Good morning. We’re covering Turkey’s move to stall NATO’s expansion, North Korea’s effort to follow China’s pandemic restrictions and China’s new tactic to censor online speech.

       Will Turkey block NATO’s expansion? Finland and Sweden formally asked to join NATO on Wednesday, heralding what could be the alliance’s biggest expansion in decades, and one that would increase its presence on Russia’s doorstep.

       But later in the day, Turkey, a NATO member, blocked an initial effort to move ahead quickly with the applications. Analysts said it was an attempt to squeeze out political concessions and win President Recep Tayyip Erdogan domestic accolades.

       Turkey presented NATO ambassadors with a list of grievances. Most address the issue of Western support for Kurdish groups that it regards as terrorists. Turkey also wants to unblock military sales of American F-16s. Here are live updates.

       Analysis: “He is trying to give a message: ‘You cannot discipline me and my country. You have to make a broad bargain with me about Turkey’s problems with the West,’” a professor of international relations in Turkey said of Erdogan.

       Energy: The E.U. outlined plans to wean itself from Russian fossil fuels before 2027. But Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary is also parrying Western diplomatic efforts: He continues to block even the watered-down effort.

       The front: Doctors in eastern Ukraine are opting to amputate limbs rather than trying to repair them, a desperate attempt to save lives.

       Other updates:

       Russia said that nearly 1,000 fighters had surrendered to Kremlin custody at the Mariupol steel plant.

       Top finance ministers are meeting to discuss how to keep pressure on Moscow and avoid a looming global recession.

       In a Kyiv court on Wednesday, a Russian soldier pleaded guilty to having shot a civilian, during the first Ukrainian trial for a potential war crime.

       Residents of Kharkiv and its surrounding villages are returning home. Bodies and ruins await them.

       North Korea may emulate China When North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, acknowledged a Covid outbreak last week, he ordered his government to learn from ？China’s “success” fighting the virus. ？

       China has used strict lockdowns, mass testing and vaccinations to keep cases low throughout the pandemic. But outside health experts say an attempt to mimic its pandemic response could send Kim’s impoverished country into an outright catastrophe.

       North Korea cannot feed its own people in the best of times, and lacks the basic therapeutics and food supplies that China has mobilized for the extreme restrictions seen in cities like Wuhan, Xi’an and Shanghai. It does not have vaccines, either, so people have developed no immunity against the virus.

       History: North Korea’s state rations system collapsed during a famine in the mid-1990s, which killed an estimated two million people. It has never recovered. The country is so isolated that the outside world didn’t know about the famine until the bodies of famished citizens started washing up along the shallow river on its border with China.

       Details: The suspected ？number of new patients in North Korea has soared from 18,000 last Thursday to hundreds of thousands a day today. Without enough testing kits？ to accurately measure the ？outbreak, the country has relied on figures for the number of “people found with fevers” instead of positive test results.

       Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

       In other developments:

       Japan will admit small groups of fully vaccinated and boosted tourists from the U.S., Thailand, Singapore and Australia as a test before reopening fully.

       Over 75 percent of long Covid patients were not hospitalized for an initial illness, a study found.

       U.S. health officials said that a third of Americans live in areas where the threat of infection is so high that they should consider wearing masks indoors.

       A new tactic for China’s censors Beijing’s internet censors are starting to reveal the locations of users beneath their posts, a rapidly expanding practice which has further chilled online speech in China.

       Authorities say the location tags, which are displayed automatically, will help unearth overseas disinformation campaigns intended to destabilize China.

       Live Updates: Russia-Ukraine War Updated May 18, 2022, 7:43 p.m. ET

       Throughout eastern Ukraine, grievous injuries and not enough doctors to treat them. Around Kharkiv, Ukrainians emerge to ruin. Here’s the latest on the war in Ukraine.

       But the move increasingly links Chinese citizens’ locations with their national loyalty. Chinese people posting from overseas, and even from provinces deemed insufficiently patriotic, are now easily targeted by nationalist influencers, whose fans harass them or report their accounts.

       Details: People writing from Shanghai, where bungled Covid-19 shutdowns have triggered food shortages, are called selfish by nationalist trolls. Those criticizing the government from coastal provinces near Taiwan and Hong Kong have been called separatists and scammers. And those who appear to be going online from abroad, even if they’re just using a virtual private network, are treated as foreign agitators and spies.

       Background: The locations were first applied to posts that mentioned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but have since expanded to most social media posts. The move follows months of online anger about Covid-19 lockdowns, which has sometimes overwhelmed the censors.

       THE LATEST NEWS World News

       A trash-talking South Korean entrepreneur caused a $40 billion crash in cryptocurrency by hyping a risky technology.

       A British lawmaker was arrested on suspicion of rape, becoming the latest member of Parliament to have been accused of sexual misconduct.

       A French court has ruled that Lafarge, a global cement maker, can be charged with complicity in human rights violations for allegedly making payments to the Islamic State.

       A Pentagon investigation found no wrongdoing in a 2019 airstrike in Syria that killed dozens of people, including women and children.

       The U.S. Soccer Federation agreed to new contracts with the country’s men’s and women’s teams that set a new global bar for equal pay.

       A Morning Read

       A small Colorado town maintains the only public outdoor funeral pyre in the U.S., a common practice in India. One man, Dr. Philip Incao, saw in it his own perfect ending.

       Russia-Ukraine War: Key Developments Card 1 of 3 In Mariupol. The bloodiest battle of the war in Ukraine ended in Mariupol, as the Ukrainian military ordered fighters holed up at a steel plant in the city to surrender. Russia said that nearly 1,000 Ukrainian fighters are in Kremlin custody, though their fate remains uncertain.

       War crimes trial. A Russian soldier pleaded guilty in a Kyiv court to having shot a civilian. This is the first trial Ukraine has conducted for an act that could be considered a war crime since Russia launched its invasion.

       NATO’s expansion. Finland and Sweden formally asked to join NATO, in potentially the alliance’s biggest expansion in two decades. But Turkey, a NATO member, blocked an initial effort to move ahead quickly with their applications, according to a senior diplomat.

       ARTS AND IDEAS

       A new type of Circus In 2017, faced with slumping sales and a growing public distaste for its marquee lion, tiger and elephant acts, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus shut down after 146 years, allegedly for good.

       That, it seems, was yet another act. On Wednesday, the circus announced that it is coming back, and will go on a tour next year. This time, though, only humans will perform for the crowds.

       Instead of elephants standing on their hind legs, the circus will feature narrative threads and human feats, often highlighting the performers’ personal stories. That makes for a slimmed-down business model, too: Humans, unlike lions, can stay in hotels instead of purpose-built cabins on mile-long trains.

       Animal rights groups have applauded the move. But not everyone is convinced that Ringling Bros 2.0 is a sure thing. Animals have been part of the circus since its inception in 1768, an expert noted. Without them, some wondered, will people come?

       PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook

       Jackfruit curry is a rich, vegan dish that draws on Fiji’s flavors.

       What to Read “Atoms and Ashes” tells the frightening history of nuclear disasters.

       What to Watch The feminist drama “Pleasure” follows a woman who sets out to be a porn star. “I wanted to look at porn from a perspective that doesn’t see women as victims,” the director said.

       Now Time to Play Play today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Duck call (five letters).

       Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.

       You can find all our puzzles here.

       That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Amelia

       P.S. The Times won two Deadline Club awards from the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

       The latest episode of “The Daily” is about a Ukrainian soldier.

       You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.