Turkey has formally asked to join BRICS, which would make it the grouping’s first NATO member, Jorge Heine and Ariel González Levaggi write.

Toledo was charged with accepting bribes from a construction company that has also allegedly been connected to criminal cases against officials in Panama and Ecuador, FP’s Alexandra Sharp reports in World Brief.

A full-fledged U.N. peacekeeping mission might not be politically feasible at this point in Sudan’s civil war, but there’s still room for a multinational force to protect civilians, Roméo Dallaire and Shelly Whitman write.

While Blinken was racking up more frequent flyer miles, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gave a speech in Washington that stressed the importance of U.S. alliances, FP’s Lili Pike and Rishi Iyengar report.

Observers from all corners of Georgian politics and civil society view Saturday’s election as a “referendum on the country’s future,” Brawley Benson writes.

Pyongyang has previously sent artillery shells to aid in Russia’s war against Ukraine, but its suspected injection of soldiers into the conflict is a dramatic escalation of previous defense cooperation, FP’s Keith Johnson reports.

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon has already triggered a humanitarian crisis, FP’s Christina Lu reports, with some 1.34 million people displaced and nearly 2,500 people killed since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah resumed last October.

One of the main areas of concern for Kiribati’s voters is the incumbent president’s relationship with China, which has stepped up its investments in the region in a bid for greater influence, Derek Grossman wrote last year.

A recent spate of wildfires in the Amazon rainforest has been driven largely by deforestation—which is exacerbated by land theft, Antônio Sampaio writes.

Jakins—known as “King Conker”—can now reclaim his title as this year’s winner of the men’s tournament, which he won at the championship earlier this month; he has been competing since 1977, according to the Guardian.