Indian prime minister faces pressure during U.S. visit

INDIA: As Narendra Modi begins a state visit to the United States today, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators are asking President Donald Trump to pressure the prime minister over India’s policy banishing non-governmental organizations like Compassion International from working in his country. The government forced Compassion, which has served 145,000 impoverished children in India, to shutter operations by blocking funds.

CHINA: Authorities today released from prison Liu Xiaobo, China’s only Nobel Peace Prize winner (and the only jailed laureate) on medical grounds to treat his advanced liver cancer. Officials refused to allow the Tiananmen Square demonstrator, jailed since 2008, or his family to attend the Nobel ceremonies in 2010.

UKRAINE: Among the hundreds, perhaps thousands, missing in embattled eastern Ukraine is the region’s head of religious affairs.

RUSSIA is recalling from the United States Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, whose undisclosed contacts with top Trump aides, and with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, have made him increasingly controversial.

NORTH KOREA: The White House has said little since Trump called the death of University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier “tragic,” but the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is now pressing for tougher sanctions following Warmbier’s coma and death, apparently the result of head trauma inflicted upon him during 17 months of captivity. Warmbier’s family was advised not to publicize his Jewishness, which would have undermined Pyongyang’s charges against him. Authorities said he took a propaganda poster from a hotel lobby “as a trophy” for a church he allegedly was affiliated with.

ISLAM: The senior Anglican prelate in the Middle East says interfaith dialogue is not so effective but “moderate Mus­lims need to have a dialogue with those jihadists.”

FAMINE: Yes, the UN is always trying to raise money, but the humanitarian crisis gripping four countries—Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria—where approximately 20 million people risk famine, is worth paying attention to.

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