World News at a Glance

Leaders of Koreas Set to Talk

Kim Jong Un on Friday became the first North Korean leader to set foot in South Korean-controlled territory, starting a historic summit meeting with the South’s president that will test Kim’s willingness to bargain away his nuclear weapons. Kim’s crossing into the world’s most heavily armed border zones was broadcast live in South Korea, where all eyes and ears are focused on the intentions of the North’s 34-year-old leader. For South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, the meeting presents a formidable task: finding a middle ground between a cunning enemy to the North and an impulsive ally in the United States.

Supporters of El Salvador’s Abortion Ban Foil Efforts to Soften It

El Salvador’s national legislature adjourned Thursday without voting on proposals to allow exceptions to the country’s total ban on abortion, thwarting the first challenge to one of the world’s toughest laws. The failure of the Legislative Assembly, El Salvador’s legislative branch, to consider two proposals that would have allowed doctors to end pregnancies under limited conditions leaves intact El Salvador’s two-decade-old ban on abortions. What appeared to be momentum in favor of relaxing the law was defeated by an alliance of social conservatives and religious organizations who succeeded in convincing legislators in the final days that their vote could have a political cost.

Modi and Xi to Meet Friday With Election as Backdrop

When the leaders of the world’s two most populous nations meet Friday in China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India will be pushing to get less from President Xi Jinping of China. Less trouble like the embarrassing territorial showdown that put the two countries on alert in 2017. Less worry of the kind India is feeling right now about rising Chinese influence on its doorstep, in Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Maldives. Analysts say Modi is fixated on winning the 2019 election. And it is a measure of the fraught relationship between China and India that he is seen as needing Xi’s help to do that.

Fight Over Care of Brain-Damaged Baby Divides Britain

Alfie Evans is the subject of a national debate in Britain. The hospital and doctors treating him in Liverpool say that he suffers from a degenerative neurological condition that is certainly fatal and that the only humane course of action is to let him die. His parents, supported by the Italian and Polish governments and the pope, want to continue his care. On Wednesday, the Court of Appeal upheld a ruling that not only approved the withdrawal of care and sustenance but also prohibited his parents from seeking treatment elsewhere, despite an invitation to take him to a hospital in Rome.

After Arduous Journey, Migrants See Stubborn Obstacle: Trump

For hundreds of migrants who arrived in Tijuana this week after a month traveling en masse across Mexico, perhaps the hardest part is to come. The hope of sanctuary in the United States had sustained them throughout the trip, and, for many, one person now stood in the way: the president of the United States. The group is planning to walk en masse on Sunday to the border crossing leading to southern San Diego, with those planning to petition for asylum presenting themselves to U.S. border officials and making their case for sanctuary.

From Siberia, an Unlikely Cry: ‘We Need Greenpeace Out Here!’

At a truck stop at the northern terminus of the Vilyui ice highway in Siberia, drivers make small talk not about life on the road but rather the life of the road. Every spring, thousands of miles of winter highway in Russia, mostly serving oil and mining towns in Siberia and far northern European Russia, melt back into the swamps from which they were conjured the previous fall. And every year, it seems to the men whose livelihoods depend upon it, the road of ice melts earlier. That insight has turned Tas-Yuryakh, a tiny village that depends on the ice highway for business, into a hotbed of true believers in the human contribution to climate change.