Each night, when the sun sets over the Korean Peninsula, South Korea blazes with the glow of millions of lights. In the capital city of Seoul, skyscrapers, streetlights, homes, and bridges gleam, as neon shop signs advertise piles of merchandise and mounds of food to throngs of passersby.

Less than 35 miles north, the peninsula goes dark.

Washington journalists joke about having a front row seat at the circus. The amusement of some intensified on the last day of July as President Donald Trump fired Anthony Scaramucci from his post as White House communications director, just days after hiring him.

The in/out embarrassed a chaotic administration, but the short-term pain of acknowledging an unacceptable hire will have long-term benefits if all those involved learn important lessons from the fiasco.

During a June gathering in an Illinois chapel, a Nigerian archbishop and a group of North American Anglicans consecrated a British missionary to serve churches facing an erosion of Biblically orthodox teaching in Scotland.

Sounds complicated?

Consider it a summer tableau of the ongoing battle to maintain basic Christian teaching, as some churches around the world continue to embrace perilous compromise on issues of marriage and sexuality.

British-born baby Charlie Gard is set to have his first birthday on Aug. 4—unless hospital officials turn off his ventilator, against the wishes of his parents.

Courts have debated whether to let Charlie live, and his parents have made a simple plea: Let us decide what’s best for him. A British judge’s consistent answer has been no, with a final decision possibly looming before the end of July.

WEST AND SOUTH SIDE CHICAGO—For Chicago’s summer tourists, most travel guides suggest familiar stops: Millennium Park, Navy Pier, Wrigley Field, or one of the boat tours along the winding river through a gleaming downtown.

Less popular: Hot spots in the West and South sides, where scores of residents have been shot this year. Over the Fourth of July weekend alone, at least 102 people were shot. Fifteen people died.

When President Donald Trump announced the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, the president of France offered a sweeping assessment: Trump made a grave mistake for the future of the planet.

Trump’s assessment was less apocalyptic: He argued it would be a serious mistake for the United States to remain bound to an international agreement that burdened our nation more than it bolstered the future of humanity.

In the waning hours of a warm afternoon in Sunset Beach, N.C., a friendly woman in a floppy hat approached my beach chair on a mission. She had been sitting in a nearby spot all week and was curious: What book had absorbed me every day?

When I hoisted a sandy copy of David McCullough’s 700-page biography John Adams, her face flashed a mixture of bewilderment and mild sympathy: This was beach entertainment?