And in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s victory in parliamentary elections raised the possibility that he would move swiftly to try to change the country’s pacifist Constitution.
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• In Syria, U.S.-backed militia fighters seized the country’s largest oil field from the Islamic State, narrowly beating pro-government forces to it. Our graphics editors traced the militant group’s advance, and subsequent retreat, in maps.
In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani is leading a crackdown against the economic might of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which has been seen as a drag on growth after international sanctions were lifted.
But speaking in Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Europeans not to invest in certain Iranian businesses as the United States considers reimposing sanctions against Iran.
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• Russia is trying to turn the tables against William Browder, a prominent critic: Prosecutors claim that Mr. Browder, a hedge fund manager, had colluded with British intelligence in murdering Sergei Magnitsky, a tax lawyer whose death in a Russian jail has led to international sanctions.
The graft trial of a former economy minister suggests that infighting is growing within President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle over ever-smaller slices of the country’s economic pie.
Meanwhile in Washington, the three congressional investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election have run into serious obstacles. Definitive conclusions seem to be increasingly unlikely.
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• Iceland lost most of its trees more than a thousand years ago, when Viking settlers took their axes to the forests that covered one-quarter of the countryside.
Now Icelanders would like to get some of those forests back, to improve and stabilize the country’s harsh soils, help agriculture and fight climate change. But reforestation is a slow and arduous task.
Business
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• Fox News gave Bill O’Reilly a new anchoring contract early this year even after it emerged that he had recently settled a previously undisclosed $32 million sexual harassment case, a Times investigation found.
• Silicon Valley’s giants are placing big bets on artificial intelligence — and offering A.I. specialists startlingly high compensation.
• Some of Europe’s largest banks are set to report quarterly results this week. Here’s a look at the week ahead in business.
• Here’s a snapshot of global markets.
In the News
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• Thousands of protesters marched through Valletta, the capital of Malta, amid outrage at the murder last week of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the country’s best-known journalist. Virtually nobody expects her killing to be solved. [The New York Times]
• The World Health Organization dropped Zimbabwe’s leader, Robert Mugabe, as a “good-will ambassador” after days of widespread criticism. [The New York Times]
• The C.I.A. is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan, sending small teams of officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to kill Taliban militants. [The New York Times]
• In Washington, Senator John McCain, a Republican, has carved out a new role for himself since his cancer diagnosis: elder statesman and truth-teller. [The New York Times]
• Prosecutors in France charged eight men, aged between 17 and 29, in what they called a far-right terrorist plot. [Politico]
• The Times mapped 30 videos in an attempt to draw a complete picture of what happened during the mass shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 1. [The New York Times]
• “To be fat in France is to be a loser,” said the author of a hit memoir in a country that grapples with often overt stigmatization and growing obesity. [The New York Times]
• Conspiracy theorists rejoice: President Trump has said he’ll release the final documents related to the Kennedy assassination. [The New York Times]
Smarter Living
Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.
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• Recipe of the day: Find perfection at the bottom of a perfectly cooked katsudon, Japan’s pork-cutlet rice bowl.
• Get a jump on next season’s fashion trends.
• You know when a word is on the tip of your tongue but just can’t think of it? Here’s why (and more, in this week’s Smarter Living newsletter).
Noteworthy
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• For more than a century, the huddle has been one of the most defining fixtures of American football. But in today’s N.F.L., it’s slowly disappearing.
• “A lot of people said to me, don’t you want to be an air hostess?” That’s Jane Goodall, the primatologist, discussing her career in a new documentary that includes never-before-seen footage of her work among chimpanzees in Tanzania in the 1960s.
• A coming exhibit in Haarlem, the Netherlands, will show that many paintings from the Dutch Golden Age “have a joke as their very core.”
• And our behavioral science reporter explains why so many of us are vulnerable to fake news on social media.
Back Story
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“They’re two inches tall and very German. They’re blue and live deep in the forest.”
That’s how The Times eventually introduced its readers to the Smurfs, a cartoon and merchandising series that first appeared in a European comic magazine on this day in 1958.
The Smurfs were the work of the Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, who penned his work under the pseudonym Peyo.
At first, the uniform gnomelike characters played a secondary role as “Schtroumpfs” in another comic series, but they soon had their own albums and movies. (Here’s a detailed history.)
In the U.S., they gained popularity under their Dutch name, the “Smurfs,” becoming a perennial pop culture reference after a Saturday morning TV show began airing in 1981.
Now, there’s the concept of “smurfing” among computer gamers, referring to skilled gamers who play anonymously. In the banking industry, “smurfing” is a form of money laundering carried out by a multitude of couriers. There’s the 1980s break-dance style and there are Smurf conspiracy theories.
Six years ago, a village in Spain agreed to have all of its buildings painted in blue to mark the premiere of a Smurf movie. The publicity stunt worked and turned the sleepy settlement into a tourist attraction.
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