Good morning.
Scared elephants, social media bots, and good news on the global economy: Here’s your Morning Briefing.
• Roger Federer, 36, won the Australian Open, under a controversially closed roof.
It was his 20th Grand Slam singles title. Caroline Wozniacki won her first.
And, by the way, how did the tournament go from a backwater to the largest annual sporting event in the Southern Hemisphere? Our correspondent found the key in its embrace of Asia.
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• A decade after the financial crisis, the world has hit a key marker of recovery.
All of the world’s big economies are growing. Asia stands out, led by China, India and Indonesia.
There is no single explanation, our correspondent notes, but many of the destructive forces unleashed in the downturn have simply finished playing out.
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• Bots for sale:
Fake accounts infest the world’s social media platforms, and nearly 15 percent of Twitter’s active users may be bots — including the Communist Party’s flagship News organization, Xinhua News. Read our investigation into social media’s black market.
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• Afghanistan is bleeding.
The Taliban detonated an ambulance packed with explosives in Kabul on Saturday, killing scores of people.
It was the city’s second deadly attack in a week. Another casualty: Afghanistan’s main airline is struggling to survive after more than 50 foreign employees fled the country.
The Trump administration is preparing to increase the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. Meawhile, Pakistan’s powerful new army chief is building contacts in China, Iran, Qatar, Russia and Saudi Arabia that could help wean his country from U.S. influence.
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• Myanmar’s army, which seized power from a civilian government in 1962, has spent seven decades fighting domestic ethnic minorities.
The army, known as the Tatmadaw, has displaced millions of people while making billions of dollars in profit from natural resources — and enriching its officers. Handing some power back to civilian leaders has done little to change it.
“The Tatmadaw is an unreconstructed, unrepentant institution that is abusive to its core,” said an analyst in the country.
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• The Grammy Awards are coming up shortly in New York (11:30 a.m. Sydney).
We have questions. Is Bruno Mars, for example, the next Adele? And will the Australian nominees -- Mansionair, above, Nick Cave and Sia — take home awards?
Check our live briefing for updates.
Business
• In Vietnam, a state-run company asked the U.S. government for help financing a coal-powered power plant. But the project is under fire from environmentalists, and its ties to a Kremlin-backed bank could be problematic.
• Ingvar Kamprad, the frugal Swedish entrepreneur who created Ikea, died at 91. His driving ambition led him into alcoholism, years of fascination with fascism and a life of almost monastic frugality.
• Walmart is making a belated push into digital books, building an app with Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant. (Its Kobo e-readers are small players in the U.S.)
• Here’s a snapshot of global markets.
Market Snapshot View Full Overview
In the News
• Demonstrators turned out across Russia for protests against what they called a lack of choice in the March vote that will almost certainly extend Vladimir Putin’s presidency. The protests’ orchestrator, Aleksei Navalny, was detained by force. [The New York Times]
• Saudi Arabia’s most prominent investor, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has been freed after being locked up for more than 80 days in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. It is widely presumed that he purchased his freedom by handing over a chunk of his immense fortune to the government. [The New York Times]
• A French mountain climber who had been stranded on a treacherous peak in Pakistan was rescued, but her Polish climbing partner remained in peril. [The New York Times]
• Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull released a plan to make Australia one of the world’s top 10 weapons exporters. [The Guardian]
• In the U.S., the government is now funded till Feb. 8. A new focus for negotiations on a budget: Democratic efforts to protect the special counsel in the Russia inquiry. [The New York Times]
• Hackers breached Coincheck, a cryptocurrency trading exchange in Tokyo, and stole about $534 million in virtual money. [Reuters]
• U.S.A. Gymnastics said that all remaining members of its board of directors would resign in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal centered on Larry Nassar, the former doctor for the U.S. gymnastics team. [The New York Times]
Smarter Living
Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.
• This year, travel with wellness in mind.
• Here’s how to make sure your medicine makes it through customs.
• Start the week with a red lentil stew spiced with turmeric, chili and ginger.
Noteworthy
• Elephants are scaredy cats. (Yes, you heard right.) A new study explains why Asian and African elephants are terrified of bees — and why that’s good for farmers.
• Do musical motifs cut across cultures? Take our quiz that’s based on new scientific research. (It includes songs from Aboriginal hunter-gatherers in Australia.)
• The New Zealander who launched a geodesic sphere into space last week calls it the Humanity Star. Some astronomers have reacted with “a big dose of dread.”
• What does a suffering person want to hear? In our Opinion section, a woman living with a serious cancer weighed in.
Back Story
He was born in San Francisco and named after a Confederate general. But he died as a celebrated poet of the United States and its people, especially the flinty farmers of New England.
Robert Frost, whose life was full of paradoxes, died on this day in 1963 in a Boston hospital. A gifted observer of nature and the human spirit, he won four Pulitzer Prizes and spoke at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961.
Frost lived for years in Vermont and New Hampshire, initially working as a farmer, reporter and shoemaker. His poetry, including works like “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” used colloquial language and spoke to an urbanized generation that longed for the simplicities of rural life.
“I don’t like to write anything I don’t see,” he said before his 88th birthday.
But he “had no illusions about the life of the soil,” The Times noted the day after his death in 1963, in part because he knew it could be “spiritually crippling and physically exhausting.”
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Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online. Browse past briefings here.
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