Briefly

CHINA

Top diplomat to visit Russia next week

Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Wang Yi will visit Russia for the 20th round of China-Russia strategic security consultation from Monday to Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry has announced. The consultation will be attended by Wang and Secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council Sergei Shoigu. The two sides will have in-depth exchanges of views on international and regional issues of common concern and strengthen communication and coordination on important issues that bear on the strategic security interests of the two countries, the ministry's spokeswoman Mao Ning told a daily news conference on Friday.

UNITED STATES

Trump plans land strikes on Venezuelan dealers

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that efforts to halt Venezuelan drug trafficking "by land" would begin "very soon", further ratcheting up tensions with Caracas, which claims the so-called antidrug campaign aims at regime change. The US so far has only operated in waters and sent a large deployment of US military, even including an aircraft carrier group, killing at least 83 people, according to an AFP tally of publicly released figures. It has released no details to back up its claims that the people targeted in the more than 20 strikes were actually traffickers.

China Daily - Xinhua - Agencies