Russian meddling in the U.S. election follows a pattern, our columnist writes: Mark Zuckerberg often fixes things after they’ve broken, rather than preventing problems.

• A backlash is building in Silicon Valley against the push for gender equality in tech.

• Australia’s four biggest banks are dropping cash withdrawal charges at A.T.M.s to lift their reputations after a series of scandals.

Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

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Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

• Iraqi Kurds appear to be holding to their plan to vote on independence today, despite enormous pressure from Iraq, regional neighbors, and the U.S. over fears of violence that could tear the country apart. [The New York Times]

• A “tremendous increase” in seismic activity has forced more than 35,000 people to flee Mount Agung, a Bali volcano that last erupted in 1963, killing 1,100 people. [Associated Press]

• Three U.N. soldiers were killed and five others seriously injured by an explosion in Mali. As of Aug. 31, the four-year peacekeeping mission had recorded 133 fatalities. [The New York Times]

• Two Vietnamese fishermen were killed and five arrested in what was described as an exchange of gunfire with the Philippine Navy in the South China Sea. [The Rappler]

• “Brexit” talks resume today, but divisions within Britain’s Conservative and Labour parties could endanger Prime Minister Theresa May’s starting position. [Bloomberg]

• Saudi Arabia’s 87th anniversary celebrations included an event that allowed women to enter the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh for the first time. [Reuters]

• Thousands of Tibetan mastiffs are roaming wild on the Tibetan plateau after a craze for owning them faded out. [Quartz]

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

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Credit...Craig Lee for The New York Times

• Recipe of the day: Avoid the deep fryer. Bake your chicken tenders.

Use your smartphone to explore a new city like a local.

• Action — not fretting — is an excellent career and business strategy.

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Credit...Leo Acadia

• Are you a “prepper?” Doomsday isn’t just for camouflage-clad American cave dwellers hoarding canned goods. Our style team offers a checklist for the neo-survivalist.

• “I wasn’t really sure what to expect.” A Swedish photojournalist explored the Afghan capital and found Kabul’s stylish side in beauty parlors, teens and weekend cricket players.

• Finally, birds beware. Praying mantises prey on small birds more often than realized — especially large species like the Chinese mantis.

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Credit...Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

If you’re looking to point fingers for one of the more giddily narcissistic trends of our time, look to the world’s smallest continent.

When the Oxford Dictionaries crowned “selfie” its Word of the Year (edging out “twerk”) a few years ago, its editors noted that the first known use of the term could be traced back to a post on an Australian Broadcasting Corporation forum that came 15 years ago this month.

There, a tipsy university-aged man posted a photo of his mouth, asking for medical advice for his lip, which he’d split open at a party.

“I had a hole about 1 cm long right through my bottom lip,” wrote “Hopey.” “And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”

It was a very Australian turn of phrase.

A “barbecue” is a “barbie.” Your work colleague, Mr. Fitzgerald, is more often than not “Fitzy” at the pub.

Anna Wierzbicka, a linguistics professor at the Australian National University, has described the country’s love affair with such foreshortenings as reflective of cherished ideals, like “mateship,” humor, informality, and a dislike for “long words.”

Although, given that Hopey turned out to be a man named Nathan Hope, maybe a casual tone is more important than brevity.

Adam Baidawi contributed reporting.

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

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

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