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Asia and Australia Edition

Donald McGahn, Indonesia, Pakistan: Your Monday Briefing

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

Good morning. An olive branch in Afghanistan, faded hopes in Turkey and a New Zealand minister’s bike ride to child birth. Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...Mohammad Ismail/Reuters

• A cease-fire offer in Afghanistan.

President Ashraf Ghani extended a trust-building measure to the Taliban before the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha this week. He said the conditional cease-fire would start today and extend “until Nov. 21, birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.”

There was no immediate response from the Taliban, which has staged a charm offensive of sorts in advance of the Islamic holiday — even as the insurgents, in the past week alone, have overrun cities, burned down government facilities and killed hundreds of their opponents. Above, a checkpoint on the Ghazni-Kabul highway last week.

The U.N., meanwhile, urged all sides of the Afghan conflict to protect aid workers delivering critical assistance to a population suffering the brunt of war and drought.

And Rod Nordland, a Times correspondent who has been reporting on the country since the 1979 Soviet invasion, writes that there are two wars convulsing Afghanistan: “the war of blood and guts, and the war of truth and lies.”

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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

• President Trump attacks The Times.

Mr. Trump, in a series of tweets, denounced a Times report describing the extensive cooperation between the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, and investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

The president confirmed that he allowed Mr. McGahn, above center, and other officials to cooperate fully with the inquiry, saying he had “nothing to hide.” But Mr. Trump said the Times’s article had falsely insinuated that Mr. McGahn had “turned” on him.

In a statement, The Times said the paper stood by the report and the reporters who wrote it, Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman. In one of his tweets, Mr. Trump called them “two Fake reporters.”

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Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

• Faded hope in Turkey.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan once held promise as a potential beacon of democracy for a region rife with religious conflict.

After all, Turkey was a stalwart NATO ally and sought to join the European Union, while Mr. Erdogan presented himself as a moderate and modernizing Muslim leader for the post-9/11 age.

But as he began amassing supreme powers, this analysis points out, the notion that he was a liberalizing force has been extinguished.

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Credit...Rehan Khan/EPA, via Shutterstock

• A nation divided, and in debt.

Imran Khan, the former cricket star turned politician, was sworn in as Pakistan’s prime minister on Saturday, with many wondering whether his campaign rhetoric will match the policies he pursues.

As our South Asia correspondents explain, Mr. Khan’s populist campaign promises “will bump up against the reality that Pakistan’s government has little money to spare, is straddled with debt and must tighten its finances.”

If Mr. Khan completes his five-year term, he would be the first prime minister in Pakistan’s history to do so.

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Credit...Julie Anne Genter, via Instagram

• “Beautiful Sunday morning for a bike ride.”

Julie Anne Genter, New Zealand’s minister for women and associate minister for health and transport, rode her bike “mostly downhill” to have her labor induced at Auckland City Hospital.

Ms. Genter, 38, is expected to become the second New Zealand government minister to deliver a baby this year, after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

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Credit...Noah Berger/Bloomberg

• Elon Musk explains: In a sometimes tearful interview with The Times, he shared his struggles in trying to make Tesla’s production goals, saying, “This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career. It was excruciating.”

• Headlines to watch this week: The U.S. trade representative begins six days of hearings today on plans to place tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese goods, and trade talks with China resume on Wednesday.

• “Crazy Rich Asians” took in $25.2 million at North American theaters over the weekend, easily enough for No. 1. “The Meg” placed second, collecting $21.2 million, for a two-week global total of roughly $300 million, including more than $100 million in China.

• Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

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Credit...Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• “I would have died there”: This video report looks at India’s Kerala State, where heavy rains caused some of the region’s worst flooding in nearly a century, killing more than 300 people and displacing thousands. [The New York Times]

• Here’s the latest on rescue efforts in Kerala, where rains have eased. The state’s chief minister vowed on Sunday “to save even the last person stranded.” [BBC]

• In Indonesia, a series of earthquakes including a 6.9 magnitude tremor struck the resort island of Lombok, killing one person. An earthquake killed more than 430 people there this month. [Reuters]

• President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, over China’s objections, made two brief stopovers in the U.S. last week, meeting with members of Congress who favor closer ties. [The New York Times]

China fired 10 officials and punished dozens more in connection with a vaccine scandal that has undermined President Xi Jinping and further rattled confidence in the health care system. [The New York Times]

• North Korea pressed its demand that the U.S. agree to declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, as South Korea’s leader indicated that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was preparing for his fourth visit to the North. [The New York Times]

• Aged to perfection? Archaeologists cleaning an Egyptian tomb found a jar with a 3,200-year-old piece of cheese, one of the oldest solid specimens discovered. [The New York Times]

Tips for a more fulfilling life.

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Credit...Lucy Jones

• Finding it hard to focus? Maybe it’s not your fault.

• Block and report spam text messages and emails.

• Recipe of the day: Looking for something light and refreshing? A crunchy herb and radish salad with feta will do the trick.

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Credit...Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

• Glory days: Japan’s national high school baseball tournament — this year is the 100th edition — has once again gripped the nation, drawing 50,000 people to games and turning teenagers into household names. The tourney concludes on Tuesday.

• In memoriam: Kofi Annan, 80, the first black African to head the United Nations and the 2001 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; Isamu Shibayama, 88, whose family was deported from Peru to a U.S. wartime internment camp, setting him on an unsuccessful mission to have the wrongs redressed.

• And this dispatch from Croatia looks at Dubrovnik, a city known to “Game of Thrones” fans as King’s Landing. As crowds of “set-jetters” threaten to spoil the port’s sublime majesty, officials are fighting back.

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Credit...NASA

Chirping crickets. A baby cooing. Crashing waves. A greeting from President Jimmy Carter.

Those were some of the contents of the so-called Golden Record that was attached to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, which was launched for Jupiter and Saturn 41 years ago today. Voyager 1, which launched on Sept. 5, 1977, also carries a record.

The spacecraft were designed to explore the outer solar system, but the record (actually made of copper) also carried a message to any extraterrestrials that may find it: sounds and images that best represented humankind and life on Earth. In addition to sounds of nature, there were musical pieces and greetings in 55 languages. Above, the cover of the record.

The astronomer Carl Sagan led the effort to compile the record, an ambitious process that was fraught with indecision. In addition to the technical issues of creating a record that could withstand the pressures of space, there was also the philosophical burden of how to best paint a picture of our planet.

Voyagers 1 and 2 are, respectively, now about 13 billion and 11 billion miles from Earth, carrying the record, which Dr. Sagan called a “bottle in a cosmic ocean.”

Alisha Haridasani Gupta wrote today’s Back Story.

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Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online. Sign up here to get it by email in the Australian, Asian, European or American morning. You can also receive an Evening Briefing on U.S. weeknights.

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