IRAQ: The Iraqi Anglican congregation at St. George’s sits next to Baghdad’s Green Zone, where rockets aimed at the U.S. Embassy landed on Sunday, “But with your prayers, we are fine until now,” a church deacon told me. Attendance is down, he said, because authorities have closed three bridges leading to the area since anti-government demonstrations began in September.

IRAQ: A top Iranian commander said the country was not planning on war, “but we are not afraid of any war,” after supporters of an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq pulled back from attacking the U.S.

CHINA: A report by researcher Adrian Zenz, one of the first to document Beijing’s oppression of mostly Muslim Uighurs, cites the authorities’ extensive plan for reeducation and forced labor at factories where Uighurs “can learn the nation’s common language” and “understand the right and wrong.” At a clothing factory in Shenzhen, a manager claims the “de-extremification” process “causes workers to become born again.” Writes Z

INDIA: A citizenship amendment bill sparked protests across the country that have turned deadly, as police go after campus-led demonstrations in Delhi. The bill, passed by parliament’s lower house, creates a pathway to citizenship for some religious minorities but excludes Muslims. Many fear it could establish a religious test for citizenship.

BRITAIN: Voters are at the polls throughout the U.K. on Thursday in what is essentially a(nother) Brexit referendum. The Conservative Party’s Boris Johnson has held a consistent lead over Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, but it had narrowed in closing days of campaigning.

SAUDI ARABIA: The FBI is now working with the presumption that the Friday shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola that killed three Americans and wounded eight others “was an act of terrorism.”

IRAN is building up an arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles in Iraq, part of a widening effort to assert power across the Middle East that comes as protests drive media coverage from the region and the United States is occupied by impeachment proceedings and pullouts from that part of the world.