(HONG KONG) — Only after finding safety in numbers, joining hundreds of other pro-government protesters in Hong Kong on Saturday, did Reddy Lin drum up the courage to slip into her red T-shirt marked, “China, I love you” and glue a heart-shaped Chinese-flag sticker on her face.

But for the train ride home, the teacher said she’d be taking all her pro-China garb off again. The risk of running into supporters from the rival camp, those who oppose China’s communist rulers, was simply too great, she said.

“It’s very dangerous. They’ll beat you,” she said. “They’re brutes.”

Lin and hundreds of other protesters waving red Chinese flags packed a Hong Kong park to vociferously denounce what they say is a reign of terror being imposed on the city by months of anti-government demonstrations. The protest highlighted the widening gulf between the pro- and anti-government camps in Hong Kong, with divisions that appear irreconcilable.

Compared to the hundreds of anti-government rallies that have..

(UNITED NATIONS) — North Korea said Saturday that denuclearization has “already gone out of the negotiation table” and it does not need to have lengthy talks with the United States now.

North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Kim Song accused the Trump administration of persistently pursuing a “hostile policy” toward the country “in its attempt to stifle it” — and of using claims that it is engaged in a “sustained and substantial dialogue” with Pyongyang solely for “its domestic political agenda.”

Song’s statement was a response to Wednesday’s condemnation by six European countries of North Korea’s 13 ballistic missile launches since May. The North Korean envoy accused the Europeans of playing “the role of pet dog of the United States in recent months.”

His comments came as prospects dim for a resumption of nuclear diplomacy between the United States and North Korea.

(MINSK, Belarus) — The leaders of Russia and Belarus spent more than five hours Saturday in sensitive talks on deepening ties between the two allies — a meeting that triggered a protest in the Belarusian capital among those who fear Russia’s intentions.

No immediate deal was announced after the talks in Sochi on Russia’s Black Sea coast between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, but a senior Russian official said they edged closer to an agreement.

More than 1,000 opposition demonstrators rallied in Minsk to protest closer integration with Russia, which they fear could erode the post-Soviet independence of Belarus, a nation of 10 million. The protesters marched across the Belarusian capital, chanting “No to integration!” and “Belarus to Europe!”

Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for more than a quarter-century, relies on cheap Russian energy and loans to maintain his country’s Soviet-style economy.

Russia and Belarus sig..