Fourteen minutes to Guam

NORTH KOREA: In a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump, Korean-American elected officials urged the commander in chief to avoid “dangerous language that could end up unnecessarily escalating the conflicts even more.” Beyond the heated rhetoric between the United States and North Korea, back-channel discussions have continued since the release of now-deceased student hostage Otto Warmbier.

Guam’s daily newspaper heralds the 14 minutes it would take for a Pyongyang-fired missile to reach the U.S. territory.

Trump has yet to nominate an ambassador to South Korea. A record 55 of 188 ambassadorships remain vacant, including other international hot spots like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt.

KENYA: Voters await Friday’s expected announcement of a winner in Tuesday’s presidential election. Results so far compiled by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission show incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta in the lead, but opposition leaders claim irregularities, and 400,000 rejected votes could make the difference for Raila Odinga, who is running second and has lost to Kenyatta before. Photojournalist Katie Nelson is capturing Friday’s protest.

IRAN: An Iranian air force drone came to within 100 feet of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 this week, forcing it to take evasive action before landing on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

SYRIA: Seven Christians and two parrots were smuggled out of Raqqa this week. A century ago, the ISIS capital, where U.S., Kurdish, and Syrian forces are meeting fierce resistance, was a haven for Armenian Christians fleeing holocaust at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

IRAQ: Congress can’t even pass an emergency relief bill that would have directed already-designated U.S. aid to survivors of ISIS-led genocide in Iraq and Syria. The bill was tabled in the Senate before lawmakers adjourned for the summer, I’m told, because Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and a few others, felt “no urgency.”

CHINA: Also tabled for the year by the U.S. Senate: an innocuous but symbolically potent bill that would have named a plaza adjacent to the Chinese Embassy in Washington for Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner who died last month.

Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, has not been seen since her husband’s death and is reportedly under house arrest. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on China in mid-July to release her and allow her to leave the country.

HEAVENS: I remember the solar eclipses of 1970 and 1979, watched through the lid of a shoebox in my yard in Richmond, Va. Annie Dillard recalls when “The sun was going and the world was wrong”:

“It began with no ado. It was odd that such a well advertised public event should have no starting gun, no overture, no introductory speaker. I should have known right then that I was out of my depth. Without pause or preamble, silent as orbits, a piece of the sun went away. We looked at it through welders’ goggles. A piece of the sun was missing; in its place we saw empty sky.”

Friday’s sunset over North Korea.

NOTE: Globe Trot will take a final summer break next week, returning Aug. 21 (Eclipse Day).

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