DAILY NEWS AND UPDATES

P utin   and  T rump   Discuss   Arms   control   issue   in   phone   Call   MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed arms control and cooperation in fighting the coronavirus during a phone call between the two leaders Thursday, the Kremlin and White House said. The presidents “thoroughly considered” various arms control issues “given the special responsibility of Russia and the U.S. for maintaining international peace and security,” the Kremlin said. According to the White House, Trump reiterated his hope of avoiding an expensive three-way arms race between China, Russia, and the United States and “looked forward to progress on upcoming arms control negotiations in Vienna.”   The Kremlin's readout of the call said the parties reaffirmed “the timeliness of bilateral consultations" on arms control issues, including the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The only remaining U.S.-...

'Untrue and unacceptable': WHO chief slams US accusation of bias  The head of the World Health Organization has called "untrue and unacceptable" allegations by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who reportedly said the health official had struck a deal with China that has influenced the body's decisions. The response comes after months of criticism from the administration of US President Donald Trump, who has paused funding and began to withdraw the US from the UN agency, while calling WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus a "puppet of China".  "The comments are untrue and unacceptable and without any foundation, for that matter," WHO chief Tedros said on Thursday in response to a question at a Geneva briefing about the reported remarks by Pompeo According to the Times and the Daily Telegraph newspapers, Pompeo told a private meeting of MPs in London on Tuesday that the WHO had become a "political" body, alleging that its decisions wer...

Trump scraps Republican convention, US virus cases top four million President Donald Trump announced Thursday he was scrapping the Republican nominating convention in Florida as the number of coronavirus cases in the United States topped four million. Trump said he was cancelling next month's event in Jacksonville because it was not the right time to do a "big, crowded convention." "The timing for this event is not right, it's just not right with what's happened recently," he said at a White House news conference. Trump was speaking just hours after Johns Hopkins University reported that there were now more than four million COVID-19 cases in the United States. With a total of 4,028,741 cases and more than 144,000 deaths, the United States is by far the hardest-hit country in the world, with Brazil and India trailing in second and third place for infection numbers. The country has seen a coronavirus surge, particularly in southern and western states, and...

China orders U.S. to shut Chengdu consulate, retaliating for Houston BEIJING (Reuters) - China ordered the United States to close its consulate in the city of Chengdu on Friday, in a tit-for-tat response to being told to shut its consulate in Houston earlier this week, as relations between the two world powers deteriorated further. China had warned it would retaliate after it was unexpectedly given 72 hours - until Friday - to vacate its Houston consulate, and had urged Washington to reconsider.   "The U.S. move seriously breached international law, the basic norms of international relations, and the terms of the China-U.S. Consular Convention. It gravely harmed China-U.S. relations," China's foreign ministry said in a statement. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China informed the U.S. Embassy in China of its decision to withdraw its consent for the establishment and operation of the U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu," it said. The U.S. Department of State an...