Highlights

In his toughest remarks yet on a potential new arms race, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow will match any U.S. move to deploy new nuclear missiles closer to Russia. He said Russia was not seeking confrontation and would not take the first step to deploy missiles in response to Washington’s decision this month to quit a landmark Cold War-era arms control treaty. But he said that Russia’s reaction to any deployment would be resolute.

Nicholas Sandmann, a 16-year-old high school student from Kentucky, sued the Washington Post for defamation on Tuesday. He claims the newspaper falsely accused him of racist acts and instigating a confrontation with a Native American activist in a January videotaped incident at the Lincoln Memorial. He seeks $250 million in damages.

Bernie Sanders' second White House run promises to be far different than his campaign 2016. Sanders will have to fight to stand out in a crowded field of progressives touting issues he brought into the Democratic Party mainstream four years ago. At 77, he will also face questions about his age and relevance in a party increasingly embracing more diverse and fresh voices. Who are the other Democratic contenders jumping into the 2020 fray? Find out here.

President Donald Trump has expressed confidence that he would prevail against a lawsuit filed by 16 U.S. states seeking to block his declaration of a national emergency to fund a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. “I think, in the end, we’re going to be very successful with the lawsuit,” Trump said. “It’s an open-and-closed case."

World

Veteran North Korean diplomats are being sidelined from nuclear talks ahead of a second summit with the United States as recent defections and allegations of spying undermine the trust of leader Kim Jong Un, South Korean officials and experts say. Kim has purged and replaced many top diplomats and officials who served his father and grandfather with new, younger advisors as he gears up to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Vietnam next week.

Three MPs have quit Theresa May’s Conservative party in protest over the government’s “disastrous handling" of Brexit. The pro-EU lawmakers will join a new grouping in parliament that consists of eight independent MPs who broke away from the main opposition party earlier this week. Several politicians have said they expected more to follow from both sides of parliament. With only 37 days until Britain leaves the EU, divisions over Brexit are redrawing the political landscape, with the resignations threatening a decades-old two-party system.

Senegal’s modernizing president is leading the field as the country prepares to head to the polls on Sunday. President Macky Sall’s popularity is partly the result of a modernizing first term that boosted economic growth to over six percent - one of the highest rates in Africa last year. Although, critics accuse him of jailing his rivals for political gain.

Israeli researchers have discovered that animals known a ‘sea squirts’ could help measure plastic pollution. Also known as ascidians, they can filter tiny particles from the ocean and store them in its soft tissue. “[Sea squirts] just sit in one place all their life and filter the water, like a pump,” said Gal Vered of Tel Aviv University.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists imprisoned in Myanmar, have won the prestigious George Polk Award in the Foreign Reporting category. They were honored for ‘Massacre in Myanmar,’ an investigation of a massacre of ten Rohingya men and boys in a village in Rakhine state. They were working on the story at the time of their arrest. In what has become a landmark press freedom case, the court in Yangon charged Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act and in September 2018, sentenced them to seven years in prison. See our full coverage here.