hello, i'm lewis vaughanjones, welcome to outside source. the us orders china out of its consulate in houston. firefighters are called to the building — after reports of documents being burned in the courtyard. needless to say, china's not pleased. china urges the us to immediately withdraw its wrong decision or china will definitely take a proper and necessary response. more us mayors call for an end to the deployment of federal forces in their cities. but the trump administration says

it won't stop sending in national officers. families and friends can be reunited with loved ones as some visits to care homes in england are allowed to restart. and ethiopia, egypt and sudan agree to further talks to resolve their dispute over a mega dam on the blue nile. welcome. the united states has ordered china to close its consulate in houston, texas in the latest escalation of diplomatic tensions between the two countries. us media in houston has been showing these pictures: chinese consular staff, apparently burning documents in the courtyard of the embassy. police and firefighters were called but weren't allowed into the building. the us state department says it wants to close the consulate to protect us intellectual property and private information. our state department correspondent barbara plett usher explains. now she spoke generally about years of complaints that the chinese

government was stealing intellectual property, hacking into various elements of both government and commercial entities here. as you heard, two chinese nationals were indicted by the department of justice for a long—term conspiracy they were charged with stealing secrets and the allegation was that they were linked to the chinese government. it is not clear whether this move isn't related to that one but given the long long—term complaints that the state department, that the american government has had about chinese behaviour, which china denies, it seems that this is a signal that they are ready to start being more consultation about it. no specifics but a clear signal. meanwhile the us secretary of state mike pompeo is currently in denmark, and he continued his call for countries to join the us in putting pressure on china on a range of issues. we are setting out clear expectations for how the chinese

communist party is going to behave and we are going to take actions that protect the american people, oui’ that protect the american people, our national security and also our economy and jobs. that is the actions that you are seeing being taken. well as you would expect, china isn't very happy about all this. the foreign ministry criticised the decision and even warned chinese students in the us to be on guard, alleging they'd been targeted by law enforcement agencies for harassment and detention. china strongly condemns this outrageous and unjustified move to sabotage china us relations. china urges the us to immediately withdraw the wrong decision. or china will definitely take a proper and necessary response. we are yet to see what that reaction will be, but its expected beijing will close one of the us embassies in china. but which one? our china correspondent stephen mcdonnell tweeted "which us consulate in china has the document shredders and burn bags on overdrive right now?

shanghai won't go. but great excuse for beijing to get rid of hong kong gotta be the favourite followed by shenyang and chengdu?" here's our washington correspondent for the bbc chinese service on what we can expect. for the past few days, china has been trying to dial down tensions with the us and this is a pattern of how a chinese government will react when tensions are high. now, this has become big news in china and anti—american sentiment is on the rise. china has to react to this and today, the foreign ministry spokesperson has suggested that at least at the minimum, closing one of the us consulates in china will be one of beijing's options. beijing might want to do it in a way that does not further escalate tensions. let's look at what else is happening in the us. within the next half hour or so,

president trump is due to speak about his plan to send federal officers to kansas city, in missouri. it's part a programme that's being called "operation legend", designed to fight a recent surge in violent crime. and it's the latest instance of the president sending federal, or national, officers into states, without the agreement of the city's mayor. 1a mayors from across the country, including — kansas city mayor quinton lucas — have now signed this letter addressed to attorney general william barr and chad wolf, the acting secretary of the department of homeland security. it asks them to stop sending federal officers to their cities. now one city where the federal police are already in place is portland, oregon. where protests over police brutality following the death of george floyd have been happening every night for nearly two months — sometimes turning violent. so how did we get here? the next day.

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