Pence arrives in South America

VENEZUELA: U.S. Vice President Mike Pence traveled to South America Monday with a scheduled meeting with interim President Juan Guaidó following a weekend of violence. Security forces under President Nicolás Maduro clashed over the weekend with an opposition-led operation to breach Maduro’s humanitarian aid blockade and deliver needed food and medicine. In retaliation, Maduro closed the border with Brazil and severed diplomatic ties with Colombia.

SYRIA: British Special Forces say they discovered the severed heads of 50 Yazidi women, captured and enslaved by ISIS in Iraq and apparently beheaded in the militant group’s final stronghold just across the border in Baghuz.

QATAR: A Taliban founder and one-time deputy leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, arrived in Qatar Sunday and is scheduled to attend the latest round of peace talks with the United States. His involvement in the effort to end the war in Afghanistan signals the negotiations are reaching a high-level stage—though the elected Afghan government has been barred from talks. Baradar has been portrayed as leader of the “moderate” wing of the Taliban, but experts are skeptical such a wing can overrule the group’s terrorist roots.

NIGERIA: Election-related violence has claimed at least 39 lives, with no clear winner in the presidential race named yet. Most of the violence took place in the northeast, where Boko Haram militants are based. One of those shot while trying to vote, 19-year-old student Daniel Usman, was a churchgoer in Kogi State who’d warned friends via Twitter to “vote and not fight” during the election.

CHINA: U.S. President Donald Trump said he will delay tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese-made goods set to take effect this week, due to progress in trade talks.

HONG KONG: Heading into this week’s U.S.-North Korea summit, just imagine the frenzy when North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte “showed up” for Sunday mass.

GLOBAL: The median age of Africans is … 18.

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