The Rev. Mitri Raheb has experienced firsthand the growing divide between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. Since 2019, a 26-foot-high, 3-mile-long wall along the major highway connecting the West Bank to Jerusalem has divided the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the territory. Israel welcomed the highway as an effort to ease congestion, but Palestinians saw it as a sign of oppression because they needed a permit to travel to the other side of the wall.

Thousands of demonstrators defied a police ban and gathered in the streets on Wednesday for an annual protest marking the 23rd anniversary of the former British colony’s handover to China. Police arrested at least seven people under the contentious new national security law less than a day after it was passed. One of the detained demonstrators had in his possession a Hong Kong independence flag while another woman held up a sign with the British flag and called for independence. Elsewhere in the city, police said they detained more than 180 people.

U.S. citizens cannot travel to the European Union for at least another two weeks. Starting on Wednesday, the bloc will partially reopen its countries’ borders to travelers from 14 countries that have declining COVID-19 infection numbers or rates comparable to those of EU member nations. The list includes Canada, Rwanda, Tunisia, and New Zealand, among others. Travel from Russia, India, and Brazil, which are still battling to control the pandemic, remains restricted.

Twenty-three years after the Chinese government pledged to give Hong Kong 50 years of autonomy, the mainland has stripped the former British colony of its freedoms by passing a contentious law that would quash dissent. Rather than going through the Hong Kong legislature, Beijing took matters into its own hands after last year’s widespread anti-government protests. The Chinese government first endorsed the law, which criminalizes subversive and secessionist activities, at its annual congress last month.

State lawmakers from both sides of the aisle hugged one another and spectators cheered on Sunday after the House and Senate voted to replace the last U.S. state flag that displayed the Confederate battle emblem. The design adopted by white supremacist legislators more than a century ago came under criticism amid the recent protests against racial injustice. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, said the flag will lose its official status once he signs the bill into law this week.

The North Korean military on Tuesday reinstalled about 20 loudspeakers along the Demilitarized Zone with South Korea, suggesting a return to psychological warfare. Pyongyang has spent the past several weeks backpedaling on many peace agreements it reached with its southern neighbor in 2018.

The Karachi-based state-run airline on Thursday said 150 of its pilots had other people take their licensing exams for them. Pakistan International Airlines spokesman Abdullah Hafeez said the company grounded all the implicated pilots as the country investigates a deadly plane crash last month.