North Korea Saturday lashed out at US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over his comments on Pyongyang's "rogue behaviour" and warned its expectations for nuclear talks with Washington are "gradually disappearing".

An Iranian official published an image Saturday of a satellite after an apparent rocket explosion at the space center meant to launch it, tweeting at President Donald Trump after the American leader shared online what appeared to be a surveillance photo of the aftermath.

The tweet from Iran's Information and Communications Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, including a selfie of him in front of the Nahid-1, comes as Tehran has yet to acknowledge Thursday's explosion at the Imam Khomeini Space Center.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he gave his approval to the unannounced invitation of Iran's top diplomat on the margins of the G-7 summit, denying Monday that he was surprised or angered.

French President Emmanuel Macron's invitation was a bold gamble that he could secure a breakthrough in global tensions over Iran's nuclear program following Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the 2015 nuclear deal and impose new sanctions.

Moscow on Tuesday said the United States was ramping up military tensions by testing a medium-range cruise missile weeks after tearing up a pact with Russia.

Chinese and US negotiators held talks in Shanghai Wednesday in a bid to bring an end to a year-long trade war, with the meeting overshadowed by a Twitter tirade from President Donald Trump.

Washington and Beijing have so far hit each other with punitive tariffs covering more than $360 billion in two-way trade in a row centred on demands for China to curb the alleged theft of American technology and provide a level playing field to US companies.

Caught in the crossfire of the US-China trade war, Chinese students are looking for alternative study destinations -- threatening to turn off an important source of revenue for American universities.

Russia and China on Tuesday blocked an American initiative that aimed to halt fuel deliveries to North Korea, which Washington accuses of exceeding its annual ceiling for 2019, diplomatic sources said.

Moscow and Beijing said more time was needed to study the US request, which was backed by 25 UN members including Japan, France and Germany, according to the sources. 

Washington has blamed Iran for a twin attack on tankers in sensitive Gulf waters, releasing grainy footage it said implicates Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces in one of the operations.

The U.S. military on Friday released a video it said shows Iran's Revolutionary Guard removing an unexploded limpet mine from one of the oil tankers targeted near the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting the Islamic Republic sought to remove evidence of its involvement from the scene. Iran denies being involved, accusing the U.S. instead of waging an "Iranophobic campaign" against it.

The U.S. Navy rushed to assist the stricken vessels in the Gulf of Oman, off the coast of Iran, including one that was set ablaze Thursday by an explosion.

The United States is accusing North Korea of breaching a UN-imposed ceiling on fuel imports by carrying out dozens of ship-to-ship transfers this year, according to a report obtained by AFP on Wednesday.

Backed by 25 countries including Japan, France and Germany, the United States asked a UN sanctions committee to rule that the annual cap of 500,000 barrels had been exceeded and order all countries to immediately halt fuel deliveries to North Korea.