At the close of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) annual World Health Assembly, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that member states will attend a special session in November to discuss a potential treaty (UN News) on pandemic preparedness and response.
 
Such a treaty could make countries more accountable to each other in the wake of a COVID-19 pandemic defined by lack (NPR) of information, technology, and resource sharing, Tedros said. He urged WHO countries to commit to vaccinating 30 percent of the world’s population by the end of this year, which would require them to contribute hundreds of millions of additional doses (UN News) to the COVAX vaccine partnership. The WHO also announced new names for the coronavirus variants first identified in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil, and India, calling them Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, respectively.

China is allowing married couples to have three children (NYT), up from a previous cap of two, in an effort to reverse a decline in birth rates. Increasing the quota to two children in 2016 did not lead to a sustained rise in births.
 
North Korea: The country’s state news agency carried an article by an international affairs analyst that said a new U.S. permission for South Korea to develop longer range missiles amounts to a “hostile policy” (Yonhap) toward North Korea. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Washington remains committed (Yonhap) to diplomacy with Pyongyang.
 
CFR’s Scott A. Snyder looks at the U.S.-South Korea summit that prompted the North Korean comments.

Press freedom groups criticized Geo News’s decision (Dawn) to take prominent TV host Hamid Mir off the air after he spoke at a rally in support of a reporter who was beaten up. In his speech, Mir implied that Pakistan’s military was connected to the attack (Al Jazeera).
 
Afghanistan: Former President Hamid Karzai called for the Afghan government and the Taliban to organize peace talks (TOLOnews) within the country, saying U.S.-facilitated talks in Doha have yielded no progress.

Ultranationalist Naftali Bennett and centrist Yair Lapid are in talks (Haaretz) to create an ideologically mixed coalition government (NYT) that removes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power. The deadline to form a coalition is tomorrow.
 
Iran: UN nuclear inspectors reported that they have been unable to access (AP) important metrics about Iran’s nuclear activity since February 23, forcing them to estimate rather than report precisely on the country’s nuclear stockpile.
 
For Foreign Affairs, Jamsheed K. Choksy and Carol E.B. Choksy write that Iran needs a return to the 2015 nuclear deal to keep Russia and China at bay.

Katumba Wamala, Uganda’s minister of works and transport and a former army commander, was wounded after gunmen shot at his car in an attempted assassination (Reuters). His daughter and his driver were killed.
 
Mali: The fifteen-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) suspended Mali (Al Jazeera) in response to the country’s second coup in nine months last week.

Danish intelligence services partnered with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on senior European officials (Reuters) between 2012 and 2014, including Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and its then foreign minister, according to a report by Danish broadcaster DR. French President Emmanuel Macron asked (Politico) the United States and Denmark for details on their spying practices, saying the efforts described in the report are “not acceptable among allies.”
 
Greece/Turkey: Leaders of the two countries will meet on the sidelines of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit next month in a bid for the “gradual normalization” (Kathimerini) of relations, Greece’s foreign minister said. 

Peru’s government released a revised count of COVID-19 deaths that is nearly three times higher than its original tally, making it the country with the most COVID-19 deaths per capita, according to a New York Times database.
 
This In Brief looks at how COVID-19 cases and deaths are undercounted.
 
Brazil: The country agreed to host (NYT) the South American soccer tournament Copa America after Argentina said it could not host due to a COVID-19 spike.

Texas Democrats walked out (NPR) of a legislative session Sunday to prevent the passage of a bill that would reduce polling hours and access to mail-in voting. President Joe Biden criticized the bill (White House) as an “assault on democracy” and called out similar restrictions on voting rights in Florida and Georgia.