The Biden administration conducted an airstrike in Syria on Thursday that officials believe killed a number of alleged Iranian-linked fighters, signaling its intent to use targeted military action to push back against violence tied to Tehran.

U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Thursday, stressing the importance of human rights and vowing to make the relationship between the two countries stronger and more transparent, the White House said.

More from WPR: Why Saudi Arabia Will Be the First Big Test of Biden’s Foreign Policy

The Biden administration is struggling to reconcile two inescapable truths about Egypt: It’s an important friend and ally of the United States. And it has a repressive government that violates basic human rights.

Joe Biden is expected to call Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, as his administration prepares to release a declassified intelligence assessment that will reportedly name the royal’s son and heir as complicit in the grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

More from WPR: Why Saudi Arabia Will Be the First Big Test of Biden’s Foreign Policy

Unidentified gunmen seized 317 schoolgirls in northwest Nigeria on Friday, police said, the second such kidnapping in little over a week in a region increasingly targeted by militants.

More from WPR: With the Expansion of Boko Haram, Nigeria Faces an Increasingly Transnational Threat

Eritrean soldiers killed hundreds of civilians in Ethiopia’s ancient town of Axum between Nov. 28 and 29, rights group Amnesty International said Friday, one of several mass killings reported during a conflict that erupted nearly four months ago in the northern region of Tigray.

More from WPR: How Abiy’s Effort to Redefine Ethiopia Led to War in Tigray

In a late-night meeting Thursday, Somalia’s prime minister persuaded opposition leaders to postpone their plan for mass anti-government protests and apologized for violence last Friday that targeted candidates running in an election that was meant to take place this month but is now delayed indefinitely.

At least two people have been killed and hundreds arrested in Niger’s post-election violence.

More from WPR: A Democratic Breakthrough for Niger?

Nine soldiers have been killed in an attack near the central Malian town of Bandiagara, in an area where armed groups are rampant, a military official has said.

In the two years since President Nayib Bukele won a stunning victory over El Salvador’s established political parties, the hold that the opposition maintained on the congress and other key positions has been a point of constant frustration for the young president and his fervent supporters.

More from WPR: Corruption Scandals Stain Bukele’s Image Ahead of Key Elections in El Salvador

A prison director was among at least eight people killed Thursday after several inmates tried to escape from a prison in Haiti’s capital, a police officer and witnesses said.

The market-friendly chief executive of Brazilian oil producer Petrobras said Thursday he would step down, paving the way for his replacement with an army general as President Jair Bolsonaro fights for greater control of the company.

More from WPR: Bolsonaro’s Sudden Interference in the Economy Could Sink Brazil

As debate rages around the world about who should be vaccinated first, Mexico has come up with its own unconventional approach—one with no apparent epidemiological foundation. The government of populist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who campaigned on the slogan “First, the poor,” is prioritizing the country’s poorest citizens, using the vaccine as a kind of reparation for years of marginalization.

The largest anti-graft effort in the world couldn’t stop endemic corruption in Brazil.

More from WPR: Latin America’s Anti-Corruption Drive Has Stalled at the Worst Possible Time

India and China have agreed to set up a hotline between their foreign ministers as the two nuclear-armed neighbors look to reduce tensions along a disputed Himalayan border where their troops have been locked in confrontation since last summer.

Facebook ended a one-week blackout of Australian news on its popular social media site Friday and announced preliminary commercial agreements with three small local publishers.

More from WPR: Facebook Provokes Fury Down Under

India has announced sweeping rules that could force social media companies to break into encrypted messages and take down posts New Delhi deems contentious.

Police dispersed protesters in Myanmar’s two biggest cities Friday, firing stun grenades, rubber bullets and guns into the air, witnesses said, as the challenge to the army’s bid to reimpose its rule showed no sign of slackening.

More from WPR: The Return of Myanmar’s ‘Revolutionary Spirit’

South Korea has warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis and food shortages unfolding in North Korea as leader Kim Jong Un grapples with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Foreign passport holders risk being trapped in China by nervous authorities.

More from WPR: China Targets the Last Vestige of Hong Kong’s Democracy

Shamima Begum, who as a schoolgirl left her London home to join the Islamic State in Syria in 2015, lost a series of appeals before Britain’s Supreme Court on Friday that could have allowed her to return home to fight the removal of her citizenship, a move that could affect other British citizens held in detention camps in Syria.

Hundreds took to the streets of the Georgian capital Tbilisi on Friday to demand the release of opposition leader Nika Melia, after his detention threatened to intensify a political crisis that led to the prime minister’s resignation last week.

Hundreds of police in Germany carried out dawn raids on 27 homes and business premises Friday, including a lawyer’s office, in an operation targeting members of far-right groups suspected of drugs and weapons trafficking, public broadcaster MDR said.

In Tbilisi, many hope that the Biden administration will take a more active role, as the president himself has pledged. As Winston Churchill is often quoted as saying, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.” Those concerned about the future of Georgia’s democracy are hoping that the time has come to do so.

Heavy fighting between rebels and government forces in Yemen’s oil-rich Marib has killed at least 27 people, tribal leaders and security officials said Firday, amid a resurgence of violence in the area.

Iran is threatening to end a deal struck with the U.N. nuclear watchdog last weekend temporarily salvaging much monitoring of its activities if the agency’s board endorses a U.S.-led push to criticise Tehran next week, an Iranian position paper shows.

The U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions Thursday on a top police security official in Yemen’s capital, which is controlled by Houthi rebels, citing his prominent role in intimidations, systematic arrests, detentions, torture, sexual violence “and rape against politically active women.”