The Trump administration announced it will hold off on imposing tariffs (Bloomberg) on some of the $300 billion worth of Chinese goods it was set to start taxing next month until December. It also said it will cancel a separate, small portion of the planned tariffs.
 
The group of imports that won’t see tariffs until the end of the year is worth around $160 billion, according to Bloomberg estimates, and includes smartphones, laptops, and children’s toys. President Donald J. Trump said the decision was aimed at protecting American shoppers (FT) ahead of Christmas. More than $110 billion worth of imports, including agricultural products, clothes, and kitchenware, will be hit by the tariffs beginning September 1. U.S. stocks and China’s currency rose after the announcement (FT). 

Police arrested five pro-democracy protesters (NYT) after clashes at Hong Kong’s international airport yesterday in which officers used batons and pepper spray (NPR) and demonstrators beat two men from mainland China. On Wednesday, several dozen protesters remained in the airport, which said it received an injunction to restrict demonstration areas.
 
CFR’s Jerome A. Cohen discusses whether the Hong Kong protests have reached a tipping point.
 
Japan: More than twelve thousand people have been hospitalized and twenty-three have died in the past week due to an ongoing heat wave (Kyodo), according to officials. Fifty-seven people died in the week prior (WaPo).

The head of Kyrgyzstan’s national security forces said that former President Almazbek Atambayev, who was detained by police last week, had been planning a coup (RFE/RL). The prosecutor general’s office said Atambayev faces additional charges of organizing mass unrest and using violence against authorities.
 
Pakistan: A ban on single-use plastic bags (WaPo) in the capital city of Islamabad takes effect today, with fines starting at around $31.

Loujain al-Hathloul, one of the women’s rights activists arrested in a government crackdown last year, rejected an offer (Reuters) to be released in exchange for issuing a video statement denying she was tortured while in custody, according to her family. Rights groups say Hathloul is one of at least three in the group of activists who suffered prison abuse.

In the first half of 2019, more than 150 children were killed in violent attacks (Guardian) in Mali, more than double the total from all of 2018, according to the UN Children’s Fund. The agency cited an increase in intercommunal violence.
 
Rwanda: President Paul Kagame’s government reported false national poverty statistics in 2011–2014, according to a new Financial Times report. The report found that poverty rose during this period, while the government has claimed a continual decrease during Kagame’s tenure.

Authorities issued and then retracted an evacuation order (WaPo) for the northern village of Nyonoksa, which is near the site of last week’s suspected nuclear explosion. The state weather service reported that radiation levels around the site spiked after the blast.
 
UK: Teen activist Greta Thunberg begins a wind- and solar-powered sailing journey across the Atlantic Ocean today to call attention to climate change (BBC). Thunberg is scheduled to attend a climate conference in New York in two weeks but has declined to fly.

A new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) called Canada’s program for recruiting skilled immigrants one of the world’s most successful, and said it should be seen as a model for other countries.
 
Venezuela: A crackdown on dissent (NYT) by President Nicolas Maduro’s government has increasingly included torture of military officers, according to a Caracas-based monitoring group. The group counted 250 cases of torture against members of the military, their relatives, and opposition activists since 2017.
 
In Foreign Affairs, Ivan Briscoe discusses the paranoia gripping Caracas.

More than 364,000 cases of measles across 182 countries were reported between January and July, according to the World Health Organization. This is up from approximately 129,000 cases during the same period in 2018. The agency reported a tenfold increase in cases in Africa.
 
CFR looks at the spike in measles cases and the anti-vaccination movement.