The United States will no longer allow people who enter the country illegally to claim asylum, officials said Thursday, unveiling a controversial new crackdown on immigration.

The U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday will bring a range of fresh faces to Washington, from the vice president's brother to the youngest-ever woman in Congress.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman welcomed U.S. sanctions that took effect Monday targeting Iran's oil and financial sectors, calling it a "critical" blow to Tehran's actions in the region.

"President (Donald) Trump's bold decision is the sea-change the Middle East has been waiting for," Lieberman said in a statement.

US President Donald Trump said Thursday he had "very good" talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the trade conflict between the two economic giants, and meetings were being planned at the G20 summit at the end of this month.

The Pentagon is deploying 5,200 active-duty troops to beef up security along the US-Mexico border, officials announced Monday, in a bid to prevent a caravan of Central American migrants from illegally crossing the frontier.

The Kremlin said Wednesday it was ready to discuss the possibility of a summit in Washington next year between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US counterpart Donald Trump.

The Kremlin on Monday said the world would be less safe if Washington goes ahead with plans to withdraw from a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty that banned intermediate-range missiles. 

"Such steps, if taken, will make the world more dangerous," said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov as he rejected claims by US President Donald Trump that Russia had violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).

China on Friday rejected US Vice President Mike Pence's charge that Beijing was meddling in American elections as "unwarranted" and "ridiculous".

In a blistering speech, Pence on Thursday accused China of military aggression, commercial theft and rising human rights violations as he cast the Asian power as a villain bent on interfering in upcoming US polls.

The U.N.'s top court ordered the United States on Wednesday to lift sanctions on humanitarian goods for Iran, in a stinging rebuke for the Trump administration which nonetheless made clear the decision would change nothing.

China on Wednesday denied US President Donald Trump's claims that it was meddling in the US midterm elections by taking aim at his political base in their escalating trade war. 

The comments came after Trump wrote a combative series of tweets on Tuesday claiming that Beijing's retaliatory import duties on US goods were seeking to influence knife-edge midterm congressional elections.