Incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared victory (Haaretz) in elections that are projected to leave his Likud Party two seats short of a parliamentary majority.
 
The win boosts Netanyahu after months of political deadlock that included two other elections. With 90 percent of votes counted, Likud won (BBC) 29.3 percent, compared to its rival Blue and White party’s 26.3 percent. The Joint List of Arab Parties is set to win its highest-ever legislative representation after Netanyahu embraced a U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace plan (FT) that could strip Arab Israelis of citizenship. Netanyahu will be tried for corruption on March 17.

Four Chinese state-backed media companies must reduce their Chinese staff in the United States from a combined 160 people to 100, the State Department said. The measure aims to reciprocate Chinese treatment of U.S. journalists. Beijing vowed to retaliate (WaPo).
 
North Korea: U.S. prosecutors indicted two Chinese men (WSJ) accused of helping North Korean hackers launder around $100 million worth of cryptocurrency used to fund Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned (TOLO) the Taliban’s reported resumption of attacks on Afghan forces after signing a peace deal with Washington, adding that the Afghan government would need to see its own conditions met before entering talks with the militant group. A Taliban spokesperson said such talks would only come after the government’s release of five thousand Taliban prisoners.
 
This CFR Backgrounder looks at the U.S.-Taliban peace deal.
 
Sri Lanka: President Gotabaya Rajapaksa dissolved Parliament and called for general elections (Al Jazeera) to occur six months early, on April 25. Rajapaksa, who took office in November, said his powers as president have been restricted by opposition control of Parliament.

UN Special Representative Ghassan Salame, who facilitated cease-fire talks in Libya’s civil war, stepped down (UN) due to stress.

The national army and forces from the state of Jubbaland clashed (Reuters) in a southwestern Somali town. The forces are meant to be cooperating to fight Islamist insurgents in the region.

A UN investigator’s report on Syria’s civil war found that Russian military forces at least twice committed the war crime of indiscriminately attacking a civilian area.
 
CFR looks at Syria’s descent into horror.
 
UK: Officials project that a much-anticipated trade deal with Washington will boost the UK economy (FT) by only 0.16 percent over the next fifteen years. Prime Minister Boris Johnson campaigned on the deal’s power to compensate for post-Brexit trade losses with Europe.

Six of Colombia’s nine Constitutional Court judges chose not to rule (NYT) on a bid to legalize abortion during the first four months of pregnancy. The current law bans abortion, with three exceptions.
 
Canada: Government officials and leaders from the indigenous Wet’suwet’en community said they reached a proposed agreement (CBC) to acknowledge indigenous land title rights in the region of a pipeline dispute. They still disagree on how the pipeline might proceed.

Fourteen states will hold Democratic presidential primaries (WaPo) today, and most will also hold Republican primaries. Former Democratic candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar endorsed (WSJ) former Vice President Joe Biden ahead of today’s contests.
 
Six people have now died from the new coronavirus (CNN) in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration authorized academic centers and private labs to develop their own tests for the virus in an effort to rapidly expand testing across the country.
 
In Foreign Affairs, Thomas J. Bollyky and Vin Gupta discuss what the world can learn from China’s experience with the coronavirus.