President Donald J. Trump threatened to permanently end U.S. funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) and withdraw the United States from the body if it does not commit to “major substantive improvements” (WaPo) within thirty days.
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Trump decried what he called an “alarming lack of independence” from China and detailed a series of alleged failures in the organization’s handling of the pandemic in a letter to the WHO director general, which the president posted on Twitter. A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said that the United States was trying to “smear China and shift blame for its own incompetent response.”

Beijing has imposed a steep tariff (Bloomberg) on Australian barley and suspended some beef imports following Canberra’s call for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. China is considering hitting other exports, sources told Bloomberg.
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Japan: In an annual foreign policy report, Tokyo renewed its claim (Kyodo) to Russia-held islands seized by the Soviet Union after World War II. The issue has kept the two countries from signing a peace treaty to end the war for more than seventy-five years.  

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ordered that shopping malls and markets, shut down due to pandemic lockdown measures, be reopened. The chief justice said (News International) that if stores remain closed, shopkeepers will “die of hunger rather than the coronavirus.”
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Bangladesh/India: The countries are evacuating over two million people (Al Jazeera) from their homes ahead of the expected landfall of Cyclone Amphan on Wednesday.

An Israeli settler was convicted of murdering (Haaretz) three members of a Palestinian family, including an infant, in a 2015 arson attack. He had confessed to the crimes multiple times but earlier confessions had been ruled inadmissible.
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Iraq: A rocket landed (AP) near the U.S. embassy inside Baghdad’s Green Zone, causing minor damages to an empty home. The United States has blamed Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia group, for previous attacks.

Lesotho Prime Minister Thomas Thabane resigned on Tuesday (Reuters). He is suspected of conspiring with his current wife to kill his former wife.
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Nigeria: President Muhammadu Buhari ordered a two-week extension (This Day) of the country’s nationwide curfew, ban on interstate travel, and lockdown in the state of Kano.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a recovery fund (NYT) worth 500 billion euros ($545 billion) backed by shared European Union debt, a departure from Berlin’s past opposition to collective borrowing. The plan would have to be approved by the twenty-seven EU member states.
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Malta: More evidence has emerged (Guardian) of a government strategy to use private vessels to intercept migrants and return them to Libya.

Police in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro killed a record 1,814 people last year, according to a New York Times investigation.
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Chile: Protesters demanding government aid clashed with police (Santiago Times) on the outskirts of Santiago during a citywide lockdown.