Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Sudan's military rulers say protest site threatens stability: TV

Sudan's military rulers on Thursday said that a protest encampment outside the Defence Ministry in central Khartoum has become a threat to stability after a military vehicle was attacked and seized. In a statement read on television stations, including state TV, a military spokesman also said that legal action would be taken against people who were unruly at the protest site. Pope to honor Romania's communist-era martyrs

Pope Francis travels on Friday to Romania, giving him another opportunity to preach a message of European integration and political rectitude even as he pays tribute to Christians killed during the communist era. On his second trip to Eastern Europe in under a month, Francis will spend three days in Romania, which is overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian. North Korea's Kim Jong Un carrying out purge after Hanoi summit collapse: Chosun Ilbo

North Korea executed Kim Hyok Chol, its special envoy to the United States, and foreign ministry officials who carried out working-level negotiations for the second U.S.-North Korea summit in February, holding them responsible for its collapse, a South Korean newspaper reported on Friday. Kim Yong Chol, a senior official who had been U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's counterpart in the run-up to the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, is also said to have been subjected to forced labor and ideological education, the Chosun Ilbo reported. Pence calls on Canada to do more to engage Cuba over Venezuelan crisis

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday called on Canada to do more to engage directly with Cuba over what Pence called the island nation's "malign influence" on Venezuela's political crisis. Pence said earlier in his visit to Ottawa that Canada should help "expose" Cuba's negative impact, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded that he thought Cuba could still help resolve the crisis. UK PM May's party faces worst ever election result amid Brexit crisis: poll

British Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party is facing its worst ever general election result if a vote were held now, according to a new opinion poll, as voters frustrated with the deadlock over Brexit will punish the main political parties. The Conservatives, one of the most successful parties in the western world, would slump to third place in a nationwide vote with 19 percent of the vote, its lowest place since the party was founded almost 200 years ago, the YouGov poll for The Times newspaper showed. At least five dead in blasts in Iraq's Kirkuk: medical sources

At least five people were killed and 18 injured in a series of explosions in the Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, medical sources in the city's general hospital told Reuters on Thursday. At least six improvised explosive devices went off in the northern city and two more were defused by security forces, the Iraqi military said in a statement. It gave a lower death toll of three and said 16 were injured. Pompeo says Iran attacked oil tankers to raise global oil price

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday blamed Iran for attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf, saying it was an effort by Tehran to raise the global price of oil. "These were efforts by the Iranians to raise the price of crude oil throughout the world," Pompeo told reporters shortly before leaving on a trip to Europe. Extinction Rebellion considers using drones to shut London's Heathrow Airport

Climate activists from Extinction Rebellion are considering using drones to shut London's Heathrow Airport this summer in a campaign against plans to build a third runway at Europe's busiest airport, the group said on Thursday. This would mark a significant escalation by Extinction Rebellion, which mobilized thousands of people in a peaceful civil disobedience campaign that brought parts of central London to a standstill in April. Seven South Koreans dead, hope dims for missing in Budapest boat disaster

Hungarian rescue officials said there was little chance of finding survivors after a boat with South Korean tourists on board sank on the Danube River in Budapest, with seven people confirmed dead and 21 missing. The boat was cruising when it collided with a larger luxury passenger boat during a rainstorm on Wednesday evening, causing it to capsize and sink with 33 South Korean tourists and tour guides and two Hungarian crew aboard. Saudi Arabia says firm Arab stand needed to deter Iran

Saudi Arabia's king told an emergency Arab summit on Thursday that decisive action was needed to stop Iranian "escalations" in the region following attacks on Gulf oil assets, as American officials said a U.S. military deployment had deterred Tehran. King Salman had opened an earlier meeting of Sunni Muslim Gulf leaders with a warning that Shi'ite Iran's development of nuclear and missile capabilities and its threatening of world oil supplies posed a risk to regional and global security.