Kim Jong Un sits down

NORTH KOREA: South Korean officials say they were not prepared for how “forthcoming and daring” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was in a rare sit-down with his longstanding enemies. But experts warn there’s reason for caution, despite Kim’s seeming willingness to start negotiations with Washington.

SYRIA: When Bruce Hoffman says al-Qaeda is undergoing a resurrection, you believe it. Its new nucleus is Syria and North Africa, with perhaps 20,000 militants in Syria, Hoffman writes. See the map and read this because the ending parallel with 1939 is chilling.

UNITED STATES: The resignation of President Donald Trump’s economic adviser Gary Cohn is a real blow. With tariff fallout continuing, the big question is, who in the community of free market economic specialists would take the job now?

RUSSIA: The suspected poisoning of a Russian double agent is being treated as an attempted assassination as the British government warns Russia over the incident. Sergei Skripal, once a colonel in Russia’s GRU military intelligence service, and his daughter, Yulia, were found slumped unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in southern England on Sunday and remain in critical condition. The Kremlin denies involvement, but there’s a long list of similar mystery deaths or poisonings, and Skripal’s wife and son both died under mysterious circumstances.

ISRAEL: A review of Zionism’s history in America shows the deep roots of support for Israel among Christians. Plus this: While the vast majority of American evangelicals approved of the administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, only one-third of American Jews voiced similar approval.

NIGERIA: The kidnapping of more than 100 schoolgirls in northern Nigeria’s Yobe state is raising concern about the Nigerian army’s conduct after it claimed to destroy “the heart and soul” of the militant group.

FRANCE: Mona Lisa might be going on tour.

EUROPE: Threats against the press are rising and not limited to former Soviet states. The last report about the Italian mafia by Slovak Ján Kuciak, who was murdered along with his girlfriend, reads like a movie script.

AUSTRIA: The clock is ticking on whether the Iranians stranded in Vienna after the U.S. denied them refugee status will be deported back to Iran.

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