The White House announced on Friday that US President Donald Trump, his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, will hold a tripartite meeting next week on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, hosted by the Chinese city of Shenzhen.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wells told reporters about the talks scheduled for Thursday, saying: “The president has made clear that he will discuss, among other topics, the issue of reducing nuclear weapons in the world,” adding that “President Trump believes that this proliferation poses an extreme risk.”
Although the leaders' meeting for joint talks will constitute an exceptional event, analysts say that expectations are low that the talks will result in major breakthroughs, and that their symbolic nature will overshadow their actual content.
Trump showed great rapprochement with Xi after reaching a truce in their short trade war last year, despite disagreements over the US war with Iran and other tensions between the two largest economic powers in the world.
US President Donald Trump intends to discuss the Iran war with his Chinese and Russian counterparts, but he is not expected to address the war in Ukraine, a senior US official said on Friday.
The official, who requested to remain anonymous during a phone call with journalists, said: “I believe that the president intends to talk about Iran during the tripartite meeting that he will have with both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.”
He added that Washington has a “completely different path” for negotiations with Kiev and Moscow, noting that “China is not actually part of this path, so it does not seem appropriate to hold a discussion about Ukraine there.”
The US official also ruled out that President Trump would address the issue of Alice Huang, a suspected Chinese spy who allegedly had a relationship with former NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, when he visits China in the coming days to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference.
On Friday, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a decision to stop the takeoff of all aircraft nationwide “for exceptional circumstances and safety reasons,” after it had previously reported serious problems with air traffic control communications.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullen announced that there are no indications yet of a threat to the United States behind the decision.
“There is no indication, so far, that this is a malicious attack against us, it is just a communication breakdown,” Mullen said, adding that officials “are not ruling out any possibility at this stage.”
The decision means that planes in the air can land, but planes on the ground will not be allowed to take off.
Shortly before the announcement, the administration halted air traffic in Chicago due to problems with air traffic control communications, according to what Reuters reported.
The administration added: “All departing aircraft must remain parked in place until further notice.” The administration explained that international flights will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
Later, US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said that the Federal Aviation Administration's decision was due to a communications problem affecting all air traffic control centers, adding that FAA technicians were examining the problem.
This is the second nationwide decision to stop all departing flights since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The other decision was in January 2023, when the authority stopped all domestic flights departing for less than two hours.
Last year, Congress approved $12.5 billion in funding to modernize the agency's outdated communications system.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration and the White House asked Congress to allocate another $30.1 billion to deal with other problems.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum confirmed on Friday that there were no migrant convoys heading to the US border, after her US counterpart, Donald Trump, threatened to increase customs duties on the country if it did not prevent migrants from heading north.
Sheinbaum's government has intervened since September to obstruct the movements of groups of migrants arriving from Central America, but at least two other groups have tried to head north in recent days.
The leftist president said during her daily press conference: “There is currently no migrant convoy heading to the northern border,” noting that the local authorities succeeded in dissuading a group of people from continuing their journey, after they set off last week.
Trump said on Thursday that the tariffs imposed on Mexico would “immediately double” if the authorities failed to prevent migrant caravans from heading to the border.
Migrants in two convoys, the first comprising about a thousand people and the second about a hundred, expressed their hope that the defeat of the Republicans in the midterm elections would lead to an easing of restrictions imposed on crossing the US border, according to Agence France-Presse.
