Japan’s foreign minister warned that any attempt to revise the agreement would be “unacceptable” and would make the relationship between Japan and South Korea “unmanageable.”
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• Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, abandoned a softened approach toward President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, calling Mr. Assad a “terrorist” with no place in that country’s postwar future.
Mr. Erdogan may have intended his remarks as a message to Russia, Syria’s ally. A day earlier, Russia said that Kurdish groups would be included in talks that it’s hosting next month, a move that Turkey strongly opposes.
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• Chinese companies are still going global, despite Beijing’s efforts to temper outbound investment.
The latest example: Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, which bought Volvo cars in 2010, said it would take an 8.2 percent stake in AB Volvo, the Swedish truck maker.
The deal would position Geely as the truck maker’s largest shareholder.
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• In an interview with Prince Harry for the BBC, the former President Barack Obama said he was adjusting to life outside the White House and expressed concern about social media. Here are highlights from the interview.
And Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, drew an intense response with his claim that President Trump is similar to Winston Churchill. Historians took issue with the comparison.
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Business
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• American produce growers, who grapple with migrant labor laws and many other rules, exemplify what businesses describe as regulatory fatigue. President Trump is tapping into the discontent.
• Our technology writer says that it’s easy to count the ways that tech did you wrong in 2017. Here’s his review.
• China is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy by 2032, a new report shows.
• Barbie. The hula hoop. The Rubik’s Cube. Here are the stories behind some of the must-have toys of several generations.
• U.S. stocks were up. Here’s a snapshot of global markets.
In the News
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• A court in Myanmar extended the detention of two Reuters journalists for another 14 days. The two had been reporting on the Rakhine State, the site of a military crackdown on ethnic Rohingya Muslims. [The New York Times]
• Japan’s Supreme Court upheld a not-guilty verdict for a woman who eluded the police for 17 years following a cult’s deadly crime spree, including a 1995 nerve gas attack in Tokyo. [The Asahi Shimbun]
• Four defectors from the area near North Korea’s nuclear testing site showed symptoms that could be attributed to radiation exposure, scientists in South Korea said. [The New York Times]
• The Kremlin is clearly afraid of Aleksei Navalny, the Russian anticorruption activist, but it is unclear exactly what it fears, our correspondent writes. [The New York Times]
• An Australian grandmother escaped the death penalty in Malaysia after a court accepted her argument that she had been unaware of 2.4 pounds of crystal methamphetamine in her luggage. [BBC]
• In South Korea, prosecutors asked to extend the prison term of Lee Jae-yong, the heir to the Samsung empire also known as Jay Y. Lee, in an appeal of Mr. Lee’s five-year sentence for bribery. [Bloomberg]
• A Vietnamese general announced the existence of Force 47, a 10,000-strong team of “cyber troops” tasked with “combating wrongful information and anti-state propaganda.” [Tuoi Tre News]
• Saudi Arabia blocked Israel’s chess team from competing in the world championships in Riyadh by refusing to issue visas. [The New York Times]
• Wild Oats XI won its ninth Sydney to Hobart yacht race, smashing the previous record by nearly five hours. But the crew will face a hearing over a near collision before officially being named the champion. [The Guardian]
Smarter Living
Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.
• Should you shower in the morning, or at night? Yes.
• Here are cities around the world that are trending for budget fare hunters, and reasons you might want to visit them in 2018.
• Recipe of the day: Provide comfort by cooking a lemony carrot and cauliflower soup.
Noteworthy
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• From President Trump versus Hollywood to the debate over the whitewashing of Asian movie characters, here’s a not-so-nostalgic look back at the year’s fiercest cultural fights.
• Unable to pay for the personnel, produce and precision needed to charge one-star prices, the French chef Jérôme Brochot wrote to the Guide Michelin, the gastronome’s bible, to say he wanted out.
• And in a behind-the-scenes post, one of our journalists writes about how her life became deeply intertwined with that of a 14-year-old cancer patient.
Back Story
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“The young writer touches us with a pungent melancholy, a kind of dark brilliance.”
That was a description of Heinrich Böll, the German writer born 100 years ago this month, in the first review of his work in The Times in 1955.
Mr. Böll’s writing was informed by his experiences as a soldier in World War II, which ended with his capture by American troops.
“I will never forget those very young boys coming up the hill, who had to take me a prisoner to liberate me,” he once recalled in a Times Op-Ed.
This experience turned him, in a correspondent’s words, into “an enemy of tyrannies large and small, an anti-militarist and a doubter.” One of Germany’s most widely read authors, Mr. Böll won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972.
Months later, a Times reporter asked him how he felt about the United States.
His response: “You have Watergate and you have press freedom. You have desert and you have New York, terrible provincialism and terrible up-to-datedness. Being American means the chance to be what you want.”
Patrick Boehler contributed reporting.
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