Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to block the exit of student protesters at one Hong Kong university campus on Monday, in an escalation of clashes that an official said could delay local elections (Guardian) planned for Sunday. Authorities said they arrested more than four hundred people (SCMP) at the university since yesterday, and at least thirty-eight people have been reported injured.
 
Student protesters had been holding off police (NYT) for several days with improvised weapons including fire bombs, sling shots, and bows and arrows; police demanded that protesters surrender their weapons in order to leave. Amid the university standoff—part of a monthslong pro-democracy movement in the semiautonomous territory—Hong Kong’s top court struck down a recently imposed ban on wearing face masks in public.

Pyongyang said it remains uninterested (AP) in denuclearization talks with Washington, according to state media, even as the United States and South Korea called off joint military drills. In a Sunday tweet, U.S. President Donald J. Trump appeared to urge North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to reach a deal quickly.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former wartime defense secretary, was sworn in (VOA) as the new president after he won Sunday’s election by more than ten percentage points. He campaigned in favor of ramping up counterterrorism efforts (NYT) after the Easter Sunday bombings this year killed hundreds of people.
 
Afghanistan: A prisoner exchange between the Afghan government and the Taliban has been delayed (TOLO), according to spokespeople from both sides. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced the planned swap last week as a prelude to resuming peace talks.

More than eighty-five thousand people are estimated to have taken part in nationwide protests (Al Jazeera) against a hike in the price of fuel, with at least two people reported killed in the demonstrations. President Hassan Rouhani said “anarchy and rioting” would not be tolerated.
 
Iraq: Leaked intelligence cables from 2014–15 detail vast Iranian influence in Iraq, including yearslong efforts to co-opt the country’s leadership, according to a new report by the New York Times and the Intercept.

Police broke up a monthlong sit-in (Al Jazeera) of around seven hundred refugees and asylum seekers at the UN refugee office in Pretoria following a string of reported xenophobic attacks in the country. Close to two hundred people were arrested and another four hundred temporarily detained.
 
CFR’s John Campbell looks at what’s behind South Africa’s recent violence.
 
Burkina Faso: The army said it killed thirty-two suspected militants (AFP) in two operations in the country’s north.

The British government and armed forces sought to avoid accountability for the killing of civilians by British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, according to a new BBC and Sunday Times investigation based on interviews with almost a dozen detectives.
 
Georgia: Some twenty thousand people protested in the capital city of Tbilisi to call for an early election (Reuters) after the government failed to pass a planned electoral reform.

Juan Guaido, who declared himself Venezuela’s president in January, called for a new wave of protests (FT) against President Nicolas Maduro during a rally in Caracas that attracted tens of thousands of people. Maduro supporters held a rival rally.
 
Bolivia: Eight people died when security forces opened fire (AP) on supporters of former President Evo Morales in the central city of Sacaba, the national ombudsman’s office said. UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet called the violence “an extremely dangerous development.” 
 
CFR lays out what to know about Bolivia’s power vacuum.

The House Intelligence Committee is scheduled this week to hear from eight people (NPR) with knowledge of President Trump’s handling of U.S. relations with Ukraine, including officials from the National Security Council and Defense and State Departments.
 
On this episode of The President’s Inbox podcast, CFR’s Stephen Sestanovich discusses the history of U.S.-Ukraine relations.