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The leader of Venezuela’s ruling Socialist party, Diosdado Cabello, is self-quarantining after testing positive for the coronavirus, making him the highest-ranking official in the South American nation to contract the virus.Cabello announced his infection in a tweet Thursday. He vowed to overcome the disease, writing, “We will win!”President Nicolas Maduro said Cabello is fine but added he will need several days of treatment and recovery.Cabello’s diagnosis comes a few days after the governor of Venezuela’s Zulia state, Omar Prieto, tested positive for the coronavirus after being treated for a respiratory illness.Venezuela has confirmed more than 8,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 75 deaths. 
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Local authorities say an explosion at a fireworks factory in the Guanghan city area of China’s Sichuan province Wednesday night was caused by nitrocotton catching fire.The city government is reported as saying that high temperatures caused the nitrocotton used in explosives to accumulate heat, causing it to catch fire, triggering an explosion.Six people were hurt, including at least two with serious injuries.The China News Service said several hundred people living the factory were evacuated as firefighters spent several hours battling the blaze, which was extinguished early Thursday.  
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North Korea says the chances are low for another summit with the United States, after President Donald Trump this week said he is open to meeting again with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.  Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un, said another summit would “not be useful to us” unless the U.S. changes its approach to stalled nuclear talks, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Friday.”It is my personal opinion, but a summit between the U.S. and North Korea will not take place this year,” she said.FILE – Kim Yo Jong attends a ceremony at Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam, March 2, 2019.However, she said the relationship between Trump and Kim Jong Un remains strong and has likely prevented “extreme provocations.”  Earlier this week, Trump said he was open to meeting again with Kim Jong Un. “I understand they want to meet, and we would certainly do that,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with Gray TV. The comments were puzzling, because North Korea has said for months that it has no interest in resuming dialogue with the United States.  North Korea is upset at the U.S. refusal to relax sanctions and provide security guarantees in exchange for limited steps to dismantle its nuclear program.  “We are not saying we are not going to denuclearize, but we cannot denuclearize now,” Kim Yo Jong said, stressing any North Korean steps must be matched by corresponding U.S. ones.FILE – North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, right, walks with U.S. President Donald Trump at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore, in this picture taken June 12, 2018, and released from North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency.Trump and Kim have met three times, including in June 2018 in Singapore, where they signed a short statement agreeing to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”  But the talks began to break down in February 2019 after the two sides failed to reach an agreement at a second summit in Hanoi, Vietnam.  FILE – This photo, taken Dec. 18, 2007, and released June 27, 2008, by the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, shows the cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear complex near Pyongyang, North Korea.At the Hanoi summit, Trump rejected North Korea’s offer to dismantle its prominent Yongbyon nuclear facility in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed on North Korea since 2016.  In June 2019, Trump and Kim met briefly at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. The two sides also held working-level talks in Stockholm in 2019, but those negotiations quickly broke down.Speaking to reporters Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. continues “to work to establish dialogue and have substantive conversations” with North Korea.”We’re very hopeful that we can continue to have this conversation, whether that’s at the levels beneath the summit, or if it’s appropriate and there is a useful activity to take place, to have senior leaders get back together as well,” Pompeo said. “As for who and how and timing, I just don’t want to talk about that today,” he added.  FILE – South Korean President Moon Jae-in speaks in Gwangju, South Korea, May 18, 2020.Earlier this month, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he would like to see Trump and Kim hold another meeting before the U.S. presidential election in November. Some analysts have questioned whether Trump has other priorities; with just four months to go until the election, Trump is trailing Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in the polls. North Korea is not seen as a major issue in the U.S. election. However, if Trump could revive the North Korea talks, it could help highlight what White House officials had once heralded as a signature Trump foreign policy achievement.
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The U.S. defense secretary and the top military officer told members of Congress on Thursday that they still do not know who gave the order to clear protesters near the White House ahead of President Donald Trump’s walk to St. John’s Church last month.”It’s still unclear to me,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told the House Armed Services Committee when asked who gave the order to clear the protesters in Lafayette Square, adding that he had not pursued the topic.“I find that hard to believe,” Committee Chairman Adam Smith replied.Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley also said he did not have “personal knowledge” on who gave the order for law enforcement to clear the square on June 1.Active duty troops were never used to aid law enforcement amid protests following the death of African American George Floyd while he was in police custody. Esper and Milley reiterated Thursday that the National Guard troops who were there served as a “backup” to law enforcement and did not engage in clearing protesters.“The Guard did not advance on the ground. The Guard did not shoot rubber bullets. The Guard did not employ chemical agents of any type. Rather, the Guard remained in a static role,” Esper said.Former leaders criticalThe  forceful dispersing of protesters at Lafayette Square ahead of Trump’s walk to St. John’s Church last month drew criticism from former military leaders, including retired General Jim Mattis, the former secretary of defense, and retired Admiral Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.While military troops were not seen engaging with protesters, military helicopters were filmed flying low in Washington in what appeared to be an intimidation tactic to clear protesters from the area.Esper said Thursday that an Army investigation into possible misuse of National Guard helicopters was completed and should be available for lawmakers to view next week.In light of the recent widespread U.S. protests against the death of Floyd, Milley  acknowledged Thursday that both the United States and its military are struggling with racism and have “much more to do” on the path to equality.”Divisiveness leads to defeat,” he said, later warning the committee that foreign adversaries are trying to take advantage of current civil unrest in the U.S.Review of symbolsThe head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also called for a “hard look” at Confederate symbols on U.S. military installations in order to make sure the military is a place where all Americans see themselves represented.”There is no place in our armed forces for manifestations or symbols of racism, bias or discrimination,” Milley said.“Some think it’s heritage. Others think it’s hate,” he added when asked about the Confederate flag.The Marines and U.S. Forces Korea have already banned displaying the Confederate flag on their military grounds, and the Navy is in the process of drafting a ban as well.When asked about a potential militarywide ban, Esper on Thursday deferred to the review process that had been directed.“There is a process underway by which we affirm what types of flags are authorized on U.S. military bases. I want to make sure we have an approach that is enduring, that can withstand legal challenge, but that unites us,” he said.Trump has defended the display of Confederate symbols, speaking out against NASCAR for banning the Confederate battle flag and chastising Army leadership on Twitter for considering renaming 10 bases that are currently named for Confederate leaders. 
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A U.S. drone strike that killed Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, at Baghdad International Airport in January is a violation under international law, according to U.N. report Thursday.Investigator Agnes Callamard said more than 100 nations have an active military drone inventory and about a dozen allegedly have deployed armed drones for the use of force, such as targeted killings.  The uncontrolled proliferation of armed drones poses a threat to international peace, she added, and the U.S. killing of Soleimani has elevated the dangers. She noted the U.S. carried out its attack without first obtaining Iraq’s consent, thereby violating Iraq’s territorial integrity. FILE – In this Sept. 18, 2016, photo released by the office of Iran’s supreme leader, Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, center, attends a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran.“That is a significant and troubling new development,” Callamard said. “It is the first known incident in which a state invokes self-defense as justification for an attack against a government official outside a declared armed conflict. “No evidence has been provided that General Soleimani specifically was planning an imminent attack against U.S. interests, particularly in Iraq, for which immediate action was necessary and would have been justified.” Days after the drone attack, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Soleimani had “planned a broad, large-scale attack against American interests, and those attacks were imminent.” Callamard countered that the U.S. self-defense argument is just a tipping point. She said Turkey has fully accepted the U.S. doctrine and other countries, including Britain, have expressed their support for it. She told VOA she fears an increasing number of countries are likely to justify armed drone attacks by invoking the war on terror. “So, my response to you is that if I were in the shoes of a government or member of the government who will be deemed a terrorist by the U.S., at this point, I would be wary and extra careful,” she said.   Callamard submitted her report to every country mentioned early in May. She said the U.S. has not responded.Earlier this week, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said, “It takes a special kind of intellectual dishonesty to issue a report condemning the United States for acting in self-defense while whitewashing General Soleimani’s notorious past as one of the world’s deadliest terrorists.” The Iranian ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Esmaeil Baghael Hamanch, called Washington’s assassination of Soleimani brutal, arbitrary, unjust and unlawful. He told the U.N. council the United States had committed an international crime of grave nature and must be held to account.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a growing backlash over plans to convert Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, the former Greek Orthodox cathedral that is now a museum, into a mosque. Once eastern Christianity’s greatest church, it was turned into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in the 15th century and then a museum in the 1930s. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul on the latest battle over Hagia Sophia.Camera: Berke Bas   Produced by: Jon Spier 
 
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