Japan's PM Shinzo Abe heads to Iran this week on a rare diplomatic mission, hoping to ease tensions between the Islamic Republic and Tokyo's key ally Washington, news wires reported. Abe will meet President Hassan Rouhani and the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on his 3-days trip, started on Wednesday, the first time a Japanese prime minister has visited Iran since 1978, a year before the country's revolution.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through Hong Kong on Sunday to voice their opposition to government-sponsored legislation that would allow people to be extradited to mainland China to face charges. The peaceful protest however turned violent early Monday when several hundred protesters stormed Hong Kong's parliament and clashed with police.

Moldova’s newly appointed acting president Pavel Filip on Sunday dissolved parliament and called snap elections, as a political crisis rocks the ex-Soviet country, news wires reported. Filip signed a decree dissolving parliament and calling snap elections in Moldova for 6 September after the Constitutional Court on Sunday suspended pro-Russia president Igor Dodon and named Filip, who is the acting prime minister, as acting president.

Albania’s president Ilir Meta has canceled upcoming municipal elections, citing the need to reduce political tensions in the country, news wires reported. According to him the actual circumstances do not provide necessary conditions for true, democratic, representative and all-inclusive elections on 30 June.

Moldova’s parties on Saturday agreed to form a government and appoint Maia Sandu, a former education minister and World Bank adviser, as prime minister with a mandate to curb the power of oligarchs in one of Europe’s poorest countries, news wires reported. “Injustice has come to an end today in Moldova,” Sandu said. “Today begins the process of the purification of Moldova.”

The United States and Mexico struck a deal on Friday to avert a tariff war, after Mexico agreed to rapidly expand a controversial asylum programme and to deploy security forces to stem the flow of illegal Central American migrants, news wires reported. The US President Donald Trump had threatened to impose 5% import tariffs on all Mexican goods starting on Monday if Mexico did not commit to do more to tighten its borders.

Pope Francis will receive Russian President Vladimir Putin for an audience on 4 July, the Vatican announced on Thursday. The meeting will be the third between the two men, with Francis having received Putin most recently in 2015, when the pope urged all parties to the conflict in Ukraine to make a "sincere effort" for peace.

The US President Donald Trump arrived on his state visit to Britain on Monday in a combative mood, following up his weekend interventions over Brexit with a broadside against London’s “loser” mayor, news wires reported.

On Sunday, the last day of his 3-day visit to Romania, Pope Francis visited the central city of Blaj. In the morning, in the presence of some 60 thousand faithful, he celebrated the Divine Liturgy and beatified seven Greek Catholic bishops who were martyred under the communist regime.

We know that the Inter-Korean talks and the US-North Korea talks are linked to one another and they both advance only if they advance in parallel, said EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who participates in the 18th edition of IISS Shangri-La Dialogue 2019 in Singapore.