US-Funded El Salvador Police Linked To Extra-judicial Killings

The United States has quietly funded and equipped elite paramilitary police officers in El Salvador who are accused of illegally executing gang members, according to CNN.

Successive US administrations have pumped tens of millions of dollars into Salvadoran law enforcement and military to shore up the government’s “Mano Dura” or Firm Hand program, first launched in 2003 but redoubled in 2014 to tackle the country’s rampant gang problem.

Yet the country’s police will be broadly accused next month of “a pattern of behaviour by security personnel amounting to extrajudicial executions” in a United Nations report, seen in advance by CNN, that will also call on Salvadoran security forces to break a “cycle of impunity” in which killings are rarely punished.

European Union (EU) top diplomats on Monday urged Venezuela to hold “fresh” presidential elections, days after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for a second term. In a move aimed to bring Caracas to heel, the EU foreign ministers threatened to swiftly impose “targeted and reversible restrictive measures”, according to the conclusions adopted at the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council.

Two unidentified men walked into a restaurant on Thursday in the Canadian city of Mississauga and set off a bomb, wounding more than a dozen people, local police said. The blast went off in the Bombay Bhel restaurant at about 10:30 p.m local time. According to Reuters, fifteen people were taken to hospital, three of them with critical injuries, the Peel Regional Paramedic Service said in a Tweet.

Trump, Mexican President Square Up Over Border Wall

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday accused Mexico of doing “nothing” to stop illegal immigrants crossing into the United States, and repeated his election campaign pledge that Mexico would pay for his planned border wall.

Very quickly Mexico replied: no we won’t.

Trump was addressing supporters in a campaign-style rally in Nashville, Tennessee when he returned to the wall he wants to build on the U.S. southern border to keep out illegal immigrants.

US President Donald Trump has said his summit with North Korea's leader could still happen on 12 June, despite earlier cancelling the meeting.

"We'll see what happens. It could even be the 12th. We're talking to them now. They very much want to do it, we'd like to do it," he told reporters.

On Thursday, he blamed the North's "open hostility" for the cancellation of his talks with Kim Jong-un.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday called off a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scheduled for next month, citing Pyongyang’s “open hostility,” and warned that the U.S. military was ready in the event of any reckless acts by North Korea.

Trump announced his abrupt withdrawal from what would have been a first-ever meeting between a serving U.S. president and a North Korean leader in Singapore on June 12 in a letter to Kim.

“Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it would be inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump wrote. “Please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place.”