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Munich, Feb 16: Iran's foreign minister said Saturday that US President Donald Trump is receiving bad advice if he believes an American "maximum pressure" campaign against his country will cause the government in Tehran to collapse.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a group of top defense officials and diplomats at the Munich Security Conference that the information provided to the president has dissuaded Trump from accepting offers from other leaders to mediate between Washington and Tehran.

"President Trump has been convinced that we are about to collapse so he doesn't want to talk to a collapsing regime," Zarif said.

To support his argument, the Iranian minister cited Trump's decision to pull out unilaterally in 2018 from Iran's nuclear deal with the US and other world powers. Trump said the landmark 2015 accord didn't address Iran's ballistic missile program or regional activities and needed to be renegotiated.

Since then, the Trump administration's re-imposition of US sanctions in a campaign of so-called "maximum pressure" have taken a severe toll on the Iranian economy and sent Iran's currency plunging.

"I believe President Trump, unfortunately, does not have good advisers," Zarif said. "He's been wanting for Iran to collapse since he withdrew from the nuclear deal." Zarif also said the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq on January 3 was a miscalculation by Washington that has galvanized support for Iran instead of increasing pressure on the regime.

The Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, promised Iran economic incentives in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. It was intended to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb, which Iran insists it does not want to do.

Since the US withdrawal, the deal's other signatories - Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China - have unsuccessfully struggled to come up with ways to offset the effects of the new American sanctions.

Washington has pressured the other countries - so far without success - to abandon the deal entirely US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the Munich Security Conference earlier Saturday that while there may be disagreements on what to do with the JCPOA, "when I talk to my counterparts here in Europe, everybody gets it."

"Everyone understands that these are folks who continue to build out their nuclear program," Pompeo said. "So there's a common understanding about the threat; we have tactical differences on how to proceed."

In recent months, Iran has steadily violated the limitations the deal placed on the amount of enriched uranium and heavy water it can stockpile, the number and type of centrifuges it can operate, and the purity of the uranium it enriches.

Iranian officials insist the moves are intended only to put pressure on the countries that remain part of the deal to provide economic help to Iran and that all the measures taken are fully reversible.

Zarif rejected Trump's suggestion of negotiating a new deal, saying the one negotiated during the Obama administration was the only vehicle for talks on Iran's nuclear program.

"There is no point in talking over something you already talked about. You don't buy a horse twice," he said.

"It's not about opening talks with the United States. It's about bringing the United States to the negotiating table that's already there," Zarif said.

Washington D.C., April 21: North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, is in grave danger following a surgery this month, according to a US intelligence official with direct knowledge.

Kim recently missed the celebration of his grandfather's birthday on April 15, which raised speculation about his well-being. He had been seen four days before that at a government meeting, according to intelligence reports cited by CNN.

The National Security Council and Office of the Director of National Intelligence have however declined to comment on the matter.

CNN has also reached out to the CIA and the State Department for comment and sought comment from the South Koreans.

Kim's absences from official state media often spark speculation and rumors about his health. North Korea has no free press and is often a black hole when it comes to the country's leadership. Analysts are heavily reliant on scanning state media dispatches and watching propaganda videos for any semblance of a clue.

Kim last appeared in North Korean state media on April 11. April 15 -- North Korea's most important holiday, the anniversary of the birth of the country's founding father, Kim Il Sung -- came and went without any official mention of Kim Jong Un's movements.

Experts are unsure of what to make of Kim's absence from any festivities celebrating his grandfather. When North Korean leaders have not shown up to these important celebrations in the past, it has portended major developments. But it has also turned out to be nothing.

"There have been a number of recent rumours about Kim's health (smoking, heart, and brain). If Kim is hospitalized, it would explain why he wasn't present on the important April 15th celebrations," said Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former CIA deputy division chief for North Korea. "But, over the years, there have been a number of false health rumors about Kim Jong-un or his father. We'll have to wait and see."

Kim Jong Il's absence from a parade celebrating North Korea's 60th anniversary in 2008 was followed by rumblings that he was in poor health. It was later revealed he had a stroke, after which his health continued to decline until his death in 2011.

Kim Jong Un disappeared from the public eye for more than a month in 2014, which also prompted speculation about his health. He returned sporting a cane, and days later South Korean intelligence said that he had a cyst removed from his ankle.

May 5: Global coronavirus deaths reached 250,000 on Monday after recorded infections topped 3.5 million, a news agency tally of official government data showed, although the rate of fatalities has slowed.

North America and European countries accounted for most of the new deaths and cases reported in recent days, but numbers were rising from smaller bases in Latin America, Africa and Russia.

Globally, there were 3,062 new deaths and 61,923 new cases over the past 24 hours, taking total cases to 3.58 million.

That easily exceeds the estimated 140,000 deaths worldwide in 2018 caused by measles, and compares with around 3 million to 5 million cases of severe illness caused annually by seasonal influenza, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

While the current trajectory of COVID-19 falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10% of patients, experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic.

The concerns come as several countries begin to ease strict lockdowns that have been credited with helping contain the spread of the virus.

"We could easily have a second or a third wave because a lot of places aren't immune," Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at Canberra Hospital, told Reuters. He noted the world was well short of herd immunity, which requires around 60% of the population to have recovered from the disease.

The first death linked to COVID-19 was reported on Jan. 10 in Wuhan, China after the coronavirus first emerged there in December. Global fatalities grew at a rate of 1-2% in recent days, down from 14% on March 21, according to the Reuters data.

DEATH RATE ANOMALIES

Mortality rates from recorded infections vary greatly from country to country.

Collignon said any country with a mortality rate of more than 2% almost certainly had underreported case numbers. Health experts fear those ratios could worsen in regions and countries less prepared to deal with the health crisis.

"If your mortality rate is higher than 2%, you've missed a lot of cases," he said, noting that countries overwhelmed by the outbreak were less likely to conduct testing in the community and record deaths outside of hospitals.

In the United States, around half the country's state governors partially reopened their economies over the weekend, while others, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, declared the move was premature.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who battled COVID-19 last month, has said the country was over the peak but it was still too early to relax lockdown measures.

Even in countries where the suppression of the disease has been considered successful, such as Australia and New Zealand which have recorded low daily rates of new infections for weeks, officials have been cautious.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has predicated a full lifting of curbs on widespread public adoption of a mobile phone tracking app and increased testing levels.