NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has met Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, face-to-face for the first time at the Lotte New York Palace hotel, less than 15 kilometers from the Brooklyn prison where Nicolas Maduro has been held since U.S. forces abducted him nearly nine months ago. The closed-door meeting, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, was the first between U.S. and Venezuelan heads of state in more than 11 years. Rodríguez called it a “historic meeting,” saying the two sides discussed strengthening bilateral ties and cooperation in energy, mining, and security. For critics of Venezuela’s interim government, the image of Rodríguez standing beside the man who ordered Maduro’s abduction amounted to a betrayal — the moment Caracas legitimized a kidnapping and opened the country’s resources to a foreign power.

 

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NAIROBI (Reuters) - Thousands of displaced people in Somalia’s southwest could experience famine between October and December if El Nino causes worse-than-expected flooding and humanitarian aid remains insufficient, a global hunger monitor said on Wednesday. Baidoa, one of Somalia’s biggest cities, is home to hundreds of thousands displaced by conflict and hunger. A report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), an initiative of UN agencies, regional bodies and aid groups, said that 5% of displaced people in Baidoa, or about 26,000, were likely to face starvation and a collapse in livelihoods in October to December. More than 5 million Somalis, 26% of the analyzed population, are already suffering crisis-level food insecurity or worse due to repeated droughts, conflict and aid shortfalls, the report said. An estimated 1.92 million children aged 6 months to 5 years will require treatment for acute malnutrition by next June, including 433,000 severe cases.

 

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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan curbed access on Wednesday to its capital, Islamabad, ahead of a march planned by supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, blocking major highways with shipping containers and deploying tens of thousands of security forces. The show of force is the starkest sign in years of how divisions between Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and the military-backed government have polarized the South Asian nation of 240 million. Ahead of Sunday’s planned march, authorities detained three of Khan’s sisters and hundreds of party activists in recent days, citing a need to maintain public order. The PTI’s last large-scale protest two years ago ended in deadly clashes with security forces.

 

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Hundreds of students protested in Delhi on Wednesday, demanding better safety for women, after a teenager said she had been gang-raped by three men posing as police officers at a park in the national capital this week. Police shot and caught one suspect on Tuesday and were questioning two more, who were brothers, senior police officer Vijay Kumar told reporters after the 17-year-old reported the assault. Protesters, most of them female and several wearing face masks, held placards and shouted slogans while marching on the streets near the crime scene on Wednesday evening, demanding safety. “Our body is our own,” some placards said, while others demanded freedom to go out at night without fear.

 

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Republican U.S. senator on Tuesday called for an investigation into whether President Donald Trump’s family is profiting from his time in office, saying any perception that family members are exploiting their position undermines trust in the government. Senator John Curtis wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee calling for a probe into businesses owned by Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and payments by a Russian oligarch for his wedding celebrations in the Bahamas this year. Congressional Democrats launched an investigation last week into the wedding payments.