Globe Trot: Taliban gains ground in Afghanistan

AFGHANISTAN: World events are moving Western focus elsewhere, and a Taliban advance is going unreported with U.S. forces in decline and an election crisis threatening government stability. Sound familiar?

Yesterday in Kandahar a suicide bomber killed the cousin of President Hamid Karzai, a powerful ally of presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani, as voting disputes mean election officials are unlikely to meet an Aug. 2 deadline for swearing in a new president.

LIBERIA: Two American health workers who contracted the Ebola virus are receiving round-the-clock care in Monrovia, according to a news release from SIM, one of the organizations running the lead treatment facility along with Samaritan’s Purse. Both groups have taken “the precautionary step” of evacuating nonessential personnel from the facility, and the groups have closed a treatment facility near the Guinea border over “growing civil unrest.”

GAZA: Israel has aerial photographs to dispute UN claims that Israeli shells hit a park on Monday, killing several children. The photos show the rockets were fired from Hamas launch sites. Today, more shells hit a UN school in a Gaza refugee camp where 3,000 displaced Palestinians took shelter, killing more than 20.

A member of Gaza Baptist Church, the only evangelical congregation in Gaza, was killed during a bombing raid, and her son was seriously injured in the first casualties among Gaza’s tiny Christian community.

AT THE BORDER: House Republicans proposed a deal to address the crisis of illegal immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, spending $659 million—a fraction of the White House request for $3.7 billion—and making it easier to deport Central American minors who enter the United States illegally.The Obama administration claims record numbers are fleeing violence and poverty in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but GOP leaders say the administration’s immigration policies are too lenient.

A look inside the United States’ busted immigration court system is WORLD’s latest cover story.

CANADA: From Cambodia to Canada, this seafaring dog has an exotic nose for helping biologists track elusive wildlife: “He can smell whale breath.”