From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm Christopher Cruise reporting.
调整语速:
President Trump has confirmed that CIA director Mike Pompeo met secretly in Pyongyang, North Korea, with Kim Jong Un.
Mr. Trump said Pompeo met with Kim Jong Un last week, that it all went "very smoothly that the two formed a good relationship and that details of a possible U.S.-North Korea summit are being worked out.
The president spoke to reporters on Wednesday.
"By the way, he just left North Korea, had a great meeting with Kim Jong Un and got along with him really well, really great. He is that kind of guy, he is really smart but he gets along with people."
Mr. Trump has been meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this week in Florida. The prime minister said Trump's decision to meet with Kim took courage.
A U.N. security team was shot at and an explosive was detonated as the team attempted a reconnaissance mission to a Syrian town awaiting a visit from chemical weapons inspectors.
This is U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis responding to the report. "We're very much aware of the delay that the regime imposed on that -- on that delegation. But we are also very much aware of how they have operated in the past to seal what they have done using chemical weapons.
In other words, using the pause after a strike like that to try to clean up the evidence before the investigating team gets in. So it was unfortunate they were delayed."
A source at the United Nations told the Voice of America that none of the U.N. security team [measure] members, that is, were injured during the incident.
This is VOA news.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called early presidential and general elections for June 24. An election had already been set for November 2019, but Erdoğan said the unprecedented challenges facing the country make early elections a necessity.
The Cuban government said First Vice President Miguel Díaz-Canel is the only candidate nominated for president. That guarantees he will be the Communist country's next president, the first outside the Castro family in nearly 60 years.
He will succeed 86-year-old Raul Castro, who is resigning after two five-year terms.
Electricity went out throughout the American territory of Puerto Rico on Wednesday. The island continues to struggle to repair its increasingly unstable power grid nearly seven months after Hurricane Maria.
AP correspondent Jennifer King reports.
Electric power authority spokeswoman Yohari Molina told the AP that crews are investigating the cause.
Officials say it could take 24 to 36 hours to fully restore power.
Some 40,000 power customers are still without normal electricity services as a result of Hurricane Maria.
This is the first time since the days after the storm that Puerto Rico has experienced a full island-wide blackout.
I'm Jennifer King.
Even the power company's customer service center lost power.
After 16 years of steady decline, malaria cases are on the rise again globally.
Correspondent Henry Ridgwell reports from a malaria conference held Wednesday in London.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has invested billions of dollars into tackling malaria. It has paid off. Deaths from the disease fell by more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2015, meaning 7 million lives were saved.
In 2016, however, that trend was reversed. There were more than 216 million reported cases in 91 countries - an increase of 5 million from the previous year.
Henry Ridgwell, for VOA news, London.
Three men have been convicted in a U.S. federal court of plotting to blow up a group of apartments in the Midwestern state of Kansas where many Muslim immigrants from Somalia live.
The U.S. Justice Department says an informant and an undercover agent posing as a black market arms dealer helped stop the attack from going forward.
The three men could be sentenced to life in prison.
You can find more on these and other late breaking and developing stories, from around the world, around the clock, at voanews.com and on the VOA news mobile app. From the world headquarters of the Voice of America in Washington, I'm Christopher Cruise, VOA news.
