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STATE DEPARTMENT � The United States is urging China to play a more prominent role in combating global terrorism and help change the calculus on North Korea, ahead of high-level security talks with Beijing.

The first round of the U.S.-China Diplomatic and Security Dialogue kicks off in Washington Wednesday.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis will host a Chinese delegation led by State Councilor Yang Jiechi and General Fang Fenghui, chief of the People's Liberation Army's Joint Staff Department.

Senior U.S. officials say China has taken a fairly limited profile in counterterrorism efforts. It is not a member of the 68-nation global coalition countering the Islamic State militant group

We would like to see them step up and take more responsibility, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Susan Thornton told VOA on Monday.

Thornton said China has a lot of interest in Iraq, and the U.S. thinks it should be doing more to contribute to the efforts of the international coalition to defeat IS.

Killings concern China

Earlier this month, two Chinese citizens were killed by Islamic State militants after being kidnapped in southwestern Pakistan. In November 2015, IS said it killed Chinese national Fan Jinghui. Both cases triggered grave concern from Beijing.

We have seen them [Chinese officials] become more interested over time, added Thornton, noting the talks are an early feeler on getting China more involved.

On Tuesday, Chinese officials said both countries have been victims of terrorism.

Cooperation is in the interests of both sides, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in Beijing.

Leveraging China's ties to North Korea

On North Korea, the U.S. is looking for China to change the calculus of the isolated regime and exert its leverage as North Korea's largest trading partner.

The most urgent and dangerous threat to peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region is North Korea, said Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia David Helvey on Tuesday. We seek to deepen our cooperation to realize the outcome which is in the best interest of peace and security in the region and the world.

The United Nations has blacklisted hundreds of North Korean entities, but many of them try to get business done though China, according to U.S. officials.

The issue is a sticking point between Washington and Beijing that experts say needs to be the focus of frank discussion.

The Chinese remain unconvinced that the U.S. goal is not regime change. The U.S. side remains unconvinced that China's goal is not to use the North Korean problem as leverage in the relationship, Dennis Wilder from Georgetown University's U.S.-China Initiative told VOA.

This is a matter of strategic trust that can only be built through this type of dialogue at the most senior levels, added Wilder, who served as the senior director for East Asian affairs at the National Security Council under former President George W. Bush.

'Freeze' proposed

Rand Corporation senior defense analyst Derek Grossman notes the last thing Beijing wants is a conflict that would end Kim Jong Un's regime and unleash new power dynamics at its doorstep.

Grossman said China's perpetual security concern is reflected in its proposal that the U.S. and South Korea freeze routine joint exercises in exchange for Pyongyang suspending its missile and nuclear programs.

U.S. officials say they welcome actions by countries that have ramped up pressure on Pyongyang, including phasing out the use of North Korean laborers, and denying the landing rights and refueling privileges of North Korea's national airline Air Koryo.

A lot of the wages of these workers go to the regime and to fund unlawful programs in North Korea, Thornton told reporters.

U.S. officials said Wednesday's Diplomatic and Security Dialogue is a departure from the Strategic and Economic Dialogue of years past that covered a wide range of issues. Instead, they say this week's discussion reflects a streamlined approach and will more narrowly focus on key security issues.

South China Sea

Another area in which Washington hopes to make headway is the disputed South China Sea, where Beijing's island building has raised concerns.

U.S. officials are calling for a binding code of conduct to resolve differences.

All parties should freeze any construction or militarization of features that they have outposts on in this space and make room and create the conditions for diplomacy, said Thornton.

Source: Voice of America

WASHINGTON � Killer heat is getting worse, a new study shows.

Deadly heat waves like the one now broiling the American West are bigger killers than previously thought and they are going to grow more frequent, according to a new comprehensive study of fatal heat conditions. Still, those stretches may be less lethal in the future, as people become accustomed to them.

A team of researchers examined 1,949 deadly heat waves from around the world since 1980 to look for trends, define when heat is so severe it kills and forecast the future. They found that nearly one in three people now experience 20 days a year when the heat reaches deadly levels. But the study predicts that up to three in four people worldwide will endure that kind of heat by the end of the century, if global warming continues unabated.

The United States is going to be an oven, said Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii, lead author of a study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The study comes as much of the U.S. swelters through extended triple-digit heat. Temperatures hit records of 106, 105 and 103 in Santa Rosa, Livermore and San Jose, California on Sunday, as a heat wave was forecast to continue through midweek. In late May, temperatures in Turbat, Pakistan, climbed to about 128 degrees (53.5 degrees Celsius); if confirmed, that could be among the five hottest temperatures reliably measured on Earth, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of Weather Underground.

Last year 22 countries or territories set or tied records for their hottest temperatures on record, said Masters, who wasn't part of the study. So far this year, seven have done so.

This is already bad. We already know it, Mora said. The empirical data suggest it's getting much worse.

Mora and colleagues created an interactive global map with past heat waves and computer simulations to determine how much more frequent they will become under different carbon dioxide pollution scenarios. The map shows that under the current pollution projections, the entire eastern United States will have a significant number of killer heat days. Even higher numbers are predicted for the Southeast U.S., much of Central and South America, central Africa, India, Pakistan, much of Asia and Australia.

Mora and outside climate scientists said the study and map underestimate past heat waves in many poorer hot areas where record-keeping is weak. It's more accurate when it comes to richer areas like the United States and Europe.

If pollution continues as it has, Mora said, by the end of the century the southern United States will have entire summers of what he called lethal heat conditions.

A hotter world doesn't necessarily mean more deaths in all locales, Mora said. That's because he found over time the same blistering conditions _ heat and humidity _ killed fewer people than in the past, mostly because of air conditioning and governments doing a better job keeping people from dying in the heat. So while heat kills and temperatures are rising, people are adapting, though mostly in countries that can afford it. And those that can't afford it are likely to get worse heat in the future.

This work confirms the alarming projections of increasing hot days over coming decades - hot enough to threaten lives on a very large scale, said Dr. Howard Frumkin, a University of Washington environmental health professor who wasn't part of the study.

Mora documented more than 100,000 deaths since 1980, but said there are likely far more because of areas that didn't have good data. Not all of them were caused by man-made climate change.

Just one heat wave - in Europe in 2003 - killed more than 70,000 people.

Source: Voice of America

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LONDON � The carnage of the London Bridge attack could have been worse: One of the attackers tried to rent a larger truck that could have killed more people, but his payment was declined. The bloodthirsty gang was also shot dead before they could make their way back to the van where their petrol bombs were stored.

In a rare glimpse into the weeklong investigation, police released details on Saturday that showed Khuram Butt originally tried to rent a 7.5 ton truck. The intended truck was smaller but similar to the one used in the Nice attack last year that killed 86 people and injured hundreds in the resort town in the south of France.

After his payment was declined, Butt and his two accomplices rented a smaller van that they used to plow into crowds before they leapt from the vehicle and went on a stabbing rampage in an attack that left eight people dead and nearly 50 people injured. It was the third such deadly attack in Britain in the three months.

Knives featured pink blades

After leaving the small white van, the men used 12-inch knives with bright pink blades, according to Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Police's Counter-Terrorism Command.

Police also disclosed that multiple petrol bombs were discovered in the van, and a copy of the Quran opened at a page describing martyrdom was found at one of the attackers' houses.

Investigators believe three victims were killed on the bridge, including one man who was thrown into the Thames River, before the attackers left the vehicle and stabbed five people to death around London's busy Borough Market, Haydon said. Police believe Butt was driving the van.

When I come back to Butt trying getting hold of a 7.5 ton lorry � the effect could have been even worse, he said.

Molotov cocktails found

More than a dozen wine bottles filled with flammable liquid and rags wrapped around them in the shape of Molotov cocktails were found in the van. Two blow torches were also found.

Haydon said the men may have been planning even more bloodshed if they had survived their stabbing spree and made it back to the van.

Police also found a number of office chairs, gravel and a suitcase in the van.

Detectives believe the gravel may have been placed in the vehicle to make it heavier, or as part of a cover to justify hiring it, while the chairs may have been used to convince family and friends they were moving furniture.

Butt, a 27-year-old Pakistan-born British citizen, and his two accomplices, Rachid Redouane, 30, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan, and Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent, were shot dead by armed police eight minutes after the first emergency call.

Fake suicide belts

The three attackers were wearing fake suicide belts consisting of plastic water bottles wrapped in grey duct tape.

Haydon described the pink knives as pretty unusual and appealed for anyone with information about where they came from to contact police.

Police raided Redouane's small residence on Tuesday and said he had been renting it since April. This was the safe house where the attack was planned, police said. In the residence, police found an English language copy of the Quran opened at a page describing martyrdom, pieces of cloth which appeared to match material wrapped around the petrol bombs and water bottles similar to those used in the fake suicide vests, police said. Luggage straps, plastic retractable craft knives and rolls of duct tape were also found.

Eighteen people have been arrested in connection with last week's attack. All but five have been released. Searches are continuing.

Questions remain

The question remains how the men met and knew one another but police said Saturday they did not suspect a wider plot.

It looks as if it is pretty much a contained plot involving the three of them, which is supported by the forensic evidence we've got back so far, Haydon said.

Butt, who police consider the attack ringleader, had been on bail after being arrested for fraud in a case in October of last year, police said. He had also been repeatedly reported to police for violent behavior and trying to recruit young children to the Islamic State group as well as featuring in the documentary, The Jihadis Next Door, where he was seen next to a group of men unfurling a black-and-white flag scrawled with Arabic script and associated with the Islamic State group.

Warned by police

There was no evidence uncovered of any attack-planning in relation to him,' Haydon said.

Butt had been warned by police on two occasions � once for fraud in 2008 and once in 2010 for assault. Still, he did not have any criminal convictions.

Zaghba and Redouane lacked any criminal convictions or such warnings in Britain.

From what I'm seeing, there is nothing that suggests at the moment that we got that wrong, Haydon said, referring to Butt.

Source: Voice of America