SAUDI ARABIA: U.S. senators emerged from a closed-door briefing with CIA Director Gina Haspel saying the evidence overwhelmingly points to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement in the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “There’s not a smoking gun—there’s a smoking saw,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

IRAQ: U.S. officials have the opportunity to make up for lost time with final passage in Congress last week of H.R. 390, the long-delayed genocide relief measure authorizing funding to assist Iraqis still displaced by ISIS actions and to assist in rebuilding key areas devastated by the militants.

ARGENTINA: An earthquake near Buenos Aires Friday shook an already dicey G-20 summit, with U.S.

PAKISTAN: U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May personally blocked granting asylum to Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian mother acquitted of blasphemy charges against Islam but targeted by Islamists. Bibi’s family requested asylum in Britain, and May reportedly overruled British Home Secretary Sajid Javid (who is of Pakistani descent) because she was concerned Bibi’s arrival could inflame tensions with British Muslims.

MEXICO: U.S. Border Patrol fired tear gas on migrants who crossed the Tijuana River Sunday to enter the United States, and for several hours the busiest U.S. border crossing was closed.

INDIA: American missionary John Allen Chau, 26, was killed by hostile members of the Sentinelese tribe after arriving on North Sentinel Island, a normally off-limits territory in the Bay of Bengal.

Perhaps one day we can read as history Rania Abouzeid’s No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria (W.W. Norton) and be grateful for her meticulous attention to detail and to humanizing a brutal and misunderstood conflict. For now, as the Syrian war grinds on, Abouzeid brings us uncomfortably face to face with its ongoing horror. That hard encounter, plus the persistence of U.S. policymakers and others in doing the wrong thing, is why No Turning Back is our Book of the Year in Understanding the World.