
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has told Britain it will not get a free trade deal unless it drops a new tax proposal for major U.S. tech companies, the Telegraph newspaper reported late on Friday.

The head of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research said on Friday he was going to be sacked following a row with President Jair Bolsonaro over deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly hit out at China for failing to curb the export of illegal fentanyl to the United States. The powerful painkiller is the primary synthetic opioid available in the US, a class of drug that was responsible for almost 32,000 overdose deaths last year.

Brazil's authorities maintained Friday President Jair Bolsonaro's haircut was not the reason for leaving France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in the lurch and argued it was all a matter of agenda.

Known for rolling up her sleeves, Bulgaria's Kristalina Georgieva has been lauded as the life of the party, as well as for her tenacity. The guitar-playing environmental specialist, who was nominated on Friday as the EU's candidate to head the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Illegal coca plantations in Colombia reduced slightly in 2018 but the country remains the world's biggest producer of the primary ingredient in cocaine production, the United Nations said on Friday.

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will attend a summit in Lima, Peru to discuss Venezuela on Tuesday, the US Commerce Department said. US national security adviser John Bolton has also confirmed attendance, two sources in Peru's foreign ministry said on Friday.

The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the opposition are continuing talks in Barbados to try to find ways to resolve the Latin American country's political crisis, the Foreign Ministry of mediator Norway said on Friday.

President Donald Trump has labelled recent protests in Hong Kong as “riots”, adopting the language used by Chinese authorities and suggesting that the United States would stay out of an issue that was “between Hong Kong and China”.

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers on Friday urged the Trump administration to suspend future sales of munitions and crowd-control equipment to Hong Kong police which has been accused of using excessive force against anti-government protesters.