U.S. and Chinese negotiators on Thursday kicked off two days of high-level talks that President Donald Trump says could decide whether he escalates the bruising tariff battle between the world's two biggest economies.

The U.S. has called for other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The call Thursday by Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Andrea Thompson in Beijing comes as the U.S. is preparing to withdraw from a separate pact, the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States and the former Soviet Union.

Top U.S. and Chinese trade officials returned to the bargaining table Wednesday, working to avoid a sharp escalation in the trade war between the world's two largest economies.

Tens of millions of people in the United States are bracing for a potentially life-threatening deep arctic chill forecast to hit swaths of the country on Wednesday.

The US Treasury Department lifted sanctions Sunday on Russian aluminum giant Rusal and two related companies after blacklisted billionaire Oleg Deripaska took action to sharply cut his stake in them.

With a month left in their truce, senior US and Chinese officials will meet in Washington this week, hoping to move toward a bargain to end their unprecedented trade war.

President Donald Trump on Friday brought a temporary end to the longest government shutdown in US history, while dropping his previous insistence on immediate funding for wall construction along the Mexican border.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accuses the United States of trying to orchestrate a coup against him. While the U.S. says it's trying to rescue Venezuela's democracy, Washington has a long history of interventions — military and otherwise — in Latin American politics.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed "great satisfaction" after receiving a letter from US President Donald Trump ahead of a second summit between the two, Pyongyang's state media reported Thursday.

US Senate leaders have agreed to vote Thursday on competing proposals to end a government shutdown now in its second month, but the chances are slim that either will reopen federal agencies.