BANGKOK (AP) – Asian nations are increasingly competing for Russian crude oil as an energy crisis mounts amid the month-old war by the U.S. and Israel against Iran, which has choked off roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply.

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump is threatening to deploy ground troops to seize critical oil infrastructure on Iran’s Kharg Island, a military gambit that experts say would risk American lives and could still fail to end the war.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to target Iran’s energy infrastructure, including the country’s desalination plants. Such a move – and Iran’s possible targeting of the plants of its Gulf Arab neighbors – could have devastating impacts across the water-starved Middle East.

JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel’s Parliament on Monday passed a law approving the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis. The bill’s passage marked a major victory for Israel’s far-right, which has pushed hard for the measure. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to the chamber to vote yes in person.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Pentagon has flouted a court order blocking it from enforcing a policy limiting news reporters’ access to the Defense Department’s headquarters, a New York Times attorney asserted Monday in urging a federal judge to compel the government’s compliance with the 10-day-old order.

A U.S. government panel was due to convene Tuesday for the first time since 1992 to consider exempting oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act due to unspecified national security concerns, a move critics say could doom a rare whale species and harm other marine life.

TORONTO (AP) – Air Canada announced Monday its CEO will retire later this year, after Michael Rousseau was criticized for his English-only message of condolence following this month’s deadly crash in New York.