Give it to the Washington press corps that it was a Friday afternoon heading into a holiday weekend when the Trump administration announced a foreign policy breakthrough. Standing in the Oval Office on Sept. 4, President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia and Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti of Kosovo—two states at war for more than 20 years—announced they’d reached an agreement toward economic normalization. 

Between 15 and 20 patients a day are showing up with symptoms of the novel coronavirus at Dr. Ahmad Hassan’s isolation center. He has 12 beds. The center, located in the town of Izraa in Syria’s embattled governorate of Daraa, opened in March as the government worked to stall the pandemic by isolating suspected cases in key cities. Nine years into one of the world’s worst conflicts, half the country’s hospitals are destroyed or heavily damaged. Thousands of healthcare professionals have fled the country. More than 900 medical professionals have been killed.

An Indian officer and two soldiers died in clashes with Chinese troops on Monday night along a disputed border, the first such confrontation to lead to fatalities since 1975. The Indian army confirmed the “violent face-off” in the Galwan Valley in the Ladakh region, adding that senior military officials later met at the location to defuse the tension. India reported casualties on both sides, but Chinese officials only confirmed the fighting.

Near the entrance of Dzaleka Refugee Camp, white tents sit in long rows. They form a new center opened on April 20. Some red with dust, the tents are yet fresh sentinels to the new realities of caring for the world’s displaced amid a fast-moving pandemic. 

The first reality: A global quarantine has not stopped refugees from fleeing war and deprivation. More than 20 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi quickly filled reception tents at Dzaleka, 30 miles outside Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi in Africa’s southeastern quadrant.

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen took the advice of the United Nations and announced a truce in the war with Houthi rebels during the coronavirus pandemic. The two-week, unilateral cease-fire begins Thursday, but the coalition could extend it to allow the warring sides to discuss a permanent solution. Yemen has no confirmed cases of COVID-19, but an outbreak could spread rapidly in the squalid conditions caused by the conflict.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to and from Afghanistan on Monday to jump-start stalled peace talks. He met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his political rival, Abdullah Abdullah, before a joint meeting with both men. It was not immediately known what, if any, agreements the leaders made.

An end to the war within Afghanistan seems as far away as ever despite the United States and Taliban signing a peace deal last month. The Afghan government on Saturday postponed the release of 1,500 Taliban prisoners, a precondition for getting intra-Afghan negotiations started. Political turmoil at the highest levels of the Afghan government and the threat of the new coronavirus have cast even more doubt on the tenuous peace process.