World News of the Week – July 16 to July 22, 2018

trump putin.jpg — US President Trump receives a football from Russian President Putin during a press conference after their meeting in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018 (via Reuters)

What You Need To Know:

1. A man walked along a Toronto street firing a handgun into restaurants and cafes, shooting 14 people and killing two before dying after an exchange of gunfire with police.

2. Nicaraguan police and armed pro-government civilians violently retook a symbolically important neighborhood that had recently become a center of resistance to President Ortega’s government.

3. A suicide bomber carried out an attack near the Kabul airport, killing 14 people and narrowly missing Afghanistan’s vice president, who was returning home after living in Turkey for over a year.

4. Israel’s parliament approved a controversial piece of legislation that defines the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people but which critics warn sidelines minorities.

5. A suspected Russian airstrike hit a school serving as a shelter in southwestern Syria, killing at least 10 people.

6. British Prime Minister May accepted amendments to a customs bill put forward by Brexit hardliners who oppose her plan for a “common rule book” with the European Union after the country leaves the bloc.

7. French President Macron fired the head of his personal security detail but faced criticism for failing to act sooner, after video was released showing the man posing as a police officer and beating a protester while off duty in May.

8. A candidate from the party of Pakistan prime ministerial hopeful was killed in a suicide attack that wounded four others, days before general elections.

9. Standing next to Russia’s Putin, President Trump openly questioned his own intelligence agencies’ conclusions that Russia was to blame for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election to Trump’s benefit.

10. The European Union and Japan signed a landmark deal that will eliminate nearly all tariffs on products they trade. It covers a third of the global economy and markets of more than 600 million people.