China and the U.S. reached a modest breakthrough in their standoff over trade, saying they would hold lower-level talks later this month on the spiraling dispute.

More from WPR: What Is the Endgame for the Trump Trade Wars?

President Trump has reversed an Obama-era memorandum dictating how and when the U.S. government can deploy cyberweapons against its adversaries, in an effort to loosen restrictions on such operations, according to people familiar with the action.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has warned Turkey not to test America’s resolve in an escalating row between the two countries, as Qatar announced $15 billion in support for Ankara.

More from WPR: The Netherlands Shows How Western Tensions With Turkey Spill Into Local Politics

Federal authorities said Wednesday they had arrested an Iraqi national and longtime member of al-Qaida and the Islamic State who fled after killing an Iraqi police officer in 2014, eventually settling in Sacramento as a purported refugee.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday named senior policy adviser Brian Hook as special representative for Iran. Hook will lead the Iran Action Group to coordinate the State Department’s actions on Iran, Pompeo told a news conference.

More from WPR: The Trump Administration’s Magical Thinking About Iran

President Trump said that negotiations have stalled over his attempt to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement and that he is no longer in a hurry to overhaul the pact.

In total, there are over fifteen hundred open cost-saving recommendations that haven’t been addressed by the Department of Defense.

The United States has the leverage needed to prevent Qatar from cozying up to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood—if it’s willing to use it.

The Trump administration announced new sanctions on Wednesday against three organizations and an individual accused of facilitating illicit shipments to North Korea, keeping pressure on the government of Kim Jong Un amid ongoing negotiations over the dismantling of his nuclear program.

American and European intelligence and counterterrorism officials said on Tuesday that the escalating tensions between President Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey could jeopardize information sharing and law enforcement cooperation between the two countries as they fight the Islamic State in Syria.

The Trump administration’s decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran is rebounding on neighboring Iraq, hitting investors with dramatic losses at a time when the American ally is already facing unrest because of tough economic conditions.

More from WPR: Protests Reveal Iraq’s New Fault Line: The People vs. the Ruling Class

The Kremlin said on Wednesday preparations were underway for a meeting in Geneva next week between Russian officials and White House national security adviser John Bolton, the first top-level meeting since the Russian and U.S. presidents met in Helsinki.

More from WPR: There Is No Strategic Rationale for Trump’s Appeasement of Putin

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday pledged closer defense cooperation with Argentina. Standing beside his Argentinian counterpart, Oscar Aguad, Mattis said the military partnership can be strengthened. He alluded to the help the U.S. Navy provided Argentina last November when one of its submarines went missing with 44 sailors aboard.

A senior U.S. official acknowledged Wednesday that the United Arab Emirates had paid money to tribal leaders in Yemen to rout al-Qaida militants from their strongholds in the war-torn county.

The Trump administration’s treatment of Canada is deeply disturbing for reasons that go far beyond personal fondness. Americans owe Canadians an apology—if not for voting for Donald Trump, then for somehow making his abusive treatment of our northern neighbor possible.

Tucked inside the $716 billion John McCain 2019 National Defense Authorization Act that President Trump signed Monday is a provision barring any U.S. university from using Pentagon resources for any program involving Confucius Institutes, Chinese government-funded language schools embedded inside U.S. colleges.

Brazil’s Attorney General Raquel Dodge filed an objection on Wednesday against the presidential candidacy of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva before the Superior Electoral Court, after the Workers’ Party officially named him as its presidential candidate in the October election.

More from WPR: Brazil’s Workers’ Party May Soon Be Forced to Start Pondering Life After Lula

The Japanese minister of foreign affairs arrived in Bogota on Wednesday for a two-day visit in which he will meet with the Colombian authorities to review the issues on a bilateral agenda, Colombia’s foreign ministry said.

As Venezuela and its state-owned oil firm PDVSA lurch from crisis to crisis, defaulted creditors are jockeying for position to ensure they are among the first to receive cash when payday eventually comes.

More from WPR: Why Higher Oil Prices Won’t Save Venezuela

Riot police have blocked hundreds of doctors and nurses from marching to Venezuela’s presidential palace to protest low pay and shortages of medical supplies amid the nation’s deepening crisis.

More from WPR: Hyperinflation Is Crippling Venezuela, but Maduro Has No Interest in Fixing It

Canadian Muslims traveling to the Hajj pilgrimage face delays coming back due to a diplomatic dispute with Saudi Arabia that is also prompting thousands of students from the kingdom to scramble to sell their assets and return home to meet a month-end deadline.

More from WPR: The Saudi Arabia Dispute Highlights Canada’s Rights-Based Foreign Policy

Brazilian President Michel Temer is endorsing another party’s candidate as well as his own in October’s presidential election. Temer said in an interview published Thursday by the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper that he sees former Sao Paulo Gov. Geraldo Alckmin of the right-leaning Brazilian Social Democracy Party as a candidate who would carry on with his work.

More from WPR: Fed Up With Corrupt Politicians, Can Brazilians Resist the Lure of Demagogues?

Andrew Scheer, the head of Canada’s Conservative Party, has 14 months to make the case that he would not merely make a decent prime minister, but a better one than Justin Trudeau. Only by doing so can he convince voters to make the relatively unprecedented move of unseating an incumbent Canadian majority government after a single term.

An estimated 2.3 million Venezuelans had fled the crisis-wracked country as of June, mainly to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, the United Nations said Tuesday.

More from WPR: Venezuela’s Exodus Adds to the Perils Across Latin America

Power has been restored to all of Puerto Rico for the first time since Hurricane Maria struck nearly 11 months ago, officials said Tuesday.

Chile’s Supreme Court has sentenced 24 former police agents to prison for the disappearance of a man who was arrested during the “dirty war” crackdown on leftists under dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Former President Jose Mujica resigned his senatorial seat Tuesday despite having the right to remain as a Uruguayan lawmaker until 2020.

The Brazilian army carried out on Tuesday a mega-operation involving over 1,900 security personnel in several communities in the western zone of Rio de Janeiro, resulting in one dead, two suspects arrested and one minor detained, according to official sources.

Mario Abdo Benitez has taken over as Paraguay’s new president, replacing a seemingly disgruntled Horacio Cartes, who left the inauguration ceremony before it finished.

More from WPR: Paraguay’s New Pro-Business President Cements Latin America’s Shift to the Right

Election season has officially started in Brazil and a record 13 candidates are due to register for October’s presidential poll. They will face a tough task: trying to win over a polarized electorate, rocked in recent years by mammoth corruption scandals, a deep recession and rising violence.

Once considered independent, the judicial system risks becoming politicized by graft scandals.

Hundreds of demonstrators walked through downtown Moscow on Wednesday to protest against a growing number of arrests of young Russians on extremism charges for material shared or stored on social media sites.

The Polish president has vetoed a law on elections to the European Union Parliament that would have benefited large political parties and made it harder for small parties to reach a threshold to get seats.

More from WPR: The Struggle for Poland’s Future Is Playing Out on the Battlefield of History

Another German citizen has been arrested by Turkish police on charges of terrorism after criticizing the Turkish government online, his lawyer said on Thursday. Ilhami A., 46, was arrested on Tuesday morning while visiting his mother in the town of Saribasak in a largely Kurdish region of eastern Turkey, public broadcaster ARB reported.

More from WPR: The Cost of a German Breakup With Turkey

The Russian military says that two nuclear-capable strategic bombers have flown to the easternmost Chukotka Peninsula, near Alaska, as part of an air force exercise.

An organization made up of the judiciaries of European Union states said on Thursday it planned to suspend Poland after political interference meant its legal system was no longer independent of the government.

More from WPR: The Limits to Any Rapprochement Between Poland and the EU

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday her government would step up efforts to deport rejected asylum seekers faster, after hundreds of far-right protesters called on her to resign over her migration policy.

More from WPR: Politically Weakened, Merkel Is Beset by Challenges at Home and Abroad

Seven years ago, when Arabs revolted against their autocratic rulers, European leaders engaged in a collective mea culpa. From now on, democracy and human rights would be the cornerstones of the European Union’s Middle East policy, they vowed. But the high-mindedness was short-lived. Driven by a fear of migrants, European governments have once again embraced strongmen.

In the last few months, rising public frustrations over domestic policy and a government proposal to weaken the social safety net have led to a sharp decline in Putin’s popularity. For Russia’s political class, this decline is a sign that Putin’s ratings have lost their cloak of invulnerability, a development that could have real implications for his new term and the potential succession fight to follow.

A driver arrested on suspicion of using his car to carry out a terrorist attack outside the Houses of Parliament was identified Wednesday as Salih Khater, a British citizen who immigrated to England from Sudan.

A man suspected of arson in connection with dozens of car fires in Goteborg, Sweden’s second largest city, has been arrested in Turkey, police said Wednesday.

The U.N. refugee agency is urging European countries to end a string of impasses over ships carrying rescued migrants and put together a Mediterranean regional arrangement that makes clear where such vessels can dock.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will hold “a possible energy dialogue” amid other bilateral issues with his Turkmen counterpart Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov later on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Chinese President Xi Jinping would visit Russia in September, Russian news agencies RIA and Tass reported on Wednesday.

Faced with Donald Trump’s inward-looking America, Europe must reestablish itself as a true global player, not by attempting to emulate a classic superpower, but rather by consolidating and deploying different types of power. To do so, however, it must address three key weaknesses.

We’re amateurs, and this summer our job became harder. During two weeks in June 2017, we intercepted and rescued more than 300 migrants. But this year we couldn’t help anyone. The European Union has tried to stop our operations while handing over search-and-rescue responsibilities to the Libyan coast guard.

Malta on Tuesday agreed to let a private rescue ship dock on the island, with the 141 migrants it is carrying to be distributed among five fellow European Union nations in what was described as a “responsibility-sharing exercise.”

The leader of Bosnia’s Serbs denied on Tuesday that genocide was committed in Srebrenica and called for the withdrawal of a government report that acknowledged the massacre of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the eastern Bosnian enclave in 1995—triggering possible new tensions in the war-scarred Balkan state.

A Dutch investigating judge has ordered a 34-year-old homeless man to be detained for a further 14 days on suspicion of an arson attack on the Turkish consulate in Amsterdam.

Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won a second five-year term in the turbulent West African nation with more than 67 percent of the vote in a runoff election, the Ministry of Territorial Administration said Thursday.

More from WPR: Mali’s Keita Faces a Growing List of Headaches Heading Into Elections in 2018

A Libyan court has sentenced 45 people to death by firing squad over killings during the 2011 uprising that evolved into civil war.

Zimbabwe’s ruling party and opposition say the Constitutional Court will hear the opposition’s challenge to the presidential election results on Aug. 22.

More from WPR: Zimbabwe’s Election Was Never Going to Be Free and Fair

Congo’s government says it has issued an international arrest warrant for opposition leader Moise Katumbi, who has been in exile since 2016.

Somali president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed Farmaajo is in Djibouti on an official visit. The visit comes amid recent tensions of Somalia’s position on Eritrean sanctions.

If you asked people to identify the most important trends shaping the world, many would name climate change, the rise of China, the potential of artificial intelligence or the surge of nationalism. Few would mention the dramatic increase of the population in a continent that to many is an afterthought.

A deadly outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo has spread outside the province of North Kivu, the country’s health ministry said Tuesday, entering for the first time an active conflict zone and raising the threat of a wider outbreak.

Lawyers representing Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa have filed papers urging the country’s Constitutional Court to throw out an opposition challenge to his disputed election.

Nigerian police on Tuesday detained a journalist for refusing to reveal the source of an article on a confidential letter from the chief of the force, the reporter’s newspaper said, as Nigeria’s security agencies come under pressure to reform.

Uganda’s vocal legislator, Robert Kyagulanyi, who is popularly known as Bobi Wine, has been charged with treason in the aftermath of the deadly clashes that rocked the West Nile town of Arua on the last day of campaigns to elect a member of parliament for the municipality.

The chairman of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress was quoted as saying the state should take without compensation land from those who own more than 12,000 hectares, comments that sent the rand weaker.

President Magufuli has clamped down hard on various freedoms. But as his popularity plummets and defiance grows, something may have to give.

Corruption in Nigeria is complicated, far-reaching, and multi-faceted. A new taxonomy can help us make sense of it.

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has won re-election “comfortably” based on his campaign’s vote count, his spokesman said on Tuesday, dismissing claims from the opposition that they won.

Six major opposition parties in Congo that have registered candidates for December’s long-delayed presidential election are discussing putting forward a joint candidate.

More from WPR: With Kabila’s Withdrawal, Congo’s Presidential Race Starts to Take Shape

Nigeria’s acting president has ordered the overhaul of a police unit following allegations of human rights violations, his spokesman said on Tuesday, as the government seeks to burnish its security record ahead of February’s presidential election.

More from WPR: A Party Split in Nigeria May Be the Least of Buhari’s Re-Election Worries

Turkey has said it is willing to speak with the U.S. to resolve an ongoing dispute between the two NATO allies, as the White House appeared to ratchet up pressure on Ankara.

More from WPR: The Netherlands Shows How Western Tensions With Turkey Spill Into Local Politics

Iraq launched an air strike on a gathering of Islamic State fighters in neighboring Syria, killing members of the hardline militant group who planned cross-border attacks, its military said on Thursday.

More from WPR: The Shape of Syria to Come

Egypt is finalizing details of a long-term truce deal between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, an Egyptian security source said on Thursday, amid easing tensions on the border of the enclave where some two million Palestinians live.

Turkey’s Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak held a teleconference with around 6,100 international investors on Thursday. “We are not in talks with the International Monetary Fund. We will continue to ensure funding from international markets,” a statement by his office quoted him telling the teleconference.

More from WPR: Why Erdogan Is Insulated From Turkey’s Economic Woes

Despite its defiant warnings, Tehran will eventually negotiate with Donald Trump—as long as Vladimir Putin mediates.

More from WPR: With U.S. Sanctions Looming, Iran Faces a Potentially Explosive Economic Crisis

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is not fragmenting and weakening—it’s actually getting stronger.

Turkey on Wednesday raised tariffs on a number of products imported from the United States, including passenger cars, tobacco and spirits, retaliating for President Trump’s decision last week to double tariffs on Turkish metals.

Yemeni officials and witnesses say heavy fighting between pro-government forces and Shiite rebels in the north and around the Red Sea port of Hodeida has killed at least 18 civilians.

More from WPR: Taking Out Yemen’s Houthi Leaders Is No Path to Peace

Israel allowed commercial goods back into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, in a sign of an easing of tensions as neighboring Egypt pursued a long-term ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian enclave’s dominant armed faction.

Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has said Qatar is standing by its “brothers in Turkey” as he announced a $15 billion investment into the country’s financial markets and banks.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has lashed out at the United States over its proposals to alleviate the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

A court in Turkey has ordered the release of Taner Kilic, honorary chair of Amnesty International’s Turkish branch, the rights group said in a statement.

The newly released lists of his regime’s victims serve as a cruel epilogue for all those who rose up against him.

Turkey’s currency crisis and standoff with the United States over the imprisonment of an American pastor have exposed the crumbling edifice of the two countries’ Cold War-era partnership. Rather than hold out hope that Turkey will return to the Western fold, U.S. and European policymakers must consider a new policy toward the country.

Fighting between two pro-government factions in Yemen has killed at least 18 people on both sides in the past two days, officials said Tuesday, as a U.N. delegation visited children wounded in an airstrike last week that killed dozens of civilians.

Saudi Arabia has freed three Iranian fishermen detained by the kingdom’s coastguard last year, Iran’s state news agency IRNA quoted an Iranian official as saying on Tuesday, following negotiations between the two regional rivals.

Israel says it plans to ease some restrictions on the Gaza Strip as Egypt attempts to broker an end to months of violence between Israel and Hamas.

A Turkish court has released two Greek soldiers pending their trial on espionage charges, state-run news agency Anadolu said on Tuesday, in a move Athens said would help to improve strained ties between the two NATO allies.

More from WPR: Rising Tensions Between Greece and Turkey Could Weaken NATO

Egyptian police have arrested 13 alleged Muslim Brotherhood members accused of inciting protests on the fifth anniversary of the violent dispersal of two mass sit-ins.

More from WPR: Why Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Needs to Transform to Survive

Malaysia’s new government on Thursday repealed a widely criticized law prohibiting “fake news,” in a move hailed as a landmark moment for human rights by a group of Southeast Asian lawmakers.

More from WPR: How Ex-Strongman Mahathir Became Malaysia’s Great Democratic Hope

Two women on trial for the brazen assassination of the North Korean leader’s half brother were told Thursday to make their defense after the judge found evidence of a “well-planned conspiracy,” extending their murder trial until next year.

Former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has died after a prolonged illness. He was 93.

In the past several months, Beijing has urged its officials and party outlets to tamp down the swagger about China’s economic strength. Rather than behemoth, Beijing has begun to pitch itself as a humble helper, an aide to countries in need.

More from WPR: The Ongoing Drama, or Farce, of Trump’s China Trade Policy

A court in central Vietnam sentenced an activist to 20 years in prison Thursday after finding him guilty of attempting to overthrow the Communist government, his lawyer said, in a case decried by international rights groups.

Thailand will ban imports of 432 types of scrap electronics within six months, an environment ministry official said on Thursday, the latest country to respond to China’s crackdown on imports of high-tech trash this year.

Pacific island nations are holding talks which could lead to a coordinated request that China forgive mounting debts in the region amid concerns Beijing may start seizing strategic assets, Tonga’s Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva said on Thursday.

More from WPR: How Debt Traps From China’s Belt and Road Initiative Could Upend the IMF

If South Korea is having trouble arriving at a peace deal with the North at the height of progressive power, then that does not bode well for health of a peace regime.

China’s new ideological rigidity is being put to the economic and technological test.

More from WPR: Are ‘Whisperings’ in China the Beginning of a Backlash Against the Cult of Xi?

A suicide bomber struck a private education center in a Shiite neighborhood of Kabul on Wednesday where high school graduates were preparing for university entrance exams, killing 48 young men and women and leaving behind a scene of devastation and tragedy.

A Taliban assault on two adjacent checkpoints in northern Afghanistan killed at least 30 soldiers and policemen, officials said, as life gradually returned to normal on Wednesday in parts of the eastern city of Ghazni after a massive, days-long insurgent attack, with sporadic gunbattles still underway in some neighborhoods.

South Korea is planning to establish road and rail links with North Korea by the end of the year as Seoul seeks to bolster economic engagement with the regime amid faltering progress on denuclearization.

More from WPR: If the U.S.-South Korea Alliance Goes, Does America’s Strategy in Asia Go With It?

Chinese cyber espionage linked to the Belt and Road Initiative is increasing, with experts warning that Beijing is using the huge infrastructure project to spy on companies and countries as well as to damp down dissent.

Pakistan’s lower house of parliament elected an ally of Imran Khan to be its next speaker on Wednesday, paving the way for the former cricket star and longtime politician to become the next prime minister.

New Zealand has banned most foreigners from buying homes as it tries to tackle runaway housing prices.

The Mekong River Commission welcomed on Wednesday a decision by the Laos government to suspend approval of new dams while reviewing all dams currently under construction following the collapse of part of a hydropower project last month.

New Zealand school teachers went on strike on Wednesday for the first time in more than 20 years, challenging the Labour government’s plans to balance promised fiscal responsibility against growing demands to increase public sector salaries.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling party has won all 125 seats in the National Assembly, official results released Wednesday by the state election board confirmed.

More from WPR: Cambodia’s Crooked Election and the Tragedy of Its Postwar Period

Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are working on a possible land swap near the border between the two Central Asian states, some parts of which have not been formally delineated since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

By letting the country into the World Trade Organization back in 2001, Washington laid the groundwork for the tensions roiling relations with Beijing today.

How changing military strategy may have led to misconduct.

China said Tuesday that Malaysia should handle any problems it has with multibillion-dollar Chinese-backed infrastructure projects through talks, a day after the Southeast Asian country’s leader told The Associated Press his government wants to cancel such deals.

Australia on Tuesday proposed a new law requiring technology firms such as Alphabet Inc’s Google, Facebook and Apple to give police access to private encrypted data linked to suspected illegal activities.

The Philippine president said Tuesday that China’s claim to airspace above newly built islands and surrounding waters in the disputed South China Sea “is wrong” and Beijing should not tell others to leave those areas to avoid possible clashes.

More from WPR: Duterte’s Efforts to Align the Philippines With China Face a Backlash