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Asia Edition

Yemen, Donald Trump, China: Your Wednesday Briefing

Good morning.

We’re trying something new for our readers in Asia: a morning briefing to jump-start your day.

What do you like? What do you want to see here? Email us with your feedback at asiabriefing@nytimes.com.

Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...Andy Rain/European Pressphoto Agency

• Samsung killed its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, an embarrassment for the tech giant. The company had been trying to for weeks to replicate the problem of exploding and burning phones.

If you have a Galaxy Note 7, turn it off.

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Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

• The U.S. presidential race has sent a major party into near schism. Many Republican leaders are now refusing to support Donald J. Trump, who is marshaling die-hard supporters with counterattacks.

The Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, turned to former Vice President Al Gore for help winning over millennial voters with a climate-change agenda.

China’s state news agency interprets the contentious campaign as evidence that its own one-party rule is superior. And Mr. Trump’s threat to imprison Mrs. Clinton should he win drew comparisons to dictators.

• India celebrated the Hindu festival of Dusshera with burning effigies of Pakistani officials and praise for recent military strikes on Pakistani-controlled territory.

A political analyst said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s relatively cautious stance for the day showed that he was trying to ride the country’s angry mood “but also respond to international pressure to de-escalate” tensions.

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Credit...Aaron Favila/Associated Press

• President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who has declared war on illegal drugs, is going after smokers. He may ban smoking in public places by the end of the month.

He also questioned anew the relevance of his country’s alliance with the United States, in a speech as joint drills with U.S. Marines ended.

• Military pressure is taking a serious toll on the Islamic State, not least on its media output.

“They’re dropping the utopian sales pitch they started with,” a counterterrorism expert said. “And that’s hurting their recruiting effort.”

• The World Health Organization urged countries to impose a 20 percent tax on sugary drinks.

The agency cited the global obesity crisis, noting that 42 million children under age 5 are overweight, about 48 percent of them in Asia.

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Credit...Altaf Qadri/Associated Press

• Negotiators from over 170 countries are trying to hammer out an accord that would phase out the use of hydrofluocarbons — a death knell for the cheapest air-conditioners on the global market.

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Credit...Kristina Barker for The New York Times

• Thousands of protesters, including many Native Americans, pledged to dig in despite arrests and the coming North Dakota winter, aiming to block a $3.7 billion oil pipeline that they say would threaten native water supplies.

• Women who work from home in Japan can take advantage of a new app that automatically applies virtual makeup on a user’s face before teleconferencing.

• Keep your spending decisions separate from your saving decisions, advises our personal finance columnist. Avoid believing “that losing or spending your own money saves you money in the long run.”

• Here’s a snapshot of global markets. U.S. stocks closed sharply lower overnight.

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Credit...Lipchitz/Huet/Associated Press

The Cambodia Daily: “De Gaulle’s Visit: A Time Before Glory Faded.” Fifty years ago, “a last glorious moment before the country began its descent toward civil war.”

The Atlantic: Looking for North Korea.” A photographer offers a glimpse of the country’s capital and small towns in a series of visits over two years.

• Bloomberg: “Meet the Parents, Australia’s Fastest-Growing Housing Lender.” More than half of first-home buyers in Australia get help from Mom and Dad.

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Credit...Jonas Gratzer/Civil Rights Defenders

Vietnam arrested Mother Mushroom, a blogger often critical of the government’s handling of environmental issues, on charges of distorting the truth and spreading propaganda.

• A columnist for Pakistan’s leading daily said he had been barred from leaving the country. Cyril Almeida had recently written about a confrontation between civilian officials and the military over what they called a failure to act against Islamist groups.

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Credit...Al Bello/Getty Images

Jeremy Lin is one of 13 players on the Brooklyn Nets team who now live in the hip New York City area they represent.

• Harvard, one of the world’s most prominent universities, is suffering through a food fight. Cafeteria workers are striking over wages. So volunteers are working in dining halls, and students have been hoarding food.

• “Go back to China!” That was the ugly phrase yelled at a Times editor and his family as they left church on Sunday morning in New York. Michael Luo was born in the U.S., the child of Chinese immigrants. His open letter to the woman who screamed the phrase has gone viral.

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Credit...Giulia Marchi for The New York Times

Dogs have made a comeback as household pets in China, especially small ones.

In fact, one particular breed has gone viral: the toy poodle. Of Beijing’s 950,000 dogs, about 125,000 are toy poodles.

The trend appears to have started in Japan and spread to China, where the pups are called “taidi,” after the English word “teddy.”

One of our Beijing correspondents, Javier C. Hernández, says owners like to dress them up in sweaters, bow ties and even dinosaur costumes. “Poodle-lovers described the breed as smart, easygoing and humanlike in personality,” he writes.

And the popularity of a particular color — brown — is easy to explain.

“The coffee-colored coats set these pups apart from other poodles and made it easy to conceal grime from the street,” Mr. Hernández says.

Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings.

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

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