News in brief

Pope visits Romania 20 years after John Paul’s historic trip
AP, Bucharest
Pope Francis arrived in Romania on Friday for a three-day, cross-country pilgrimage that in many ways is completing the 1999 trip by St. John Paul II that marked the first-ever papal visit to a majority Orthodox country.
President Klaus Iohannis met Francis at the airport and the two huddled for a private meeting before Francis opened a series of meetings with Romania’s political and religious leadership.

North Korea confirms African swine fever outbreak
AP, Seoul
South Korea said Friday that it is scrambling to prevent the spread of the highly contagious African swine fever on its pig industry after North Korea confirmed an outbreak at a farm near its border with China.
South Korea’s agriculture ministry said North Korea reported to the World Organization for Animal Health that 77 of the 99 pigs at a farm in Jagang province died of the disease and another 22 pigs were culled.

Pompeo visits Germany as tensions rise
between US, Iran
AP, Berlin
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday that Washington would not stand in the way of a system Europeans are developing to shield companies from American sanctions if they deal with Iran, so long as the focus is providing humanitarian and other permitted goods.
Pompeo, making his first visit to Germany as secretary of state, said the U.S. does not take issue with the development of the system known as INSTEX, so long as it deals with the trade of goods not subject to sanctions as the Europeans contend it will.

2 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces
AP, Jerusalem
Israeli police shot and killed a 16-year-old Palestinian near the West Bank separation barrier on Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, while in Jerusalem’s Old City, an alleged Palestinian attacker was killed after stabbing and injuring two Israelis, according to Israeli police.
The outbreak of violence came as tens of thousands of worshippers were flocking to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque for noon prayers on the last Friday in the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

HRW condemns France ‘outsourcing’ of IS trials to Iraq
AFP, Baghdad
Human Rights Watch on Friday condemned France’s “outsourcing” of trials of Islamic State group suspects to “abusive justice systems”, after seven of its nationals have this week been sentenced to death in Iraq.
Two of them have “alleged that they were tortured or coerced to confess”, the New York-based watchdog said in a statement.