Good morning.
Here’s what you need to know:
• President Trump will address world leaders and business elites in Davos, Switzerland, later today, possibly making good on his promise to “tell the world how great America is and is doing.”
On the sidelines, Mr. Trump has been in diplomatic overdrive. He worked to mend relations with Britain, saying he and Prime Minister Theresa May were “on the same wavelength,” despite reports of strains.
And with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at his side, Mr. Trump excoriated the Palestinians, threatening to cut off aid unless they “sit down and negotiate peace.”
Elsewhere, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin unleashed market turmoil with an apparently offhand comment, that a weak dollar benefits U.S. trade.
Here’s our full coverage of the World Economic Forum.
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• “You are the bravest person I’ve ever had in my courtroom.”
That’s how a judge described Rachael Denhollander, above, the first former gymnast to go public about abuse by Larry Nassar, the former doctor for the U.S. gymnastics team. He was sentenced Wednesday, and victims have formed a bond as they gathered the strength to face him in court.
And questions about how the abuse could have gone on for years forced the resignation of the president of Michigan State University, where Dr. Nassar was on the faculty until 2016.
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• “She has developed an arrogance of power.”
That was Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, describing Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian leader of Myanmar, a day after he quit an advisory panel on the Rohingya crisis.
He also said Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi “exploded” when he raised the detention of two Reuters journalists who were investigating a Rohingya mass grave.
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• Today is Australia Day, and it’s complicated.
Some mark it with barbecues and fireworks. But many others, including Aboriginal groups, see the date — which marks the arrival of British ships in 1788 — as a celebration of colonization.
On Thursday, a statue of the British explorer Capt. James Cook was found vandalized in Melbourne with graffiti of an Aboriginal flag, above.
Our Australia bureau chief visited Parramatta, an ethnically diverse Sydney suburb, to see what people thought of Australia’s relationship to its past. He reflected on his reporting experience in his weekly newsletter.
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• Scientists in Shanghai successfully created two cloned monkeys from fetal cells grown in a petri dish.
The same technique produced Dolly the sheep in 1996. It could eventually be used to create custom-made monkeys for drug tests.
Some darker scientific news: The Doomsday Clock, a symbol of concerns about humanity’s annihilation, was advanced by 30 seconds to 2 minutes to midnight.
The last time the clock was so close to midnight was in 1953, during the Cold War.
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• At the Australian Open today, Hyeon Chung of South Korea, above, will battle Roger Federer — in his first-ever Grand Slam semifinal.
No pressure or anything.
But as Mr. Chung, 21, told our sports columnist, he doesn’t view it as the highest-stakes match of his career. In 2014, he competed for a medal that would exempt him from military service.
And in tomorrow’s women’s final, the top-seeded Simona Halep, faces the second-seeded Caroline Wozniacki.
Business
• A new dimension in the Volkswagen emissions scandal: An experiment involving monkeys, cartoons and a rigged Beetle shows how far the German automaker went to skew research on the damaging effects of diesel.
• Meet the Mate 10 Pro, the $800 Huawei smartphone snubbed by AT&T. The U.S. government has long suspected Huawei of committing espionage for China.
• Two Canadian marijuana growers merged to create the world’s most valuable cannabis company, worth $6 billion.
• A Chinese drone maker, Tengoen Technology, is building an eight-engine drone with a wingspan of 137 feet capable of carrying a 20-ton payload.
• U.S. stocks were higher. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.
Market Snapshot View Full Overview
In the News
• In the Philippines, more than 70,000 people have been evacuated after Mount Mayon showed signs of erupting. [The New York Times]
• In India, “Padmaavat,” a new film about a Hindu queen had stirred up months of violent protests. Now that it’s in theaters, the fury seems to have faded. [The New York Times]
• Twelve hockey players from North Korea arrived in South Korea to compete under a unified Korean flag at the Winter Olympics. [BBC]
• A U.S. aircraft carrier plans to dock in Vietnam in March, in another sign that ties are warming. [The New York Times]
• A grim report for Asia and Australia’s coral: there’s so much plastic debris that if you lined each piece up it would circle the Earth at least 14 times. Worse: corals littered with plastic were 20 times more likely to be diseased. [The New York Times]
• A U.S. Senate report found that $800 million worth of fentanyl pills were illegally shipped over two years from China, and sold primarily through Bitcoin. [The New York Times]
• The kissing defense: Gil Roberts, the U.S. sprinter, beat a doping case by saying an impassioned exchange of saliva with his medicated girlfriend probably caused his violation. [The New York Times]
Smarter Living
Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.
• How do your internal organs communicate during exercise?
• To combat “text neck,” put your phone down and keep your head up.
• Recipe of the day: Spend some time this weekend cooking an excellent risotto with sausage and parsley.
Noteworthy
• The discovery of a fossilized jawbone in a cave in Israel could rewrite the story of human migration, proving that Homo sapiens ventured out of Africa about 50,000 years earlier than is believed.
• The “gift of a lie”: The latest video in our series on motherhood tells a dramatic tale of sadness and redemption.
• And researchers in Germany created a tiny robot small enough to navigate a stomach or urinary system. It walks, jumps, crawls, rolls and swims, and may someday deliver drugs inside the body.
Back Story
She wanted to fly, but no U.S. aviation school would admit her. So she taught herself French, moved to France and became the first African-American woman to earn a pilot’s license, in 1921.
Bessie Coleman was born on this day in 1892 in Atlanta, Tex. The daughter of sharecroppers, who were also of Native American descent, she was inspired by stories of the Wright brothers and World War I pilots.
Ms. Coleman’s brother told her of seeing Frenchwomen fly when he served in World War I, so she headed across the Atlantic. She earned her international pilot’s license in seven months.
She returned to the U.S. and performed as a stunt pilot, dazzling audiences at air shows — but only those that were open to viewers of her race. “The air is the only place free from prejudice,” she said.
On April 30, 1926, Ms. Coleman was airborne when her biplane flipped over during a test flight. She plummeted to her death from the open cockpit. She was 34.
“Before she died, however, Miss Coleman became a role model for many young black women and, as a consequence, flying became popular among them,” The Times noted in 1985.
Inyoung Kang contributed reporting.
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