SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Chinese President Xi Jinping returned home on Tuesday following a rare trip to North Korea that included a bilateral meeting and public appearances with leader Kim Jong Un underscoring a joint push to reestablish the alliance between their countries.

WASHINGTON (AP) – As the U.S. prepares for an extravagant celebration of its founding principles, fewer Americans see their country as exceptional, a new poll finds. The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research highlights many Americans’ feeling of unease over the future of its representative government.

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian forces struck oil facilities in Russia and occupied Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian officials said Monday, as part of their campaign to make Moscow pay an economic cost for the war. Separately, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed that Roman Abramovich acted as a go-between for messages between Kyiv and Moscow.

President Donald Trump is dismissing the idea that launching the war with Iran this year betrayed his refrain of “No new wars” that he made repeatedly as he campaigned again for the White House. It came hours before Israel and Iran traded fire in retaliatory strikes that threatened to drag the wider Middle East back into a full-scale regional war.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) – The tenuous ceasefire in the Middle East has held up, sometimes barely, despite being shaken by repeated flare-ups over the past two months. But it is now coming the closest yet to blowing apart and sending the region back into full-scale war – and the detonator is Lebanon.

HONG KONG (AP) – The Hong Kong government on Monday proposed legislation that would allow the city’s leader to designate certain criminal acts as national security offenses, stepping up its efforts to stamp out challenges to its rules in the city where critics say freedoms have been eroding.

MADRID (AP) – Pope Leo XIV met Monday with six survivors of clergy sexual abuse in Madrid and vowed to consider their suggestions for how the Catholic Church can improve its response to the crisis, the Vatican said. The meeting, which followed in the tradition of popes meeting with abuse survivors during their foreign trips, lasted about an hour.