AP, Washington
President Donald Trump said Friday he has directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to delay a planned trip to North Korea, citing insufficient progress on denuclearization.
Trump put some blame on Beijing, saying he does not believe China is helping “because of our much tougher Trading stance.” The surprise announcement appeared to mark a concession by the president to domestic and international concerns that his prior claims of world-altering progress on the peninsula had been strikingly premature.
Under fire, Iran’s Rouhani calls
for unity
AFP, Tehran
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called for unity on Saturday in the face of criticism from all sides of his handling of an economic crisis and tensions with the United States.
“Now is not the time to unload our burdens on to somebody else’s shoulders. We must help each other,” Rouhani said in a televised speech at the shrine of late revolutionary leader Ruhollah Khomeini.
UN to set up Venezuela crisis team
AFP, United Nations
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has told Colombia’s foreign minister that he will set up a UN team to ensure the regional response to the Venezuela crisis is well-coordinated, his spokesman said Friday.
But Guterres did not agree to Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo’s request for the appointment of a UN special envoy for Venezuela, according to UN sources.
21,000cr needed for flood-hit Kerala
PTI, Kerala
After the worst rain and floods in a century, Kerala is slowly getting on the road to recovery. Rescue operations now over, the focus has shifted to providing relief and rehabilitation to the over one million people displaced by the floods. Kerala authorities estimate the overall damage to be worth more than Rs. 21,000 crore.
Ten killed in boiler explosion in Iran
Reuters, Tehran
Ten people were killed and five wounded after a boiler exploded in a residential area of the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, Fars News reported in a Twitter post on Saturday. Three residential buildings were completely destroyed in the blast and 15 houses in the area were damaged, according to Fars.
Six dead in Taiwan floods
AFP, Taipei
Six people have been killed by floodwaters in Taiwan, officials said Saturday, after days of heavy rain forced thousands to evacuate their homes. A tropical depression has been dumping torrential rain in central and southern Taiwan since Thursday, with some districts receiving close to 1,000 millimetres (39 inches) of rainfall. Six have died in the storm so far, according to government figures, including three who were killed by a falling scaffold in the southern city of Kaohsiung.
Almost 100 more were injured.
