• American Embassy workers in Moscow are bracing for a “shock to the system” after Russia ordered the dismissal of 755 employees in retaliation for U.S. sanctions.
Though most are likely to be Russian nationals, it’s the harshest such move since 1986, and one that our analyst said underlined President Vladimir Putin’s bad bet on warmer relations with a Trump administration. Vice President Mike Pence, traveling in Eastern Europe, said the U.S. would not be deterred by the diplomats’ expulsion.
The sanctions have done nothing to stop Mr. Putin’s saber-rattling, as illustrated by long-scheduled Russian military exercises along the eastern edge of NATO territory.
• Crossrail, a $20 billion train line designed to cut crucial travel times across London by more than half, is billed as Europe’s biggest infrastructure project.
But as Britain prepares to leave the European Union, the nightmare scenario is that the project ends up moving fewer people more quickly through a shrinking city.
• Syrian children born and raised under the Islamic State have experienced and witnessed astonishing brutality. Those freed are struggling to leave the trauma behind.
At makeshift camps beyond the control of the militants, small boys wearing black bandannas still play at being Islamic State fighters.
“You don’t see children living their normal age,” one observer said. “You see grown-up men.”
• Venezuela’s contentious vote over President Nicolás Maduro’s effort to rewrite the country’s Constitution has effectively liquidated any political challenge from the opposition for years to come.
The U.S. has added Mr. Maduro to a list of Venezuelan officials facing sanctions.
• Apple’s decision to remove several VPN apps from its App Store in China sets a dangerous precedent, our tech columnist writes.
• Core inflation in the eurozone reached a four-year high in July, in a positive sign for the European Central Bank as it considers the future of its quantitative easing program this autumn. Unemployment in the currency bloc was 9.1 percent in June, the lowest level since 2009.
• HSBC will buy back up to $2 billion more in shares. The London-based bank has announced $5.5 billion in share repurchases since last year as its prospects have improved.
• Air travel trouble: A federal court directed American aviation regulators to address what a judge called “the Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat.”
And an airport attendant in France was caught on cellphone cameras punching a passenger who was holding a child.
• Paris will host the 2024 Summer Olympics in an agreement that will give Los Angeles the 2028 Games. [The New York Times]
• In Afghanistan, the Islamic State claimed a suicide attack on the Iraqi Embassy in Kabul, at least the third coordinated assault in the Afghan capital in recent weeks. [The New York Times]
• North Korea’s missile test last week suggested that Pyongyang may now have the ability to strike the mainland U.S. But video analysis has thrown that into question. [The New York Times]
• The free movement of E.U. citizens to Britain will end in March 2019, Prime Minister Theresa May said, contradicting comments by Philip Hammond, the chancellor of the Exchequer. [CNN]
• Heinz Schaden, the mayor of Salzburg, Austria, since 1999, is resigning after being sentenced to three years in prison in connection with a provincial financial scandal. [Reuters]
• The French interior minister, responding to a court order, said two more shelters would be opened for migrants in Calais. He also ordered a report on accusations of police abuse. [Associated Press]
• A senior election official in Kenya was found dead, intensifying anxiety over whether the country can hold a fair and peaceful presidential vote next week. [The New York Times]
• A 2,300-year-old vase has been seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, on suspicion that it was looted from an Italian grave in the 1970s. [The New York Times]
• Defying an order from the E.U.’s highest court, the Polish government said that it would continue cutting down trees in Europe’s last primeval forest.
The New York Times