World News at a Glance

Turks Scramble as Lira Falls and Prices Soar

Prices have soared on imported goods. Sales are off as Turks delay purchases or cut back. Everyone is feverishly calculating what to do with their savings. Turks nationwide have been thrown into a frenzy as the Turkish lira lost 25 percent of its value since last week. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is making several speeches a day, casting the economic crisis as a national struggle and laying the blame for the lira’s fall on foreign powers. But there are already signs that the quiet panic setting in among ordinary citizens is threatening to undermine Erdogan’s nationalist appeals.

Trump’s Trade War Is Rattling China’s Leaders

China’s leaders have sought to project confidence in the face of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade threats. But there are signs of unease inside the communist political establishment. In recent days, a variety of officials have summoned exporters to ask about plans to lay off workers or shift supply chains to other countries. With stocks slumping and the currency dropping 9 percent against the dollar since mid-April, censors have been deleting criticism online, some of it directed at President Xi Jinping’s leadership. State news outlets, by contrast, have sought to promote the official line, with the authorities restricting the use of the phrase “trade war.”

Italy Bridge Collapse Leaves 26 Dead

A bridge in Genoa, Italy, collapsed Tuesday, killing 26 people as dozens of vehicles and tons of concrete and steel plunged onto city streets below in a disaster that triggered an emergency review of the country’s aging infrastructure. The highway bridge fell by as much as 148 feet just before noon, taking three dozen cars and three trucks with it, an official said. Giuseppe Conte, the new prime minister, traveled to the scene. The office of the city’s public prosecutor said it would open a criminal inquiry, examining whether negligence led to the collapse, and federal authorities indicated they, too, would investigate.

Israeli Airport Detention of Prominent U.S. Jew Prompts Uproar

Israeli airport security, long applauded for success in preventing terrorism, seems to have another target: critics of Israel. On Sunday, officers at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport pulled aside Peter Beinart, a liberal American Jewish journalist, after he landed and interrogated him about his political activities. Beinart has voiced opposition to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. Critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing religious coalition say such detentions are part of an increasingly hard-line atmosphere in which leftists are branded enemies of the state. Beinart caused an uproar after he wrote about his encounter. But Netanyahu declared Beinart’s detention an “administrative mistake.”

Parents of Journalist Seized in Syria Are Confident He’s Alive

Six years after Austin Tice, a journalist and Marine veteran, was abducted while reporting on the war in Syria, his parents expressed confidence Tuesday that he was alive. Marc and Debra Tice spent the anniversary of the abduction publicizing efforts to free their son, who they believe remains somewhere in Syria. "It seems like, in many ways, the time has gone so quickly, but we know that, for Austin, it must be grinding on,” his mother said on NBC’s “Today.” Asked what keeps them optimistic, his father said, “Well, we know he’s alive, and we’re sure he wants to come home.”

Iraqi Leader Offers to Help Family of Spy Who Infiltrated ISIS

The father of the Iraqi spy who spent 16 months undercover inside the Islamic State group said Tuesday that his family’s struggle to receive his son’s death benefits has borne fruit. Capt. Harith al-Sudani helped foil dozens of planned attacks in the Iraqi capital, officials said. He was discovered by ISIS and killed last August. The family has tried for a year to get his pension for his widow and three children, only to be stymied by bureaucracy, according his father, Abid al-Sudani. An assistant to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called on the family Monday and offered to intervene on their behalf, Sudani’s father said.

After Drownings, South Africa Vows to Fix Pit Toilets in Schools

Under pressure from education activists and the courts, South Africa’s government announced Tuesday it would tackle a crippling sanitation backlog in schools, where two children recently drowned in pit toilets, the only facilities available for hundreds of thousands of children nationwide. The initiative, known as Sanitation Appropriate for Education, would “spare generations of young South Africans the indignity, discomfort and danger of using pit latrines and other unsafe facilities in our schools,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa, calling the lack of school sanitation facilities an “emergency.” Nearly 4,000 schools nationally are equipped only with pit toilets, according to government figures.