Bedugul Coffee: Monday Morning Briefing: Pompeo's chilly meeting in China

Highlights

A meeting of top U.S. and Chinese diplomats got off to a frosty start with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi airing grievances amid worsening bilateral relations.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was ready to allow international inspectors into the North’s nuclear and missile testing sites, one of the main sticking points over an earlier denuclearization pledge. Pompeo met Kim during a short trip to Pyongyang on Sunday.

William Nordhaus and Paul Romer won the 2018 Nobel Economics Prize for integrating climate change and technological innovation into macroeconomic analysis, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences says.

World

China said it was investigating former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei for bribery and other violations, days after French authorities said the Chinese official had been reported missing by his wife after traveling from France to his home country.

A Bulgarian journalist who reported on an investigation into alleged corruption involving European Union funds has been murdered in the Danube town of Ruse, authorities said on Sunday.

President Tayyip Erdogan said he was closely following the case of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi after Turkish officials said they believed he had been killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Commentary: Do so-called “safe spaces” endanger contemporary intellectual life, asks columnist John Lloyd, threatening even basic freedoms of speech and publication? “Few great social changes are wholly positive,” John Lloyd writes. “To know the nature of those who offend you. To read Adolf Hitler’s memoir, Mein Kampf, for example, is to go beyond the cardboard villain.... To understand, even in part, a monster through his own words is a sounder basis for opposition to fascism than mere sloganeering.”