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Asia and Australia Edition

Xi Jinping, Rohingya, Islamic State: Your Thursday Briefing

Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...CHINATOPIX, via Associated Press

• President Xi Jinping’s extraordinarily long opening speech set the tone for China’s weeklong Communist Party congress.

He declared a “new era” and stressed the country’s “great power” in comments that effectively claimed a stature as significant to today’s China as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping held in theirs. Here are five takeaways.

Mr. Xi’s rise has been marked by rekindled enthusiasm for traditional culture. Witness how his embrace of the Confucian philosopher Wang Yangming prompted one city to build a theme park, construct a museum and even commission a robot to bring him to life.

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Credit...Associated Press

• Newly declassified U.S. State Department files show that American officials looked on silently during Indonesia’s anti-Communist blood bath in the mid-60s — and at times even applauded the forces behind the killings of at least half a million people.

Cold War attitudes may have motivated U.S. diplomats to simply watch as mass extrajudicial executions spread beyond suspected Communists to target ethnic Chinese, students and union members. Above, President Kennedy with President Sukarno in 1961.

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Credit...Yuri Gripas/Reuters

• “We really hold the military leadership accountable.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was harsh in condemning Myanmar’s reported atrocities against Rohingya Muslims and demanded access to allow a “full accounting.”

Since Sunday, as many as 15,000 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh, a U.N. spokesman said, where the refugees are waiting to enter already overcrowded camps.

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Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

• Our photographer went to the front lines of the fight against the Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria, recording the Kurdish and Arab forces who have now declared victory. Above, a funeral for one of the fighters.

Counterterrorism experts say the Islamic State is down, but not out, with an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria; branches in North Africa and Asia; a large online network; and possibly sleeper cells abroad.

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Credit...Illustration by Andrew Rae

Hermit Kingdom? Not exactly.

North Korea’s economy grew 3.9 percent last year, and the country annually generates about a billion dollars in invisible income.

Our magazine details how, despite being blocked from international financial institutions, the North manages to sells arms, coal, seafood, textiles and, not least, the labor of exported workers. And our writer asks: How long will China continue to be its love-hate enabler?

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Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

• A very strange tale.

A Times investigation uncovered a secretive organization that lured in women with promises of empowerment, demanded they turn over naked photographs or other compromising material — and then held them down and branded them below the hip, searing a symbol into their skin.

The group, Nxivm (pronounced Nex-e-um), has been operating across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

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Credit...Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

• More trouble for Samsung: The South Korean police raided its construction arm’s head office in an inquiry into whether Lee Kun-hee, above, the conglomerate’s patriarch and the father of its jailed crown prince, misappropriated funds to renovate his family home.

• Silicon Valley’s smaller companies used to unseat the big ones. But now the giants just eat them, our tech columnist argues in his latest consideration of the unnerving power of Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

• Rio Tinto, the British-Australian mining giant, was charged with fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for inflating the value of coal assets in Mozambique.

• China’s economy grew 6.8 percent in the third quarter, the government said, in line with expectations.

• Thai stocks are booming as the royal transition nears completion.

Google’s Pixel 2 phone is an impressive but costly extravagance, according to our reviewer.

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

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Credit...Lars Hagberg/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

• U.S. threats to send in SEAL Team 6 prompted Pakistan’s operation to free an American woman, her Canadian husband and their children from the Taliban-linked Haqqani network. Above, the family is back in Canada. [The New York Times]

• A condolence call from President Trump became a political flash point, after accounts surfaced that he had told the widow of a U.S. soldier killed in Niger that he “knew what he signed up for.” [The New York Times]

• The U.N. refugee agency demanded that Australia step in to avert a humanitarian emergency over the pending, abrupt closure of the Manus Island immigration detention center. Papua New Guinea is threatening to cut off food supplies and forcibly move refugees. [AAP via SBS]

• “Not looking real promising”: Bad weather threatens Australia’s search for six fishermen missing off the coast of Queensland. [The Australian]

• China Daily, hit with fierce criticism, removed an editorial that claimed sexual harassment was a problem only in the West. [Shanghaiist]

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

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Credit...Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

• Celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, with this collection of recipes. Above, apple pickle.

• Don’t get too comfortable at that desk. Some offices are moving to a “palette of places.”

• Let us help you book the cheapest holiday travel.

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Credit...Ken Blaze/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

• Basketball’s global fans can rejoice: The N.B.A. regular season is here. In the Western Conference, the Warriors face a refueled Rockets squad. In the Eastern, where Cavaliers and Celtics have stockpiled stars. But opening night was surprising, and painful.

• When Japanese phonemakers introduced emojis in the late 1990s, they likely didn’t foresee the chaos that would be unleashed on the mission to standardize the world’s alphabets.

• In South Korea, concern over the North is mostly viewed through decisions made in Washington, according to our Interpreter column. Scrapping the Iran nuclear deal, for instance, is seen as making a deal with Pyongyang impossible.

• A new line of condoms available in 60 sizes for the U.S. market was a tough story to tackle seriously, our reporter recalls.

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Credit...Matias Costa for The New York Times

For visitors to Madrid, the starting point is often Plaza Mayor, which is 400 years old this year.

The plaza was created as a city center for the new capital of Madrid, where the Spanish royal court relocated from Toledo in the mid-16th century. Construction began in 1617, during the reign of King Philip III, who is memorialized by an equestrian statue in the center.

The square was built on the site of the market at Plaza del Arrabal, and was later called Plaza de la Constitución, Plaza Real, Plaza de la República and finally Plaza Mayor.

The plaza has seen almost as many fires as it has names. It had to be rebuilt after blazes in 1631, 1670 and 1790. It now consists of three stories, nine archways and 237 balconies.

The site of bullfights, coronations and executions during the Spanish Inquisition, the plaza is now home to shops, restaurants and an annual Christmas market.

Madrid has marked this year’s anniversary with lectures, screenings and music and dance performances. For a few days recently, the plaza was also covered with grass. “I wanted to recover the spirit of that green space,” the artist behind the project, SpY, told El País, citing the plaza’s history as earth and garden.

Jennifer Jett contributed reporting.

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Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online. Browse past briefings here.

We have briefings timed for the Australian, Asian, European and American mornings. You can sign up for these and other Times newsletters here.

If photographs appear out of order, please download the updated New York Times app from iTunes or Google Play.

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

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