Trudeau: No meeting was requested

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he rejected a one-on-one meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the trade dispute involving the North American neighbors and renewed his threat to slap tariffs on cars imported from Canada.

Trudeau spokeswoman Eleanore Catenaro said in response: “No meeting was requested. We don’t have any comment beyond that.”

In an extraordinary rebuke of America’s northern neighbor, Mr. Trump vented his frustration with Canada during a news conference along the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the latest sign of deteriorating relations between the two allies.

“His tariffs are too high and he doesn’t seem to want to move and I’ve told him forget about it,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Trudeau. “And frankly, we’re thinking about just taxing cars coming in from Canada. That’s the mother lode. That’s the big one.”

Canada, the United States’ No. 2 trading partner, was left out when the U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement last month to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Pompeo to visit N. Korea

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accepted an invitation from North Korea on Wednesday to return to Pyongyang next month, a sign that denuclearization talks will resume after President Donald Trump canceled a meeting last month citing a “lack of progress.”

Mr. Pompeo will discuss securing the “final, fully verified denuclearization” of North Korea, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement, and “prepare for a second summit between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim [Jong Un].”

Mr. Pompeo made the announcement after meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Clash over Syria’s future

With the military front lines frozen for now, the battle for Syria’s future shifted to the United Nations as the U.S. and Russia clashed over postwar plans and sought the world body’s approval.

The dispute took center stage on Wednesday at a meeting of foreign ministers and top officials in New York, where the U.N. is holding its annual gathering of world leaders. Russia is pushing the U.N. to help find funds for rebuilding Syria, and the U.S. insists it should be overseeing a political transition away from Bashar Assad’s rule.

Tensions have already flared over Syria this week. President Donald Trump, addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, repeated his threat to attack the Syrian army if it uses chemical weapons again. U.S. officials slammed Russia’s plan to deliver advanced S-300 air-defense systems to Syria.

Study: 382K dead in war

Years of brutal civil war in South Sudan have left at least 382,000 people dead, according to an estimate in a new State Departmentfunded study that far surpasses an earlier figure issued by the United Nations and points to the horrors of an often-overlooked conflict.

The findings of the study, conducted by a small team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine but commissioned by the U.S. Institute for Peace in partnership with the State Department, were released Wednesday.

In March 2016, U.N. officials estimated that the conflict had killed about 50,000.