Globe Trot: Imprisoned American pastor asks Trump to ‘Fight for me’

TURKEY: Andrew Brunson, the pastor imprisoned in Turkey since last October, has released a statement via the U.S. Embassy in Ankara calling on President Donald Trump: “Fight for me.”

Background on his case here, and more of his statement, transmitted after U.S. officials were able to meet with him yesterday.

Ahead of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Turkey tomorrow, Brunson’s wife Norine issued her own request today:

“Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will be in Ankara tomorrow. I was hoping for a meeting with him but have been told it will not happen. Since I had my ticket already I decided to come just in case the Lord opens something up. I am also hoping to get Andrew's personal appeal to him if nothing else. Please pray that I could see him.”

BRITAIN: Theresa May, who campaigned against Brexit but as new prime minister found herself in charge of carrying out her country’s European Union exit, notified the European Council this morning by letter of the country’s intention to withdraw under Article 50—formally triggering the U.K.’s exit from the political and economic union founded in 1993.

“I am writing to give effect to the democratic decision of the people of the United Kingdom,” May wrote, launching a two-year time clock in which both sides must formally negotiate the terms of separation. In the letter, May outlined conditions for negotiating trade and security agreements and warned both would be weakened if outright pacts aren’t reached.

Conservatives championed the new beginning for Britain: “What was pitched as a Common Market but became a nascent superstate has split a faultline through British politics since the 1970s.”

IRAQ: The top U.S. officer in Iraq said there was a ‘fair chance” American aircraft were involved in the March 17 airstrike that brought down a building in Mosul, killing as many as 200 civilians. But investigators also are looking at what role ISIS may have played in the tragedy, suspecting the building may have been wired with explosives, because airplane munitions alone likely would not have brought it down. “I think it’s going to play out as some sort of combination,” Townsend said.

NORTH KOREA: As the Kim Jong Un regime prepares its sixth nuclear test, columnist Bret Stephens (a Globe Trot favorite) argues it’s time to replace “strategic patience” with regime change as U.S. policy.

JORDAN: It’s a really big deal when the king of Jordan welcomes the king of Saudi Arabia.

WE’RE WATCHING: An important homeschooling case, Wunderlich v. Germany, coming before the European Court of Human Rights next month. … And the leader of a new opposition party in Zimbabwe, Noah Manyika, who was active in the business community and in Christian work in Charlotte, N.C., before his return to Zimbabwe earlier this year.