The Trump administration announced sanctions on Thursday against 17 Saudis accused of involvement in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident and journalist.

More from WPR: Why the Global Magnitsky Act Is the Best Way to Sanction Saudi Arabia

A memo sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this summer gave the greenlight for a tough U.S. response to systematic slayings and mass expulsions against Myanmar’s minority Rohingya Muslim population.

More than a century after one of the most gruesome clashes of the Philippine-American war, the “Balangiga Bells” are officially being returned to the Philippines.

Lawmakers in Washington are trying to compel the Trump administration to take strong measures against Chinese officials for their mass repression of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in China.

More from WPR: China’s Uighur Crackdown Is Turning Xinjiang Into a Police State

The EU’s trade chief said Brussels was “ready” to retaliate against U.S. products if Washington slapped tariffs on cars, as Donald Trump’s threatened levies on the automotive sector cast a cloud over budding trade talks between the EU and the U.S.

Washington and Beijing have resumed talks over their spiraling trade dispute ahead of a meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, China’s Commerce Ministry said Thursday.

More from WPR: In Standoff With China, Trump Opts for Platitudes Over Policy

U.S. President Donald Trump intends to nominate luxury handbag designer Lana Marks as the new ambassador to South Africa, the White House said, almost two years after the last ambassador left under Barack Obama.

More from WPR: Trump’s Outbursts Aside, There Are Signs the U.S. Wants to Repair Ties to Africa

The United States has no plans to redeploy personnel to fight the growing Ebola outbreak on the ground in Congo because of worsening security concerns, administration officials said Wednesday.

More from WPR: Insecurity Bedevils Congo’s Attempt to Contain the Latest Ebola Outbreak

A U.S. congressional commission said on Wednesday that China appears to have relaxed enforcement of sanctions on North Korea and called on the Treasury Department to provide a report on Chinese compliance within 180 days.

Australia said it would buy American-made Reaper drones and may station warships in neighboring Papua New Guinea, as the U.S. ally bulks up its military in response to regional security threats.

Since last week’s midterm elections, Donald Trump has spoken less frequently about the migrant caravan, but the subject is still plainly on his mind.

More from WPR: The U.S. Contributed to Central America’s Migrant Crisis. It Must Help Fix It

Far from convincing Tehran to cooperate, new U.S. measures are on track to achieve the exact opposite.

More from WPR: Going It Alone, Trump’s Iran Sanctions Will Backfire

Vice President Pence on Wednesday told Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi that violence against Rohingya Muslims in her country is “without excuse” and pressed for accountability, underscoring mounting pressure on the tainted Nobel laureate to act over atrocities described as “genocidal” by the United Nations.

The United States has lost its military edge to a dangerous degree and could potentially lose a war against China or Russia, according to a report released Wednesday by a bipartisan commission that Congress created to evaluate the Trump administration’s defense strategy.

President Trump announced Tuesday that he will nominate retired Army Gen. John Abizaid to become the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, filling a vacancy that was spotlighted by the difficult diplomacy between the United States and Riyadh over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

More from WPR: Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder Reveals the Rot at the Center of U.S.-Gulf Ties

The Trump administration on Tuesday targeted Iran-backed Hezbollah with fresh terrorism-related sanctions, as the U.S. moves to keep up pressure on Tehran and its tools of foreign-policy abroad despite resistance from European allies.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visited the U.S. southern border Wednesday, where thousands of American troops have been deployed to support border patrol agents.

More from WPR: The U.S. Contributed to Central America’s Migrant Crisis. It Must Help Fix It

Both sides need to be smart and honest about how the countries became economic successes.

Last weekend’s events in Paris offered a dramatic demonstration that “other things being equal” is not a safe assumption. The world is moving to adapt to the reality that Donald Trump is president of the United States.

Argentina’s Senate approved the government’s austere budget proposal for 2019 early Thursday, handing President Mauricio Macri a legislative victory and sending a signal to investors, and to the International Monetary Fund, that his administration is committed to steep spending cuts.

More from WPR: Macri Tries to Weather Argentina’s Economic Storm by Ending ‘Gradualismo’

Cuba said Wednesday it was recalling thousands of doctors deployed to poor and remote regions of Brazil after Brazil’s far-right president-elect criticized the communist country’s treatment of the medical professionals.

President-elect Jair Bolsonaro announced Wednesday that he is naming an admirer of U.S. President Donald Trump to be Brazil’s foreign minister in the new administration.

More from WPR: Is a Far-Right Wave Building in Latin America, Beginning in Brazil?

A plea for plea bargains in Buenos Aires.

Uruguay and Canada are two safe countries that have experienced the deleterious effects of global prohibition only from the periphery. Mexico is the epicenter of the war on drugs. The homicide rate in Uruguay is 7.69 and is 1.68 in Canada for every 100,000 inhabitants, while in Mexico, it is 19.26.

Colombian authorities moved homeless Venezuelan migrants to a soccer field filled with yellow tents and cots Tuesday, as the number of migrants fleeing their nation’s economic and humanitarian calamity has risen.

More from WPR: Venezuela’s Implosion Is Making Colombia’s Democracy More Fragile

Victims’ families gathered on Tuesday outside the Chilean Defense Ministry to protest that a general who helped conceal the murder of 15 political prisoners during the 1973 “Caravan of Death” received a sentence of three years probation.

A dramatic recording from beyond the grave has led to allegations that Colombia's chief prosecutor—a key U.S. ally in the war on drugs—tried to cover up bribery payments that were part of Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal, prompting calls for his resignation.

Whenever an authoritarian ruler succeeds in subverting a liberal democracy, however fledgling, the responsibility for the democratic backsliding must be more widely shared. Over the last decade in Nicaragua, many other individuals, political parties and social institutions were complicit, whether their sins were ones of commission or omission.

More from WPR: A Trio of Migration Crises in Latin America Won’t Stay Confined to the Region

The foreign ministers of the Dominican Republic and Uruguay signed accords this Monday on migration, air travel, trade and investment.

Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro appointed retired army General Fernando Azevedo e Silva as defense minister on Tuesday, adding another former military officer to his Cabinet, which takes office on Jan. 1.

More from WPR: If Brazil Elects Bolsonaro, Venezuela’s Migration Crisis Will Get Even Worse

Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain faced a deep political crisis on Thursday after two Cabinet ministers quit her government, including Dominic Raab, her chief negotiator on withdrawal from the European Union—decisions that threaten to wreck not only her plans for the exit but also her leadership.

More from WPR: Can Theresa May Pull Off a Brexit Breakthrough in a Divided Britain?

Czech prime minister Andrej Babis is set to face a vote of no-confidence after a political furore over claims involving his son.

The EU’s trade chief said Brussels was “ready” to retaliate against U.S. products if Washington slapped tariffs on cars, as Donald Trump’s threatened levies on the automotive sector cast a cloud over budding trade talks between the EU and the U.S.

The European Union is set to add five individuals involved in the organization of the weekend elections in the areas controlled by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine to its sanctions list, according to sources in Brussels.

Subway workers have staged a two-hour strike in the Romanian capital and threatened an all-out walkout if the government doesn’t agree to their wage demands.

The next few weeks will be an exercise in brinkmanship.

It’s time for Brussels to grab the wheel in the game of chicken over Rome’s budget.

British Prime Minister Theresa May won the backing of her senior ministers for a draft European Union divorce deal on Wednesday, freeing her to tackle the much more perilous struggle of getting parliament to approve the agreement.

More from WPR: Can Theresa May Pull Off a Brexit Breakthrough in a Divided Britain?

Sweden’s parliament has for the first time in modern history rejected a candidate for prime minister as political deadlock persists more than two months after inconclusive elections.

More from WPR: As Populists Gain Ground, Sweden Sheds Its Taste for Compromise

The Czech government has decided the country will stay out of a United Nations pact promoting an international approach to safe and orderly migration.

More from WPR: Where Resurgent Nationalism Leaves the Czech Republic’s Immigrant Communities

Libya could hold elections next spring, Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Enzo Moavero said on Wednesday, after Italy hosted a two-day conference in Palermo to try to stabilize the troubled North African country.

More from WPR: As Hurdles Mount, Diplomats Abandon Libya Election Timetable

Former Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski has submitted an asylum request in Hungary asking for refugee status, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s office said on Wednesday.

Civil servants in Greece walked off the job Wednesday in a 24-hour strike to protest austerity measures, demanding wage and pension increases as well as the abolition of all legislation as part of the country’s international bailouts.

More from WPR: Alexis Tsipras Is Wearing a Tie Again, but Is Greece’s Debt Crisis Really Over?

No one wants to enter a coalition with the Sweden Democrats, so the country is resorting to desperate and untested measures to form a new government.

The European Union’s campaign to shield Iran from U.S. sanctions is doomed to fail.

More from WPR: Why the EU’s Quest for ‘Dollar Autonomy’ Is a Long Shot—for Now

Gabon’s top court has ruled that the vice president will chair the Cabinet in the absence of President Ali Bongo, who remains in hospital in Saudi Arabia after suffering a stroke last month.

More from WPR: A Presidential Health Scare in Gabon Sparks Talk of Life After Bongo

Tanzania’s second-biggest donor Denmark said it would withhold $10 million worth of aid money, citing concerns over human rights abuses and “unacceptable homophobic comments” made by a government official.

More from WPR: How Magufuli Is Running Roughshod Over Women’s Rights in Tanzania

U.S. President Donald Trump intends to nominate luxury handbag designer Lana Marks as the new ambassador to South Africa, the White House said, almost two years after the last ambassador left under Barack Obama.

More from WPR: Trump’s Outbursts Aside, There Are Signs the U.S. Wants to Repair Ties to Africa

The United States has no plans to redeploy personnel to fight the growing Ebola outbreak on the ground in Congo because of worsening security concerns, administration officials said Wednesday.

More from WPR: Insecurity Bedevils Congo’s Attempt to Contain the Latest Ebola Outbreak

Ethiopia said on Thursday it had arrested the former deputy intelligence chief after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration launched a crackdown this week on senior security officials suspected of human rights abuses and corruption.

Morocco inaugurated on Thursday Africa’s fastest train which will halve traveling time between the commercial and industrial hubs of Casablanca and Tangier.

There are three key reasons the U.N. is removing sanctions on Eritrea.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously voted on Wednesday to lift a nearly decade-old arms embargo and targeted sanctions on Eritrea after a rapprochement with Ethiopia and thawing of relations with Djibouti.

At least 15 people have been killed in a new bout of fighting between Cameroon army troops and separatist rebels, the two sides said on Tuesday, in a rise in violence since President Paul Biya won a seventh term in power in October.

More from WPR: ‘The Old Don’t Let Go’: 36 Years of Rocky ‘Stability’ in Paul Biya’s Cameroon

Libya could hold elections next spring, Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Enzo Moavero said on Wednesday, after Italy hosted a two-day conference in Palermo to try to stabilize the troubled North African country.

More from WPR: As Hurdles Mount, Diplomats Abandon Libya Election Timetable

The small, oil-rich country of Gabon might be in line for yet another “managed” family succession of the Bongos. Father and son have been in power for 51 years since 1967. Now, with President “Ben” Ali Bongo in a hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, his brother, Frederic Bongo, the head of intelligence and supported by hardline generals, is already in charge, operating outside the constitutional provisions, according to reports.

More from WPR: A Presidential Health Scare in Gabon Sparks Talk of Life After Bongo

The Trump administration announced sanctions on Thursday against 17 Saudis accused of involvement in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident and journalist.

More from WPR: Why the Global Magnitsky Act Is the Best Way to Sanction Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor released the results of a long-awaited investigation into the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Thursday, saying that a team of Saudi agents who had been dispatched to Istanbul with orders to bring him home alive had instead killed the journalist and dismembered his body.

More from WPR: Why the Global Magnitsky Act Is the Best Way to Sanction Saudi Arabia

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency says five of 12 border guards abducted in October by militants near the Pakistani border, have been released.

The Saudi-led coalition has ordered a halt in its offensive against Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen’s main port city of Hodeidah, three sources said on Thursday, in an apparent concession to Western pressure to end the war.

More from WPR: Yemen’s Humanitarian Crisis Faces a ‘Tipping Point’ as the War Grinds On

At least 17 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed Thursday when a U.S.-led coalition shelled positions on the outskirts of Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zour province.

Far from convincing Tehran to cooperate, new U.S. measures are on track to achieve the exact opposite.

More from WPR: Going It Alone, Trump’s Iran Sanctions Will Backfire

The new special envoy must not allow Russia to protect Assad.

The Trump administration on Tuesday targeted Iran-backed Hezbollah with fresh terrorism-related sanctions, as the U.S. moves to keep up pressure on Tehran and its tools of foreign-policy abroad despite resistance from European allies.

Israel’s hawkish Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman announced his resignation Wednesday, citing his opposition to a cease-fire with Hamas following the worst outbreak of violence in Gaza since a 50-day war in the summer of 2014.

A religious Jewish candidate won election as mayor of Jerusalem on Wednesday in a run-off against a secular contender for a post that shapes Israel’s rule over the holy city at the heart of its conflict with the Palestinians.

Yemeni officials say an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition has killed at least seven civilians in Yemen’s rebel-held port city of Hodeida.

More from WPR: Yemen’s Humanitarian Crisis Faces a ‘Tipping Point’ as the War Grinds On

Iraq has agreed with Iran to exchange Iraqi food items for Iranian gas and energy supplies, two Iraqi government officials said on Wednesday.

Two rival Lebanese Christian leaders reconciled Wednesday ending four decades of enmity triggered by a massacre of dozens during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

With every passing day, the Saudi prince looks more likely to survive the Khashoggi scandal.

More from WPR: Why the Global Magnitsky Act Is the Best Way to Sanction Saudi Arabia

More than a century after one of the most gruesome clashes of the Philippine-American war, the “Balangiga Bells” are officially being returned to the Philippines.

Lawmakers in Washington are trying to compel the Trump administration to take strong measures against Chinese officials for their mass repression of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in China.

More from WPR: China’s Uighur Crackdown Is Turning Xinjiang Into a Police State

The head of Bangladesh’s refugee commission said plans to begin a voluntary repatriation of Rohingya Muslim refugees to their native Myanmar on Thursday were scrapped after officials were unable to find anyone who wanted to return.

More from WPR: Resentments Fester as Bangladesh Bears the Brunt of Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis

Major assaults by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan’s western province of Farah bordering Iran, mounted with the aim of weakening the government’s grip on the region, have killed at least 30 Afghan security forces, officials said on Thursday.

More from WPR: Afghanistan’s Islamic Emirate Returns: Life Under a Resurgent Taliban

Rival lawmakers exchanged blows in Sri Lanka’s Parliament on Thursday as disputed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed the speaker had no authority to remove him from office by voice vote.

More from WPR: Sirisena’s Sudden Appointment of Rajapaksa Throws Sri Lanka Back Into Turmoil

Washington and Beijing have resumed talks over their spiraling trade dispute ahead of a meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, China’s Commerce Ministry said Thursday.

More from WPR: In Standoff With China, Trump Opts for Platitudes Over Policy

A U.S. congressional commission said on Wednesday that China appears to have relaxed enforcement of sanctions on North Korea and called on the Treasury Department to provide a report on Chinese compliance within 180 days.

Australia said it would buy American-made Reaper drones and may station warships in neighboring Papua New Guinea, as the U.S. ally bulks up its military in response to regional security threats.

Environmental activists and government officials in the Philippines are demanding that South Korea take back a shipment of garbage falsely declared as plastic, in the latest sign of a growing backlash in southeast Asia against imports of waste that used to be recycled in China.

More from WPR: Cuts to Waste Imports in East Asia Put Pressure on World’s Producers

Since Aung San Suu Kyi came to power, Amnesty has documented war crimes and other human rights violations by the military in Kachin and northern Shan states in the north of the country. As is often the case, civilians are those who suffer the worst. But instead of alleviating their suffering, her government has joined the military in restricting humanitarian access to people in need.

More than a dozen North Korean missile bases could accommodate all types of missiles, which means the nuclear negotiation process cannot be deemed a success.

Vice President Pence on Wednesday told Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi that violence against Rohingya Muslims in her country is “without excuse” and pressed for accountability, underscoring mounting pressure on the tainted Nobel laureate to act over atrocities described as “genocidal” by the United Nations.

A majority of Sri Lankan lawmakers voted Wednesday morning to remove Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister, saying that his appointment last month was illegal.

More from WPR: Sirisena’s Sudden Appointment of Rajapaksa Throws Sri Lanka Back Into Turmoil

The United Nations doesn’t want it to happen. Dozens of rights groups say they are shocked. Even the people who will be affected the most, Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, are upset that their future, once again, is being decided without their input. On Thursday, a few of the more than 720,000 Rohingya who fled slaughter, rape and village burnings in their homeland last year are due to be repatriated to Myanmar from Bangladesh.

Afghan officials say the Taliban have killed 12 members of the Afghan security forces, including nine soldiers who died in a battle in the Maidan Wardak province just outside the capital, Kabul.

More from WPR: Afghanistan’s Islamic Emirate Returns: Life Under a Resurgent Taliban

The man who first seized power in a military coup then refashioned himself as a legitimate leader appears set to rule Fiji for another four years. Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and his FijiFirst party were headed for a convincing election win early Thursday as votes were tallied.

Police in Vietnam have arrested two more officials of a state-run mobile carrier, the latest sweep in the Communist-ruled nation’s graft crackdown that has already engulfed hundreds of government officials.

More from WPR: Continuity Reigns as Trong Consolidates Power in Vietnam

Leaders of Southeast Asian nations have again pushed back an agreement on a pan-Asian free trade deal amid a whirlwind of diplomacy Wednesday at their annual summit.

A five-member North Korean delegation came to South Korea on Wednesday to attend an academic forum on Japan’s wartime actions, as the rivals continue reconciliation efforts despite stalemated U.S.-led nuclear diplomacy.

Both sides need to be smart and honest about how the countries became economic successes.

American schools should pull out of partnerships with schools that persecute students.

More from WPR: A Campaign of Suppression on Chinese Campuses Ensnares Young Communists