Following is a summary of current world news briefs. North Korea’s Kim lays out 80-day campaign to attain goals this year

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called on his country to embark on an 80-day campaign to attain its goals in every sector before a congress in January to decide a new five-year plan, state news agency KCNA said on Tuesday. Kim made the announcement in a politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party on Monday. The meeting comes during a difficult year for North Korea as the coronavirus pandemic puts more pressure on a economy hurt by recent storms and flooding. Palestinian business leader hopes UAE, Bahrain will press Israel to stop settlements

A top Palestinian business executive said on Monday that new Gulf Arab ties with Israel, condemned by Palestinian leaders, could also be an opportunity to apply fresh pressure to halt Jewish settlement in occupied land. Bashar Masri, a Palestinian-American who runs two of the Palestinians’ largest holding companies, said the Palestinians must find a way to turn agreements Israel struck last month with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain into “a positive thing for us”. Pompeo arrives in Japan for trip shortened by Trump’s COVID-19

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Japan on Tuesday shortly after midnight for a visit that has been cut short by President Donald Trump’s hospitalisation with COVID-19. The trip has been scaled back to one full day in Japan after Trump took ill and the State Department said Pompeo would not go to Mongolia and South Korea as originally planned. Virus-hunting trio win Nobel for hepatitis C discovery

Two Americans and a Briton won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for identifying the hepatitis C virus, in work spanning decades that has helped to limit the spread of the fatal disease and develop drugs to cure it. The discoveries by Harvey Alter, Charles Rice and Briton Michael Houghton mean there is now a chance of eradicating the hepatitis C virus – a goal the World Health Organization wants to achieve in the next decade. Chemical weapons watchdog ready to assist Russia in Navalny case

The global chemical weapons watchdog, which has been asked by Germany to test samples of what Berlin says was a banned nerve agent used to poison a Russian opposition figure, said on Monday its experts would be prepared to assist Russia in the case. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said it had received a request from Moscow on Oct. 1 for help in the case of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, and was seeking clarification on what type of assistance Russia wanted. ‘No isolation, few tests’: Argentina has world’s highest COVID-19 positive rate

Argentina has the world’s highest rate of positive COVID-19 tests, according to Oxford-linked tracker Our World In Data, with nearly six out of 10 yielding an infection, a reflection of low testing levels and loose enforcement of lockdown rules. Argentina was set to hit 800,000 confirmed cases on Monday, with an seven-day rolling average of around 12,500 new daily infections. The country, which started strongly against the virus, passed 20,000 fatalities last week. Split EU lawmakers rap Bulgaria on rule-of-law failings

The European Parliament turned up the heat on Bulgaria on Monday as lawmakers debated a resolution that highlights flaws by the EU’s poorest member in respecting the rule of law, combating endemic corruption and supporting media freedom. A vote is expected later this week on the resolution that challenges Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s governance after almost three months of anti-graft protests in Bulgaria that seek his resignation. Death toll rises as Azeris, Armenians say civilian areas are under fire

Azerbaijan and Armenia accused each other on Monday of attacking civilian areas and said the death toll was rising from the deadliest fighting in the South Caucasus region for more than 25 years. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg added his voice to calls for an immediate end to the clashes over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountain enclave that belongs to Azerbaijan under international law but is populated and governed by ethnic Armenians. EU sanctions ‘a small victory’: Belarusian opposition leader Tsikhanouskaya

European Union sanctions against 40 officials in Belarus are “a small victory” but should be widened, opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said on Monday, adding she would press Germany’s Angela Merkel to do more at a meeting on Tuesday. Tsikhanouskaya fled her homeland for Lithuania amid a police crackdown in Belarus following an Aug. 9 presidential election, which official results said incumbent Alexander Lukashenko won, but which Tsikhanouskaya’s supporters say was rigged. A dozen dead bodies found in abandoned vans in rural Mexico

Mexican authorities said on Monday they found the bodies of 12 men and women left in two abandoned vans in a rural area in the central state of San Luis Potosi, an area brimming with drug cartel activity. The San Luis Potosi state attorney general’s office said a written message from an alleged criminal organization was found next to the bodies of the 10 men and two women.