The top Republican lawmaker overseeing trade policies on Sunday called for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping to ease trade tensions, warning that US tariffs would likely dampen US economic growth this year. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said US tax cuts had helped drive stronger US growth but trade tariffs on steel and aluminum, and against Chinese imports, could now undermine that impact.

South Sudan s President Salva Kiir said he is ready to accept a peace deal to end a civil war and set up an inclusive new government. The deal being negotiated in Sudan would give the country five vice presidents and also covers security and power sharing.

Iran has built a factory that can produce rotors for up to 60 centrifuges a day, the head of its atomic agency said on Wednesday, upping the stakes in a confrontation with Washington over the Islamic Republic s nuclear work. The announcement came a month after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he had ordered agencies to prepare to increase uranium enrichment capacity if a nuclear deal with world powers falls apart after Washington s withdrawal from the pact.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday moved to limit the damage from his summit with Vladimir Putin, claiming he misspoke in appearing to accept the Russian leader’s denial of election meddling — in a rebuke to US intelligence chiefs. At their meeting in Helsinki on Monday, Trump failed to challenge Putin over the 2016 presidential election, seeming to accept at face value the strongman’s denial that Moscow interfered in a bid to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

President Donald Trump refused to confront Vladimir Putin over meddling in the US election at their first face to face summit, publicly challenging the findings of the US intelligence community and triggering bipartisan outrage at home. The US and Russian presidents came out of their meeting in Helsinki Monday expressing desire for a fresh start between the world’s leading nuclear powers and more talk on global challenges, after discussing an array of issues from Syria, Ukraine and China to trade tariffs and the size of their nuclear arsenals.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un berated officials during inspections of a factory, power station and holiday camp, state media reported Tuesday, with analysts saying the reports show nuclear-armed Pyongyang’s desire to focus on economic development. “Field guidance” visits by the leader are the mainstay of the North’s state media output, with Kim regularly shown giving “on-the-spot guidance” to attentive officials, their notebooks in hand.

Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held a historic summit on Monday vowing their determination to forge a reset of troubled relations between the world s greatest nuclear powers. Trump, bent on forging a personal bond with the Kremlin chief despite allegations of Russian meddling in US politics, went into the summit blaming the "stupidity" of his predecessors for plunging ties to their present low.

British Prime Minister Theresa May warned her divided party on Sunday that there may be "no Brexit at all" if they wrecked her plan to forge a close relationship with the European Union after leaving the world s biggest trading bloc. "My message to the country this weekend is simple: we need to keep our eyes on the prize," May wrote on Facebook. "If we don t, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all."

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that talks on Sunday between US and North Korean officials to discuss the return of remains of US service members killed in the 1950-53 Korean War “resulted in firm commitments” and that there would be a follow-up meeting on Monday. It was the first time in nine years that US and North Korean generals held talks. The two sides met on the inter-Korean border and agreed to resume joint field activities to search for the remains of Americans missing from the war, Pompeo said in a statement.

The Israeli occupying military lifted its restrictions along the Gaza border Sunday, indicating it had accepted an Egypt-mediated cease-fire that ended a 24-hour round of fighting with Hamas militants that had threatened to devolve into all-out war. The occupying military had shut down a popular beach and placed limitations on large gatherings as residents kept mostly close to home on Saturday amid dozens of rockets that were fired from Gaza. But after several hours of calm it said residents could resume their daily routines.

US President Donald Trump hailed a personal victory at a NATO summit on Thursday, saying allies had sharply increased defence spending commitments after he provoked a crisis session with a tirade at European leaders. "I told people that I would be very unhappy if they didn t up their commitments," an ebullient president told reporters after the second day of the Brussels meeting, when NATO leaders huddled with Trump to try to defuse a crisis.

Landlocked Ethiopia wants to make the re-opening of two roads connecting it to two of Eritrea s Red Sea ports a priority in the two nations reconciliation process, a government spokesman said on Wednesday. In a move that ended a 20-year military stand-off, the Horn of African neighbours agreed on Monday to open embassies, develop ports and resume flights.

Seven European countries are expected to meet a NATO defence spending pledge this year, the alliance said Tuesday, in news that is unlikely to appease US President Donald Trump on the eve of an already tense summit. Trump has repeatedly berated America s European allies for not spending enough on their own defence and launched a fresh broadside as he set off for the Brussels summit, which starts on Wednesday.

The final five members of a young football team were rescued from a flooded Thai cave on Tuesday after spending 18 harrowing days trapped deep inside, completing an astonishing against-the-odds rescue mission that captivated the world. Elite foreign divers and Thai Navy SEALs extracted the final batch of four boys, plus the 25-year-old coach, on Tuesday afternoon via a treacherous escape route that required them to squeeze in darkness through narrow, water-filled tunnels.

Tayyip Erdogan was sworn in again as Turkey s president on Monday, assuming sweeping powers he won in a referendum last year and sealed in a hard-fought re-election victory two weeks ago. Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for 15 years, says the powerful new executive presidency is vital to drive economic growth, ensure security after a failed 2016 military coup and safeguard the country from conflict in Syria and Iraq.

South Sudan rebels on Monday rejected a peace plan to reinstate insurgent leader Riek Machar as vice president, saying it failed to dilute the strong power base of the country s president. Machar was President Salva Kiir s deputy until 2013, when a political disagreement between them degenerated into a war that has ravaged South Sudan ever since.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson quit on Monday over Prime Minister Theresa May s plans to leave the European Union, the second resignation in a day, leaving the British leader s Brexit plans in crisis. After a day when the eurosceptic foreign secretary cancelled meetings for crisis talks at his official residence in central London, Johnson decided to walk from his job - just hours after May s Brexit minister David Davis did the same.

Desperate relatives braced for bad news Monday as rescuers dug through landslides in the wake of severe floods that have killed 100 people and left swathes of central and western Japan under water. With the toll mounting, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cancelled a four-country foreign trip, local media said, and he was expected to visit affected areas later this week.

South Sudan s former vice president Riek Machar will be reinstated in his position as part of a peace deal to end a near five-year-old war that has devastated Africa s youngest nation, the presidency said on Sunday. According to a statement, the agreement was reached in talks held in Entebbe in Uganda, mediated by President Yoweri Miseveni and attended by South Sudan President Salva Kiir, Sudan s Omar al-Bashir and Machar.

The Trump administration on Saturday halted billions of dollars in payments to health insurers under the Obamacare healthcare law, saying that a recent federal court ruling prevents the money from being disbursed. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers programs under the Affordable Care Act, said the action affects $10.4 billion in risk adjustment payments.

When Donald Trump meets Queen Elizabeth next week, he will become the 12th U.S. President that the monarch has met during her 66 years on the throne, the longest in British history. Apart from Lyndon Johnson, Elizabeth has met every U.S leader since Harry S. Truman but no other U.S. presidential encounter has generated the same level of opposition and controversy in Britain as Trump s trip. Prime Minister Theresa May offered Trump a state visit - a pomp-laden affair usually featuring an open-top carriage trip through central London and a banquet at Buckingham Palace - when she became the first foreign leader to visit him after his inauguration in January 2017.