The idea of the U.S. purchasing Greenland has captured the former real estate developer’s imagination, according to people familiar with the discussion, who said Trump has, with varying degrees of seriousness, repeatedly expressed interest in buying the ice-covered autonomous Danish territory between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

More from WPR: The Costs of Keeping Greenland in the West’s Orbit

U.S. technology and telecoms companies still do not know whether they will be able to sell to Huawei after Monday, when a temporary export licence runs out, leaving many in the industry frustrated over the lack of information from the Trump administration.

A day after Israel announced it was banning Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering for a four-day trip to the Palestinian territories, the country’s Interior Minister Aryeh Deri said Friday he would approve a humanitarian request from Tlaib to visit her 90-year-old grandmother who lives in the occupied West Bank.

Gibraltar’s government Thursday released an Iranian supertanker detained on suspicion of violating European Union sanctions on oil exports to Syria, authorities said, in a move likely to soothe tensions with Iran even as it drew opposition from the Trump administration.

More from WPR: Iran Knows Trump Doesn’t Want a War and Is Trying to Wait Him Out

North Korea launched two projectiles yet again off its east coast Friday, as South Korean analysts said President Trump’s repeated downplaying of the North’s weapons tests had given it a free hand to conduct them.

More from WPR: Could the U.S. Live With a Nuclear North Korea?

While in the Indian Ocean heading toward the Strait of Malacca, the very large crude carrier Pacific Bravo went dark on June 5, shutting off the transponder that signals its position and direction to other ships, ship-tracking data showed.

We need to be honest with ourselves and others: The United States won’t go to war to save free speech in Hong Kong. It probably wouldn’t go to war to protect the independence of Taiwan, either. The United States should subtly raise the cost of potential Chinese intervention and maintain some ambiguity about its actions. But we should be careful about facile rhetorical threats that raise the costs for others.

And why decoupling from China will change everything.

More from WPR: Trump Is Risking a Recession—and His Reelection—With His Endless Trade War

The United States has applied to seize the Iranian oil tanker being held at Gibraltar, the government of the British territory revealed Thursday, just as the authorities appeared to be close to releasing the ship they detained more than a month ago.

More from WPR: Trump Traded an Imperfect Nuclear Deal for a No-Win Standoff With Iran

President Trump suggested a “personal meeting” with China’s President Xi Jinping to discuss the escalating crisis in Hong Kong and warned China it must respond “humanely” to the protests if it wants to strike a trade deal.

More from WPR: Why a Cold War With China Would Be So Costly

The Trump administration has decided to shield the signature projects of White House adviser Ivanka Trump and Vice President Pence as it looks to cancel billions of dollars in foreign aid for other projects around the world, U.S. officials said.

A forthcoming trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories by Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib may be blocked by Israel in its current proposed format, a senior Israeli government official told The Washington Post on Thursday.

China on Thursday redoubled its vow to retaliate against President Trump’s threat of more tariffs even after he said he would postpone some of them, casting a pall on markets trying to recover from a bad day on Wall Street.

More from WPR: Trump Is Risking a Recession—and His Reelection—With His Endless Trade War

With Taliban-U.S. peace talks failing to reach a hoped-for breakthrough this week, and the insurgents threatening to attack Afghan presidential elections next month, Afghans fear that one or both efforts will fail, leaving the country in political limbo.

More from WPR: What the U.S. and Taliban Must Get Right on Negotiations in Afghanistan

A concern for human rights and democracy has often been seen as an add-on to our country’s foreign policy, an attractive veneer over the usual realpolitik. But President Trump is demonstrating that a supposedly “America First” policy focused entirely on trade and divorced from a commitment to our values is incoherent.

Because American conventional military dominance is an assumption rather than a fact, strategists need to question its validity and its importance for policy and strategy. If the common narrative proves to be unsupported, it will change America’s strategic variables.

Venezuela’s opposition-controlled Congress is considering reforms to the country’s oil law that would open up the sector to private investment but are scaled back from the sweeping changes outlined in a past proposal, according to a draft of the bill seen by Reuters.

More than 500 migrants have lost their lives in the Americas so far this year, about a 33 percent increase from a year ago, the U.N. migration agency said Friday.

More from WPR: The World Has Lost the Will to Deal With the Worst Refugee Crisis Since World War II

The government of President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday nullified the newly named board of Venezuela’s prized Citgo refineries in the U.S. amid a political battle for control of the country, saying opposition leaders had no right to appoint them.

Brazil will pull out of the Mercosur trade bloc if the opposition party wins Argentina’s presidential elections later this year and closes the economy with protectionist policies, Brazil’s Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said Thursday.

More from WPR: Can the ‘Landmark’ EU-Mercosur Trade Deal Be Successfully Implemented?

In a democracy, the people are often mistaken but never wrong. This fall, Canada will have a federal election and a chance to make a decision. The SNC-Lavalin affair will be fresh fodder for citizens and parties. It should be. Voters can and should judge whether and to what degree Trudeau and his team ought to be sanctioned for what they did, weighing that consideration against their electoral alternatives.

More from WPR: Why the SNC-Lavalin Scandal Is Such a Blow for Canada’s Trudeau

The conservative government of President Ivan Duque is offering citizenship to Colombian-born babies of Venezuelan mothers.

More from WPR: Across Latin America, Venezuelans Reel From a Crisis That Has No End in Sight

President Mauricio Macri introduced several measures including raising the minimum wage and temporarily freezing fuel prices as part of an effort to help Argentines grappling with recession and double-digit inflation.

More from WPR: Why Fears of Fernandez’s Return Are Sinking Macri’s Reelection Hopes in Argentina

Canada’s federal ethics commissioner found on Wednesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had violated an ethics law in his handling of a corporate criminal case—a conclusion that could imperil Trudeau’s bid for a second term just months before national elections.

More from WPR: Why the SNC-Lavalin Scandal Is Such a Blow for Canada’s Trudeau

Tens of thousands of women took to the streets of Brazil’s capital of Brasilia on Wednesday to denounce the policies of President Jair Bolsonaro. The demonstration was the third anti-government protest in the city in two days.

The retrial of a Salvadoran woman convicted of aggravated homicide after having a stillbirth was scheduled to resume Thursday, offering a possibility to overturn her 30-year sentence in a country that bans abortion in all circumstances.

More from WPR: From Argentina to El Salvador, Restrictive Abortion Laws Are a Public Health Crisis

A secretive deal brought Paraguay’s president dangerously close to impeachment – and risks splattering into Brazil.

More from WPR: A Secret Energy Deal With Brazil Plunges Paraguay Into Crisis

The idea of the U.S. purchasing Greenland has captured the former real estate developer’s imagination, according to people familiar with the discussion, who said Trump has, with varying degrees of seriousness, repeatedly expressed interest in buying the ice-covered autonomous Danish territory between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

More from WPR: The Costs of Keeping Greenland in the West’s Orbit

A leading opposition lawmaker has thrown cold water on a proposal by the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, aimed at preventing Britain from leaving the European Union without a deal.

More from WPR: In Northern Ireland, There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Good Brexit’

A second police officer has been confirmed as a victim of the nerve-agent attack that nearly killed a Russian former spy and his daughter in England last year, the police said Thursday, bringing the number of those known to have been sickened in the episode to six.

A charity rescue ship carrying 134 migrants, mostly Africans, waited off the coast of Italy on Friday as a battle between former political allies in Rome stopped it docking at the southern island of Lampedusa.

More from WPR: Italy’s Populist Government Is a Marriage of Convenience. How Long Can It Last?

The biggest stereotype broken this month was the one still repeated by many Western commentators: that Vladimir Putin is the unchallenged leader of Russia, and that there is no alternative to his rule.

A general election in the wake of a chaotic no-deal Brexit is too great a risk. For a man who has always wanted to occupy No. 10 Downing St., a three-way referendum is the safest way to prolong his premiership.

More from WPR: Can Boris Johnson Survive Contact With Brexit Reality?

The leader of Britain’s biggest opposition party on Wednesday urged other opposition forces to unite, topple Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government and prevent Britain from leaving the European Union in October without a divorce agreement.

More from WPR: Can Boris Johnson Survive Contact With Brexit Reality?

Denmark’s government is considering strengthening controls at its border with Sweden after a bomb attack aimed at a government agency in Copenhagen that led to two Swedes being charged, the Danish prime minister said Wednesday.

Russian scientists on Wednesday ridiculed a government plan to impose Soviet-style restrictions on their interactions with colleagues from around the world, such as seeking permission for meetings and submitting reports about each encounter with a foreign peer.

Spain is willing to take some of around 150 migrants on a rescue ship that has been blocked from docking in Italy, under a broader deal being negotiated with other European nations, authorities in Madrid said Thursday.

More from WPR: The World Has Lost the Will to Deal With the Worst Refugee Crisis Since World War II

A British-Iranian academic was arrested at his home in Tehran over the weekend, roiling relations once again between Iran and Britain just as they appeared to be making progress on the release of an Iranian tanker seized in Gibraltar.

More from WPR: Iran Is Using a Strategy of Insurgency, Goading the U.S. Into Overreacting

The traditional Russian penchant for secrecy lives on. This time, though, it’s colliding with another powerful force: social media.

Amid a crackdown on dissent and an implosion of public services like water and electricity, Zimbabwe’s opposition planned to bring the country’s capital to a standstill in a mass protest.

A woman and her child were the first two cases confirmed with Ebola in Congo’s South Kivu region this week, opening a new front in the fight against the outbreak.

More from WPR: What the WHO’s Emergency Declaration Means for Congo’s Ebola Outbreak

A number of seamen have been kidnapped after an attack on their vessel off the coast of Cameroon in West Africa’s piracy-plagued Gulf of Guinea, a source in the Cameroonian army and a source at the major port of Douala said Friday.

While people are questioning the value of democracy, especially in many Western states, African populations who have experienced one-party or military rule are prepared to fight the resurgence of authoritarianism.

The war against Boko Haram saw kids drafted by both sides. Now they need assistance and a post-conflict future.

Technicians from the Chinese powerhouse have, in at least two cases, personally helped African governments spy on their political opponents, including intercepting their encrypted communications and social media, and using cell data to track their whereabouts, according to senior security officials working directly with the Huawei employees in these countries.

A South Africa court on Thursday awarded a second punitive costs order against the country’s top anti-corruption official, Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, after finding an investigation conducted by her office showed “gross negligence.”

Sudan’s main opposition alliance will nominate economist Abdalla Hamdok to serve as prime minister in the country’s transitional government, sources told Reuters on Thursday.

More from WPR: From the Gulf to Egypt, Foreign Powers Are Playing With Fire in Sudan

The fault lies entirely with the ruling Zanu-PF party, which has lost its legitimacy.

A day after Israel announced it was banning Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering for a four-day trip to the Palestinian territories, the country’s Interior Minister Aryeh Deri said Friday he would approve a humanitarian request from Tlaib to visit her 90-year-old grandmother who lives in the occupied West Bank.

Gibraltar’s government Thursday released an Iranian supertanker detained on suspicion of violating European Union sanctions on oil exports to Syria, authorities said, in a move likely to soothe tensions with Iran even as it drew opposition from the Trump administration.

More from WPR: Iran Knows Trump Doesn’t Want a War and Is Trying to Wait Him Out

Incessant attacks on health facilities and medical workers in a brutal battle for control of Tripoli could amount to war crimes, the United Nation’s top envoy to Libya said Thursday in a strong condemnation.

More from WPR: Libya’s Fate Remains Beholden to a Crude and Clumsy Game of Realpolitik

Israel’s record of killing or injuring Palestinians with impunity, systematically taking over their land and controlling the lives of millions through an arbitrary system of permits—while claiming that all this is “legal” and democratic—is part of the infamous status quo. So is its habit of attacking and trying to ban those who criticize its behavior.

The United States has applied to seize the Iranian oil tanker being held at Gibraltar, the government of the British territory revealed Thursday, just as the authorities appeared to be close to releasing the ship they detained more than a month ago.

More from WPR: Trump Traded an Imperfect Nuclear Deal for a No-Win Standoff With Iran

A British-Iranian academic was arrested at his home in Tehran over the weekend, roiling relations once again between Iran and Britain just as they appeared to be making progress on the release of an Iranian tanker seized in Gibraltar.

More from WPR: Iran Is Using a Strategy of Insurgency, Goading the U.S. Into Overreacting

A forthcoming trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories by Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib may be blocked by Israel in its current proposed format, a senior Israeli government official told The Washington Post on Thursday.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis rallied in Aden on Thursday in support of separatist forces who took over the southern port, the temporary seat of Yemen’s Saudi-backed government, in a move that exposed rifts in a Sunni Muslim military coalition.

Loujain al-Hathloul, an imprisoned women’s rights activist in Saudi Arabia, refused an offer of freedom in exchange for recording a videotaped statement testifying that she had not been tortured, her siblings said this week.

Beirut is ready to send refugees home, but there isn’t much for them to go back to.

U.S. technology and telecoms companies still do not know whether they will be able to sell to Huawei after Monday, when a temporary export licence runs out, leaving many in the industry frustrated over the lack of information from the Trump administration.

North Korea launched two projectiles yet again off its east coast Friday, as South Korean analysts said President Trump’s repeated downplaying of the North’s weapons tests had given it a free hand to conduct them.

More from WPR: Could the U.S. Live With a Nuclear North Korea?

India’s government said it would begin to relax communications and other restrictions in the disputed northern state of Jammu and Kashmir after initiating the curbs last week in a bid to prevent unrest.

More from WPR: Will India’s Modi Get Away With Upending the Status Quo in Kashmir?

More than two dozen Myanmar Army colonels have bypassed the battlefield to fight their adversaries in civilian courts, using criminal defamation cases to stifle criticism of the army’s authority ahead of parliamentary elections next year.

More from WPR: Why a New U.N. Report Won’t Reduce International Support for Myanmar’s Military

While in the Indian Ocean heading toward the Strait of Malacca, the very large crude carrier Pacific Bravo went dark on June 5, shutting off the transponder that signals its position and direction to other ships, ship-tracking data showed.

The chief executive of Cathay Pacific Airways stepped down Friday following a storm of criticism from the Chinese government and state news media over its employees’ participation in the territory’s protests.

More from WPR: How a Crackdown in Hong Kong Would Reverberate, From Shanghai to Taiwan

We need to be honest with ourselves and others: The United States won’t go to war to save free speech in Hong Kong. It probably wouldn’t go to war to protect the independence of Taiwan, either. The United States should subtly raise the cost of potential Chinese intervention and maintain some ambiguity about its actions. But we should be careful about facile rhetorical threats that raise the costs for others.

And why decoupling from China will change everything.

More from WPR: Trump Is Risking a Recession—and His Reelection—With His Endless Trade War

Xi Jinping’s quest to dominate China.

President Trump suggested a “personal meeting” with China’s President Xi Jinping to discuss the escalating crisis in Hong Kong and warned China it must respond “humanely” to the protests if it wants to strike a trade deal.

More from WPR: Why a Cold War With China Would Be So Costly

Technicians from the Chinese powerhouse have, in at least two cases, personally helped African governments spy on their political opponents, including intercepting their encrypted communications and social media, and using cell data to track their whereabouts, according to senior security officials working directly with the Huawei employees in these countries.

China on Thursday redoubled its vow to retaliate against President Trump’s threat of more tariffs even after he said he would postpone some of them, casting a pall on markets trying to recover from a bad day on Wall Street.

More from WPR: Trump Is Risking a Recession—and His Reelection—With His Endless Trade War

President Moon Jae-in of South Korea on Thursday struck a conciliatory note toward Japan after weeks of bitter feuding between Washington’s two key Asian allies, expressing hope that the two economies could cooperate to mend a worsening trade dispute.

More from WPR: In the Dispute Between Japan and South Korea, Echoes of Trump’s Trade Policy

As the Indian government’s shutdown of internet and phone service in the contested region enters its 11th day, Kashmir has become paralyzed.

More from WPR: Will India’s Modi Get Away With Upending the Status Quo in Kashmir?

With Taliban-U.S. peace talks failing to reach a hoped-for breakthrough this week, and the insurgents threatening to attack Afghan presidential elections next month, Afghans fear that one or both efforts will fail, leaving the country in political limbo.

More from WPR: What the U.S. and Taliban Must Get Right on Negotiations in Afghanistan

Beijing doesn’t want to intervene. But its own propaganda efforts may force Xi Jinping’s hand.

More from WPR: How a Crackdown in Hong Kong Would Reverberate, From Shanghai to Taiwan

The Indian government has confined about seven million Kashmiris to their homes and imposed a complete communications blackout.