Sasha Ingber

Two key Asian leaders — both of whom President Trump has been trying to negotiate deals with — will meet Thursday, when Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to North Korea for the first time as president, Chinese and North Korean state media report.

The two-day visit was prompted by an invitation from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to China's Xinhua News Agency.

The meeting comes just days before Trump and Xi are supposed to meet at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

Updated at 10:10 a.m. ET

Russia has spent years exploiting institutions and legal systems in the West to target critics, invalidate court decisions and roll back sanctions, according to allegations in a new report.

The report by the Free Russia Foundation describes the lengths to which it says the Kremlin has gone to undermine the West using international law and accounting firms, foreign officials, think tanks and nongovernmental organizations from New York to Latvia.

Four people have died in Australia after a gunman opened fire in multiple locations in an urban business district, an attack that has shaken a country often touted for its strong gun control laws.

The hourlong shooting happened Tuesday night in Darwin, the capital city in Australia's Northern Territory. It turned a park, bars and other locations into crime scenes.

A deputy who was blamed for failing to intervene as a shooter attacked Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., has been arrested and charged in connection with the rampage.

Former Broward Sheriff's Deputy Scot Peterson, the only armed person assigned to the school on Feb. 14, 2018, faces 11 criminal charges. They include child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury, Broward State Attorney Mike Satz announced Tuesday in a statement.

"Let's make a deal," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
"You're on," agreed Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

The two lawmakers who have often been at odds found common ground in a place that often highlights polarizing opinions: Twitter. That's where Cruz and Ocasio-Cortez vowed to set aside their differences and work on new lobbying restrictions for lawmakers. Now an unlikely coalition is forming around their joint effort.

Updated at 3:39 p.m. ET

WarnerMedia, Walt Disney Co. and NBCUniversal will consider stopping productions in Georgia should the state's new abortion law take effect, echoing a threat made this week by Netflix.

WarnerMedia, which owns HBO, CNN and other channels, told NPR in a statement on Thursday, "We will watch the situation closely and if the new law holds we will reconsider Georgia as the home to any new productions." The company said it operates in many states and countries where it may not agree with leaders' stances but respects due process.

Uber has unveiled a new policy that enables the company to kick riders with low ratings to the curb.

For years, Uber allowed passengers to rate drivers on a star system, ultimately allowing customers to influence whether drivers can stay behind the wheel. Internal charts from 2014 published by Business Insider showed that drivers with ratings of 4.6 or below were at risk for the boot.

China is ready to capitalize on its dominance as an exporter of rare earth minerals by cutting its exports to the U.S., Chinese media reported Wednesday.

Rare earths are a group of elements with unique properties that are used in cell phones, hybrid cars and cancer treatment. They also play an important role in U.S. defense, from computers to aircraft engines.

Updated at 6:27 p.m. ET

President Trump has ordered some 1,500 troops to the Gulf region to serve a "mostly protective" purpose for American forces and interests.

Trump made the announcement to reporters on the White House lawn before boarding Marine One.

In a Pentagon briefing on Friday, Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, the director of the Joint Staff, would not say where the additional troops would be sent, other than that they would not be heading to Iraq and Syria.

Kenya's High Court has chosen to uphold colonial-era laws that criminalize gay sex, dashing the hopes of activists who believed the judges would overturn sections of the penal code as unconstitutional and inspire a sea change across the continent.

Three judges said Friday that the laws in question did not target the LGBTQ community. They were not convinced that people's basic rights had been violated, they said.

Updated at 10:35 a.m.

Harvey Weinstein and his former film studio board members have reached a tentative deal with women who accused the movie mogul of sexual misconduct.

On Thursday, Adam Harris, a lawyer for Weinstein Co. co-founder Bob Weinstein, told a bankruptcy court judge that "an economic agreement in principal" had been reached.

Botswana's government is lifting a ban that protected its elephants from being hunted, part of a series of decisions that could have lasting impacts on the country's conservation efforts.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been reelected and his party is poised to take more seats than the 2014 election, signaling India's support of the strongman leader and his Hindu nationalist ideology.

The voting lasted almost six weeks to accommodate nearly 900 million people who were eligible to cast their votes.

On Thursday, the ballots were counted and results showed Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, winning more seats than any other party.

More than 1,000 victims of the Holocaust were buried Wednesday in Belarus, some 70 years after they were killed in the genocide.

Their bones were unearthed this winter by construction workers as they began to build luxury apartments in the southwestern city of Brest, near Poland.

Soldiers brought in to excavate found undisputed evidence of a mass grave: skulls with bullet holes, shoes and tattered clothing worn on the last day of people's lives.

Updated at 3:15 p.m. ET

Austria's vice chancellor has resigned after German media published a video that purportedly showed him offering government contracts to a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch, in exchange for media coverage and political funding.

The scandal drove Chancellor Sebastian Kurz to call for snap elections instead of trying to revive his weakened coalition government. "Enough is enough," he told reporters on Saturday in Vienna.

The number of people dying by suicide in the U.S. has been rising, and a new study shows that the suicide rate among girls ages 10 to 14 has been increasing faster than it has for boys of the same age.

Boys are still more likely to take their own lives. But the study published Friday in JAMA Network Open finds that girls are steadily narrowing that gap.

Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was sent back to jail Thursday after refusing for a second time to comply with a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

"Facing jail again, potentially today, doesn't change my stance," Manning told reporters in Alexandria, Va., before U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga said she was in contempt of court.

"I will not cooperate with this or any other grand jury," Manning insisted. "So it doesn't matter what it is or what the case is, I'm just not going to comply or cooperate."

An international cybercrime network that tried to steal an estimated $100 million has been taken down in a coordinated multinational effort.

Prosecutors and law enforcement officials from the United States and Europe, speaking at a news conference on Thursday in The Hague, say that criminals used malware to infect tens of thousands of computers worldwide, capturing online banking credentials from unknowing victims in a bid to extract their money.

Updated at 12:01 a.m. ET Friday

U.S. and Chinese negotiators will resume their high-stakes trade negotiations in Washington on Friday, hours after a scheduled increase in U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods took effect.

The Trump administration raised tariffs on $200 billion in imported products from China at 12:01 a.m. ET Friday, significantly raising the stakes in the ongoing trade dispute with Beijing.

The Federal Communications Commission has blocked a Chinese company from providing international phone services in the United States, citing national security concerns as tensions persist between Washington and Beijing.

China Mobile USA, though a Delaware corporation, is ultimately owned and controlled by the Chinese government, according to the FCC. The company filed an application in 2011 to provide international communications services.