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Asia and Australia Edition

International Women’s Day, Sergei Skripal, North Korea: Your Friday Briefing

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good morning. Trade retaliation, murmurs of dissent in China and overlooked obituaries. Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump signed off on tough tariffs on steel and aluminum, promising to be “very flexible” after facing a global outcry.

The tariffs have raised fears of retaliation. “Choosing a trade war is a mistaken prescription,” China’s foreign minister said. (Our senior economics correspondent calls it more of a “skirmish.”)

Mr. Trump suggested some allies, including Canada, Mexico and Australia, might be spared. But some nations aren’t taking any chances. A group of 11 — including Australia, New Zealand and Japan — signed a broad free trade deal in a direct challenge to Mr. Trump’s protectionist agenda.

And our news podcast, “The Daily,” examines Mr. Trump’s claims about tariffs and trade deficits.

The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: Trump’s Tariffs

President Trump said that protections on steel and aluminum imports were in the interest of national security. But could the threat be the tariffs themselves?

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Credit...Bryan Denton for The New York Times

• China is all but certain this weekend to throw out a 1982 rule that has restricted the country’s presidents to two five-year terms. The beneficiary, President Xi Jinping, could be in power for life.

To position himself for this moment, our correspondent writes, Mr. Xi “deployed speed, secrecy and intimidation to smother potential opposition inside and outside the party.” Here’s a look at Mr. Xi’s rise to power.

Despite the display of support, murmurings of opposition suggest that Mr. Xi and his subordinates have not fully sold the idea to a broader public. Such stirrings of discontent, our Beijing correspondents write, could build over time.

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Credit...David Becker/Getty Images

• The U.S.-China rivalry is increasingly focused on technology, and at the center of that dispute is 5G, shorthand for fifth-generation wireless technology. Here’s a look at why companies and countries are fighting for 5G dominance.

Huawei was a bit player in shaping today’s cellular networks. Now, as 5G approaches, the Chinese telecom giant, is determined to lead the pack, worrying Washington.

“It’s a commercial advantage which parlays itself into a security advantage,” one expert said. “Whoever controls the technology knows, intimately, how it was built and where all the doors and buttons are.”

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Militias Are Burning Villages in Congo. We Tracked the Toll.

We obtained satellite images that show how lakeshore villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been destroyed in recent attacks, forcing 140,000 people to flee their homes.

In a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed militias are burning villages. Scores of people have been killed, and over 100,000 have been displaced. It’s often hard to tell what’s going on in distant parts of the world. But by using satellite data, we can monitor this conflict in almost real time and detect flare-ups that may indicate violence is starting to spread. What we’re seeing doesn’t look good. This was the scene in western Uganda in February: waves of refugees fleeing violence in the D.R.C. and crossing Lake Albert. “At the height there were between five and a half and six thousand people coming across per day.” Andrew Harper was on the shore. “They grabbed everything that they owned, which was basically nothing, and they brought it with them on the boat. All these very clear signs were indicative that whole areas had been basically cleansed.” The refugees said that armed men had burned houses, forcing entire villages to flee across the lake, most to the town of Sebagoro. Many came from here, in Ituri Province. But the scale of the violence was unclear. So we analyzed aerial data. NASA satellites captured the locations of active fires every day, and many were burning on the days that people fled. Now, most were probably forest fires, not acts of violence. So we used OpenStreetMap data to pinpoint populated areas and obtained new high-resolution satellite pictures of those villages. They tell a clear story. Here’s one village photographed before the violence began, and the same village on Feb. 17. Nearly every structure is burned. This pattern emerged in village after village, all along the lake shore. Humanitarian groups estimate that more than 2,000 homes have been destroyed. Now, while satellite data gives us a clearer picture of the unrest, Ituri’s history helps us understand why the violence has suddenly erupted at this time. In the early 2000s, two communities, the Hema and the Lendu, were involved in a bloody conflict. More than 50,000 people were killed before peace was restored. “Why this currently is happening now is fairly suspicious. These communities were reconciling. Relationships had improved.” Stearns says that this time, it’s not ethnic tensions, but political motivations that are most likely driving the conflict. “The country has been in a period of political turmoil as President Joseph Kabila fights for his political survival. It is one of, unfortunately, many, many different, often interlocking conflicts.” More recently, the violence in Ituri has spread inland. “The situation has escalated, with figures of displacement basically doubling in a week.” Our reporting suggests that after the lakeshore villagers fled, the violence spilled over this mountain ridge, driving people westward, many toward the town of Bunia. “Up to 100,000 people are displaced in the Ituri province. This is probably not a very good sign.” So, while it’s unclear what’s stoking this violence, it’s troubling how suddenly it flared. And for the many displaced, who knows when, or even if, they’ll be able to return home?

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We obtained satellite images that show how lakeshore villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been destroyed in recent attacks, forcing 140,000 people to flee their homes.

• The U.S. secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is on a five-nation tour of Africa, warning against Chinese investment and wearing a tight smile when asked about President Trump’s insulting description of the continent.

Separately, in our latest visual investigation, we show how villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been destroyed in recent attacks, forcing 140,000 people to flee.

This Times Insider piece explains how we used active-fire data from NASA and Openstreetmap to bring the atrocities to light.

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Credit...Costas Baltas/Reuters

• “There’s a lot to fight for.”

That’s how one woman summed up the mood on International Women’s Day, which was marked with a sense of urgency this year, in the era of #MeToo and Time’s Up.

At The Times, we unveiled a project, “Overlooked,” that starts with the stories of 15 remarkable women who did not receive a Times obituary.

The names are surprising: Sylvia Plath, Ida B. Wells, the Bollywood legend Madhubala and Qui Jin, China’s Joan of Arc.

Our editor discussed how the idea came to her, and a veteran of the Obituaries desk pondered the historical imbalance. Do you have a suggestion for the series?

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• Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S9, arrives with a new feature, AR Emoji, that uses a selfie to create an animated avatar. (Our reviewer called it a bit creepy. His avatar is above.) Base price: $720.

• China dominated a list of self-made female billionaires, taking the top four spots and five of the top 10. Zhou Qunfei, founder of Lens Technology, is the world’s richest self-made woman, with $9.8 billion.

• How foreign is Broadcom? About 54 percent of its revenue comes from China, but 55 percent of its employees are in North America. Our DealBook column explores that and other issues of the day.

• They call it “alcopop.” Coca-Cola plans to introduce a drink in Japan that combines flavored sparkling water with alcohol.

• U.S. stocks were directionless. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

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Credit...Thomas Lovelock/OIS, via IOC, via Associated Press

• A flag dispute will keep the two Koreas from marching together at today’s opening ceremony of the Winter Paralympics in Pyeongchang. [BBC]

• Two senior South Korean officials arrived in Washington to brief U.S. officials on their meeting with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the prospect of nuclear talks. [Reuters]

• A former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter are in stable condition after what Britain’s home secretary called a “brazen and reckless” attack involving a nerve agent. Officials suspect Russian involvement. [The New York Times]

• Iran prevented the widow of an environmental activist, who the authorities say hanged himself in jail, from leaving. [The New York Times]

• A Danish inventor goes on trial in the murder of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall. The inventor, Peter Madsen, is said to have killed and dismembered Ms. Wall on his submarine. [The New York Times]

• The Trump administration’s plan to move the American embassy to Jerusalem has a hitch: The proposed site lies partly in disputed territory. [The New York Times]

• In a study of mice, scientists learned that a type of immune cell is key to making tattoos permanent, knowledge that might help improve methods for removing them. [The New York Times]

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

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Credit...Lars Leetaru

• Plan a movie-themed vacation with these tips and see the places your favorite films were shot.

• The Global Entry system is not only for U.S. citizens.

• Recipe of the day: Want an elegant and easy breakfast? Try a “soufflazy.”

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Credit...Irene C. Herrera for The New York Times

• Women may be the answer to a severe labor shortage in Japan’s construction industry. But workplace problems aren’t being helped by a tone-deaf government recruiting campaign. (To attract female welders, for example, a cartoon depicts a woman wearing a pink uniform with a heart-shaped welding mask.)

• “Pachinko,” Min Jin Lee’s epic novel set in Korea and Japan returns to our paperback trade fiction best-seller list, and Peter Frankopan’s “The Silk Roads” is on the paperback nonfiction best-seller list. You can find all of the lists here.

• And from K Road to Indigenous Drive. Our 36 Hours travel series explored Auckland, New Zealand, a city that is laid-back, but also sophisticated. If you go, here’s what to pack.

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Walter Cronkite hosted the program “Ask President Carter” on the afternoon of Saturday, March 5, 1977.Credit...CBS, via YouTube

President Trump has recently conducted a series of televised conversations with lawmakers as well as with regular citizens.

Forty-one years ago, President Jimmy Carter held a similar unscripted discussion, answering questions from callers during a live radio broadcast from the Oval Office.

“Ask President Carter,” moderated by the CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, was broadcast on the afternoon of March 5, 1977. (You can read a transcript here.)

Mr. Cronkite invited listeners to call the White House at 900‐242‐1611. According to CBS, more than 9 million Americans tried.

Some of the dozens of questions that Mr. Carter answered were distinctively of the late 1970s: about the gas tax, Mr. Carter’s pardoning of draft dodgers in Vietnam and the early days of the U.S. space shuttle program.

Others — about tax overhaul, drug abuse and relations with Cuba — still resonate today.

One caller asked why members of Congress were getting a $12,000 raise while Mr. Carter was proposing that taxpayers receive a rebate of only $50.

“Gerald, that is a hard question for me to answer,” Mr. Carter replied.

“I’m sure it is,” the caller said. “That’s why I thought I would throw it at you.”

The program caught the public’s attention (“Saturday Night Live” ran a spoof the next week), but it was never repeated.

Chris Stanford contributed reporting.

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