Russia and China spent this week’s U.N. General Assembly working to undermine international sanctions against North Korea’s nuclear program, to the exasperation of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who seeks to rally the world community and show firm resolve to North Korea at a crucial moment in the denuclearization drama.

President Donald Trump claimed at the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that China is attempting to interfere in the 2018 U.S. election. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi denied the allegation, insisting the Chinese “do not and will not” interfere in the domestic politics of other countries.

The United Nations General Assembly opened on Tuesday with a bit of American political controversy, as the White House appeared to back away from U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s proposal for a Security Council session to “address Iran’s violations of international law.”

The United States called an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Monday to discuss “efforts by some member states to undermine and obstruct North Korea sanctions violations.”

President Donald Trump will chair a U.N. Security Council meeting on Iran when the annual gathering of world leaders descends on New York this month.

China has defied international sanctions by opening a North Korean travel agency in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei last Friday with the aim of strongly promoting tourism to the rogue communist state. 

BEIRUT — The Syrian government on Tuesday called on refugees to return, saying it has successfully cleared large areas of “terrorists.”

BERLIN — Germany has said it will stand up for Israel’s interests and security if it wins a non-permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Vasily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, told a Security Council meeting that Britain’s allegations in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal are reminiscent of Nazi propaganda.

A Russia-ordered “humanitarian pause” has gone into effect to allow civilians to leave a rebel-held enclave near Damascus, giving a brief respite to the residents of the besieged area that has been under intense attack by the Syrian government for weeks.

Thirty-eight more people were reportedly killed in the Assad regime’s bombing campaign against the Eastern Ghouta district near Damascus, bringing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’ estimate to 310 killed and over 1,550 injured since Sunday.

A Reuters exclusive on Thursday quoted three sources inside Western European intelligence agencies who said North Korea shipped coal to Russia in 2017 in a probable violation of U.N. sanctions.

U.S. officials say they have satellite photographs showing Chinese cargo ships loading North Korean coal in defiance of U.N. sanctions, beginning just days after the sanctions were imposed.

At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday, United States U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley spoke in support of the Iranian protest movement, criticized the regime in Tehran for suppressing the free speech rights of its citizens, and said the world would be carefully watching as events continue to unfold in Iran.

Whether or not the protests in Iran are “dwindling,” as the regime insists and some foreign journalists reported, the uprising certainly has not been extinguished yet. U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley declared at an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Friday that the world will be watching Iran as demonstrations against both the secular government and Islamic theocracy continue.

A hard-line cleric leading Friday prayers in Iran’s capital called on the Islamic Republic to build its own social media, blaming people taking advantage of the apps to fuel the unrest that followed days of protests over the country’s flagging economy.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley made a statement on the uprising in Iran on Tuesday, giving strong support to the “brave people of Iran” and dismissing as “complete nonsense” the Iranian regime’s excuses for a crackdown.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Sunday declaring the latest round of U.N. sanctions an “act of war” equivalent to a “complete economic blockade,” and threatening the safety of the United States unless it accepts North Korea as a nuclear nation.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a statement on Thursday expressing “grave concern” about the sale of migrants as slaves in Libya, calling the slave markets “heinous abuses of human rights which may also amount to crimes against humanity.”

The U.N. Security Council issued a worldwide port ban on Monday against four ships said to have carried prohibited North Korean cargo in defiance of sanctions. According to U.N. panel coordinator Hugh Griffiths, “this is the first time in U.N. history” that such an all-ports ban has been issued.

The UN Security Council on Thursday unanimously decided to set up an investigation team to collect evidence on the massacres of Iraq’s Yazidi minority and other atrocities committed by the Islamic State group in Iraq.

North Korea’s latest round of belligerent rhetoric comes from the amusingly named Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, a Pyongyang propaganda outfit that threatened genocide against Japan, continental devastation for the United States, and ruination for the U.N. Security Council in its Thursday dispatch.

The AFP news agency reported on Wednesday afternoon that a draft U.N. resolution prepared by the United States would impose an oil embargo against North Korea.

Center for Security Policy President for Research and Analysis Clare Lopez blamed political mismanagement stretching back for decades, rather than a failure of intelligence-gathering, for the shock of North Korea’s latest nuclear test on Monday’s special Labor Day edition of Breitbart News Daily.

Leaders around the world, prominently including U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, vowed to bring increased pressure to bear against North Korea after its reckless launch of a ballistic missile over Japanese territory on Monday afternoon. The question, as always, is exactly what kind of pressure can be applied, especially if China does not agree to punish its feral client regime more harshly.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced a new round of sanctions against Chinese and Russian individuals and corporate entities for supporting North Korea’s nuclear bomb and missile programs.

China was willing to vote for stronger U.N. sanctions against its unruly client regime in North Korea, but Chinese media are sending decidedly mixed signals in the wake of the vote. The histrionics in Beijing’s state-managed newspapers seem intended to send a message that China is not prepared to go any further with North Korea.

North Korea lashed out with the expected venom and threats of violence after crushing new sanctions were imposed by a unanimous vote of the U.N. Security Council on Saturday. Although the unanimous vote means North Korea’s patrons in China and Russia agreed with the Trump administration’s push for heavier sanctions, Pyongyang’s ire was focused largely on Washington.

The turbulent relationship between the Trump administration and China might be about to take another surprising turn, as Reuters quotes diplomats who say a deal for stronger sanctions against North Korea may have been quietly struck.

Speaking from the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin conceded that the North Korean nuclear situation is “very serious,” but added: “One must not lose his cool, but rather act in a pragmatic and delicate manner.”