Following is a summary of current world news briefs.
Trump claims NATO victory after ultimatum to go it alone
Donald Trump gave an angry ultimatum to European allies on Thursday, warning a NATO summit the United States could withdraw its support and sparking crisis talks which the U.S. president said produced big new defense spending pledges. Other leaders, however, played down the extent to which they went beyond existing commitments to increase contributions to their own defense, as Trump demanded they share more of what he calls an unfair burden on U.S. taxpayers in funding an alliance focused on discouraging pressure from a resurgent Moscow.
U.N. readies to send experts to Myanmar’s Rakhine after Rohingya return deal
The United Nations is preparing to send teams of experts into Myanmar’s Rakhine state to begin work aimed at eventually repatriating Rohingya Muslims who fled violence last year, the regional head of the U.N. development agency said on Thursday. The U.N. agencies for development and refugees struck an outline deal with Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s government at the end of May to allow Rohingya Muslims sheltering in Bangladesh to return safely and by choice.
Flow of asylum seekers to Canada begins to slow amid traveler crackdown
The influx of asylum seekers that threw Canada’s refugee system into disarray slowed in June after also falling in May, the first two-month decline since the wave ramped up last year, according to preliminary figures from government officials and border agents. The decrease could ease pressure on agencies aiding refugees and on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, which has come under fire for its management of the asylum seeker issue.
Syrian state raises flag in birthplace of revolt
The Syrian government raised the national flag on Thursday over areas of Deraa city that have been in rebel hands for years, a major victory for President Bashar al-Assad in the birthplace of the revolt against his rule. State television said the army hoisted the flag near the post office, the only government building in the portion of the city that had been held by rebels since the early days of the uprising that began there in 2011 with large protests.
Chemicals factory blast injures 12 outside Cairo’s main airport
Egyptian firefighters battled flames that erupted after an explosion at a chemicals factory outside Cairo’s main airport on Thursday, with a dozen people reported injured in a blast an army spokesman said was caused by high temperatures. State news agency MENA quoted a security source as saying that 12 people were taken to a hospital after the blast, which occurred in a storage facility belonging to a local petrochemicals company outside the airport in the northern part of the capital.
Trump hails progress after receiving note from North Korea’s Kim
Kim Jong Un told President Donald Trump he believed their efforts could open up a “new future” between North Korea and the United States and expressed hope for “practical actions” in the future, according to a letter from the North Korean leader released on Thursday. But Kim, in the note posted by Trump on Twitter, made no mention of any work by North Korea toward denuclearization at a time when there has been no sign of concrete action by Pyongyang since the two leaders held a landmark summit in Singapore on June 12.
U.S. accuses North Korea of U.N. sanctions breach, demands end to fuel sales
The United States accused North Korea on Thursday of breaching a U.N. sanctions cap on refined petroleum by making illicit transfers between ships at sea, according to a document seen by Reuters, and demanded an immediate end to all sales of the fuel. The United States submitted the complaint to the U.N. Security Council North Korea sanctions committee. The charge of a sanctions breach comes as Washington engages North Korea in a bid to convince Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
Trump blasts UK PM May’s Brexit plan, says it puts trade deal in doubt
U.S. President Donald Trump said a free trade deal with Britain might be impossible if it went ahead with Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposals for post-Brexit ties with the European Union, in a damaging intervention set to further criticism of her plans. In an interview with Britain’s Sun newspaper published late on Thursday, Trump said May’s plans for a business-friendly Brexit would leave it too close to the EU to allow a new trans-Atlantic trade deal to be struck.
Mexico opposes U.S. plan to make it take asylum seekers
Mexico is opposed to a U.S. request to make people seeking asylum in the United States apply in Mexico instead, according to a source and a briefing note, in a setback to U.S. efforts to deepen cooperation on immigration before a leftist president takes office. U.S. officials believe a deal known as a “Safe Third Country Agreement,” could prove a deterrent to thousands of Central Americans who travel through Mexico each year to seek U.S. asylum, clogging immigration courts and causing a headache for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
Setting out vision for future ties, Britain’s May presses Brexit plans
Prime Minister Theresa May published her blueprint for Britain’s future relations with the European Union on Thursday, proposals which would keep close trade ties after Brexit but make it harder for banks to access the European single market. With less than nine months before Britain leaves the bloc, May has been under pressure to spell out her position to unblock the all-but-stalled talks with the EU that will shape Britain’s biggest shift in foreign and trade policies for decades. — Reuters

Tanu had marvelled at her first smartphone when her Indian migrant worker husband gave it to her last November so the couple could stay connected. Before long, she was uploading pictures on Facebook and sending messages on Whatsapp.
Then a stranger sent her a Facebook friend request.
Tanu accepted, and when her new friend messaged her with promises of a better life she believed him, agreeing to a meeting that would ultimately lead to her being sex trafficked to the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.
“He did not touch me. He just handed me over to other people,” said Tanu, 21, whose full name cannot be used for legal reasons.
“I did not fear anything while using the phone,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone on Thursday from the southern state of Kerala, from where she was rescued last week.
“I did not even know I had to fear getting trapped. I never thought something like this would happen.”
Police and campaigners in India say sex traffickers are increasingly using WhatsApp and Facebook to communicate with potential victims, calling it an invisible crime.
India’s mobile phone users have multiplied on the back of cheap devices and data packs and the country is among the top data consumers in the world, with about a billion wireless connections.
That and free wifi in public places are making it easier for traffickers to operate – and harder for authorities to track them down.
“These cases are emerging nearly every day, particularly of girls from the most vulnerable, remote parts of the country who have no exposure to city life,” said Robin Hibu, joint commissioner with Delhi police.
‘Hidden tsunami’
Hibu spearheaded an anti-trafficking drive last year and handled the case of a girl from the remote northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh who had befriended a man on Facebook.
He bought her an air ticket to Mumbai, where he sold her into a brothel.
“She was a high school student, very poor. But she had a smartphone with internet. This is a hidden tsunami. Today mobile phones are not that costly,” said Hibu.
India is only the latest country to experience the grim phenomenon – all over the world, concern is growing over the use of technology by traffickers, who use social media to contact vulnerable teenagers before selling them into sex work.
But with internet penetration at just 18 percent in rural areas, according to a report from the Internet and Mobile Association of India, there is still huge scope for growth.
The report said mobile internet was predominantly used by young people, with 46 percent of urban users and 57 percent of rural users under the age of 25.
Payments too have gone online, eliminating the money trail, according to Cassandra Fernandes of anti-trafficking charity International Justice Mission.
“Earlier, traffickers visited the family, convinced them about a job prospect in the city … they were usually people the family trusted,” said Vivian Isaac, programme director of the My Choices Foundation which works with women and girls.
“Now they sit in their rooms and send messages on Facebook and WhatsApp and girls walk into their trap themselves. They never show hurry. They do it gradually, systematically.”
For families of migrant workers, the mobile phone is their only connection to their loved one.
Tanu now plans to change her number – but says she will keep her smartphone. — Reuters

British politicians expressed outrage Friday at US President Donald Trump’s attack on the government’s Brexit strategy, although one leading eurosceptic said it was “perfectly reasonable”.
“Where are your manners, Mr President?” tweeted universities minister Sam Gyimah.
Other MPs in May’s Conservative party rounded on the president for being “determined to insult” Prime Minister Theresa May as she hosted him on a trip to Britain.
The opposition Labour party called him “extraordinarily rude”.
Downing Street stayed silent but junior foreign minister Alan Duncan brushed off the row, saying Trump was a “controversialist, that’s his style”.
In an interview in The Sun tabloid published Friday, Trump said May’s plans to keep close economic ties with the EU after Brexit would “kill” its hopes of a US trade deal.
He also warned about migration into European cities including London, criticising Mayor Sadiq Khan over recent terror attacks and knife crime.
He also suggested Boris Johnson, who quit as foreign secretary this week in protest at May’s Brexit proposal, would make a good prime minister.
“@realDonaldTrump determined to insult our PM,” said Sarah Woollaston, a Conservative MP and chairwoman of parliament’s health committee.
She attacked his “divisive, dog-whistle rhetoric” on migration, adding: “If signing up to the #Trump world view is the price of a deal, it’s not worth paying.”
While she noted May would probably keep silent, she said: “Many will be cheering if she tells @realDonaldTrump where he can stick his dog whistle”.
Emily Thornberry, foreign affairs spokeswoman for the opposition Labour party who has herself called May’s Brexit plan a “delusion”, said Trump had been “extraordinarily rude”.
“She is his host. What did his mother teach him? This is not the way you behave,” she told ITV.
Stand up to him
Yvette Cooper, a Labour MP and chairwoman of parliament’s home affairs committee said: “Trump’s appalling behaviour makes me sympathise with Theresa May.
“[Until] I remember her desperate rush to invite him, her repeated reluctance to criticise his Muslim ban or caging of children, her chasing him for a bad trade deal…. For God’s sake Theresa, stand up to him today.”
May must publicly respond to Trump’s comments when the pair hold a press conference later on Friday.
Some Twitter users speculated that she could hit back, as Hugh Grant did playing the prime minister in romantic comedy “Love Actually”.
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband offered some suggestions for her response.
She could say that “he and I do disagree on some things: his tearing of babies from their parents, his racist attacks on the London mayor, his lies, his admiration for dictators, and I tend to think his combover is an absurdity”.
Trump is not the first US president to intervene on Brexit — Barack Obama warned ahead of the 2016 referendum that if it left the EU, Britain would be at the “back of the queue” for a US deal.
Brexit supporters cried foul at the time, but eurosceptic MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said on Friday that Trump’s comments were different because they did not come in the middle of a campaign.
He said his remarks on trade were a “perfectly reasonable thing for an American president to say”. — AFP

Most Asian markets rose again on Friday following a record close on Wall Street as trade war fears are tempered by hopes China and the US will eventually reach a compromise, while attention turns to the start of earnings season.
Equities have had a rollercoaster week, with strong US jobs figures providing initial support before Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese imports sent investors running for the hills on Wednesday.
However, Beijing’s measured response to the warning and indications from both sides that they are willing to talk has instilled trading floors with a little optimism heading into the weekend.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday told lawmakers the White House was “available” for discussions with China.
That came after China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said the economic superpowers “should sit down and try to find a solution to this trade problem”.
News that China’s trade surplus with the US, a major cause of Trump’s anger, hit a record in June added to the tensions.
Expectations that US companies will report a surge in April-June earnings have also helped deflect attention from the possibility of a damaging trade war.
All three main indexes ended higher in New York with the Nasdaq hitting a fresh record thanks to a rally in the tech sector.
And those gains filtered through to Asia, with the Nikkei in Tokyo ending 1.9 percent higher thanks to a weaker yen, while Hong Kong added 0.2 percent. Seoul and Taipei each gained more than one percent, while Singapore added 0.2 percent. Manila, Bangkok and Jakarta were also well up.
Trump rattles pound
However, Shanghai dipped 0.2 percent after jumping more than two percent Thursday, while investors were unmoved by figures showing Chinese exports beat expectations last month but imports fell short.
Sydney was barely moved.
Hannah Anderson, global market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management, said: “Our baseline view is that trade policy uncertainty will continue driving higher levels of volatility but will not fundamentally alter the direction of markets over the next 12-18 months.
“Moderate, negotiated solutions remain our base case outcomes for NAFTA and China trade disputes. There is a rising risk, however, that if these disputes drag on or intensify, market reactions could become deeper and more persistent.”
On currency markets the upbeat mood has helped high-yielding currencies higher against the dollar, with the Chinese yuan — which has taken a hit in recent weeks on trade war fears — benefitting from words of support from state media.
The dollar is sitting at six-month highs against the yen, which is considered a safe bet in times of turmoil, while the US unit is holding recent gains against the pound.
Sterling has been hammered this week by fresh concerns about Prime Minister Theresa May’s political future after her pro-Brexit foreign minister resigned over her plans for leaving the EU.
The selling picked up Thursday when Trump, on a visit to Britain, criticised her handling of Brexit and warned that a US trade deal would be dead if the country did not fully leave the bloc.
In early European trade London rose 0.6 percent, while Frankfurt and Paris each gained 0.5 percent.
Key figures at 0810 GMT
Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.9 percent at 22,597.35 (close)
Hong Kong – Hang Seng: UP 0.2 percent at 28,525.44 (close)
Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.2 percent at 2,831.18 (close)
London – FTSE 100: UP 0.6 percent at 7,693.20
Dollar/yen: UP at 112.62 yen from 112.53 yen at 2100 GMT
Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1654 from $1.1671
Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3162 from $1.3207
Oil – West Texas Intermediate: DOWN seven cents at $70.26 per barrel
Oil – Brent Crude: DOWN 28 cents at $74.17 per barrel
New York – Dow: UP 0.9 percent at 24,924.89 (close)
— AFP

Apple said on Friday it has established a fund to invest nearly $300 million over the next four years to connect its Chinese suppliers to renewable energy as Beijing pushes an anti-pollution drive.
The US giant said it and 10 initial suppliers would jointly provide the money for the China Clean Energy Fund, aimed at helping the companies make the transition to clean energy.
Apple said the project would produce an initial one gigawatt of clean energy, equivalent to powering nearly a million homes.
Most of Apple’s products worldwide are assembled in vast production networks in China that employ hundreds of thousands of workers, and the company has taken various steps to reduce resulting carbon emissions.
It said in April that its headquarters in Cupertino, California, had gone 100 percent renewable and announced initiatives to achieve the same in other Apple facilities worldwide.
China’s four-decade transition into an industrial behemoth has brought the side effects of severe air, soil and water pollution, and the government is pushing various initiatives to clean things up including incentives for renewable energy and the electric-car industry.
Among other projects, in late 2016 Apple said it bought a 30 percent stake in subsidiaries of China-based Goldwind, the world’s largest wind turbine maker, to produce renewable energy. — AFP

Filipino legend Manny Pacquiao challenges Lucas “The Machine” Matthysse for the World Boxing Association welterweight belt on Sunday knowing defeat could lower the curtain on one of the greatest careers in boxing history.
Pacquiao, 39, faced calls to retire from friends, family and even his Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach when he lost the WBO belt to journeyman Australian Jeff Horn a year ago.
A second successive defeat, this time against the dangerous Argentine at Kuala Lumpur’s Axiata Arena on Sunday, could see the veteran “National Fist” hang up his gloves for good.
But victory for Pacquiao (59-7-2, 38 KOs), who has won world titles in an unprecedented eight weight divisions in a glittering 23-year career, would extend his legendary status and his life in the ring beyond his 40th birthday in December.
“I am not saying it will be the last (fight), but it will be the basis to think about (whether) to continue or not,” Pacquiao told AFP at his training camp.
But “Pac-Man’s” conditioning coach Justin Fortune thinks the world will see “the old Pacquiao” return and silence those who question whether his aging body still has the ability to compete against the world’s best.
Pacquiao is going for his 60th victory since turning pro in 1995, but despite winning 38 of his first 47 fights by knockout, he has not stopped an opponent in nine years.
“He looks like the old Pacquiao,” declared Fortune of the boxer who is also an elected senator in the Philippines and is tipped one day to run for president. “His metabolism is ridiculous. He’s a freak.”
Matthysse (39-4, 36 KOs) paid tribute to Pacquiao but warned that his admiration for one of the world’s greatest pound-for-pound fighters would not stop him from taking his belt back to South America.
“He is a great champion but he still hasn’t faced ‘The Machine’,” Argentina’s Matthysse told a pre-fight press conference.
“If he decides to retire after I beat him then that is his decision. I am here to defend my title.”
Ali vs Bugner
Knock-out specialist Matthysse has finished 36 of his 39 wins inside the distance and took the vacant WBA belt after an eighth-round stoppage of Thailand’s Teerachai Sithmorseng in January.
The Malaysian metropolis is hosting world championship boxing for the first time since heavyweight legend Muhammad Ali defeated Joe Bugner over 15 rounds in 1975.
And like buses, you wait 43 years for one world title fight and then four come along at once.
The undercard will see the interim World Boxing Association featherweight belt on the line when Mexico’s Edivaldo Ortega (26-1-1, 16 KOs) fights unbeaten Filipino Jhack Tepora (21-0, 16 KOs).
Experienced South African Moruti “Baby Face” Mthalane (35-2, 24 KOs) defends his International Boxing Federation flyweight title against the unbeaten, but inexperienced, Pakistani Muhammad Waseem (8-0, 6 KOs).
Carlos Canizares of Venezuela (20-0-1, 16 KOs) puts his WBA light flyweight title on the line against Chinese rookie Lu Bin (1-0, 1 KO), who will make history if he wins.
Lu, 23, is a former youth world amateur champion bidding to become the first boxer to win a world title in his second professional fight.
The record for fastest to a world title, in terms of number of fights, is jointly held by Thai super lightweight Saensak Muangsurin and Ukrainian lightweight Vasyl Lomachenko, who both won championships in their third pro bouts. — AFP