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Hong Kong

Special Reports: Chanting slogans like 'Hong Kong is not China,' young protesters in the former British colony are directly challenging Beijing. Their leaderless structure is frustrating efforts by the authorities to stymie them - but it could also undermine their movement.

To the outside world, China’s ruling Communist Party - faced with an expanding trade war crimping an already slowing economy and spiraling protests in Hong Kong - is confronting some of its strongest political and economic headwinds in decades.

World

Not for sale: Danish politicians poured scorn on the notion of selling Greenland to the United States following reports that President Donald Trump had privately discussed the idea of buying the world’s biggest island with his advisers.

An Iranian tanker whose detention exacerbated frictions between Tehran and the West could sail free from British territory Gibraltar, though a U.S. request to halt its passage could drag the saga back into court. Gibraltar lifted the detention order on Thursday after it said Tehran had given written assurances that the ship would not discharge its oil in Syria. But the United States is still seeking to detain the vessel on grounds it believes it was helping Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

'Nobody is not afraid': More than three decades after he flew his helicopter above the radioactive volcano that was Chernobyl’s nuclear reactor number four, the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, Mykola Volkozub recalls how he feared for his life.

Shared Afghanistan interests create opening for U.S.-Iran back channel. Western intermediaries are trying to persuade arch foes Iran and the United States to cooperate on bolstering security in Afghanistan as Donald Trump seeks to extract America from its longest war, according to three source familiar with the efforts.

U.S.

Trump defended his handling of the U.S. economy and trade war with China as recession fears have suddenly cast doubt on his central claim for re-election - that he has made the economy great again. Trump spoke at a packed campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, a state that was pivotal to his winning the Republican presidential nominating race in 2016 and could prove important to his re-election chances in 2020.

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke unveiled a plan to classify white supremacist violence as an organized crime problem and to create federal domestic terrorism offices, in a bid to combat hate crimes and gun violence in the United States.

Israel decided to allow U.S. congresswoman Rashida Tlaib - a critic of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians - to visit family in the occupied West Bank on humanitarian grounds after barring her from making an official visit to Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday he would not allow Tlaib and congresswoman Ilhan Omar, both Democrats, to make a planned trip to Israel.

‘This was surf city’: Strict environmental rules and steep labor costs have sent scores of Southern California surfboard manufacturers to China. Southern California spawned a billion-dollar international surfboard business, but Trump’s growing trade war with China still has local companies searching for factories overseas.