“The government has received official notification that King Salman will not travel to the G20 summit,” a spokesman told AFP.

The 81-year-old monarch will send Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan in his place, the German news agency DPA said separately.

The monarch was to have joined the meeting of major industrialised and emerging economies on Friday and Saturday.

Recent German media reports have said that the Saudi delegation had rented out Hamburg’s luxury Vier Jahreszeiten (Four Seasons) hotel in its entirety for the king and his delegation.

Saudi Arabia and its allies the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt have engaged in a bitter row with Qatar, severing air, sea and ground links and cutting off vital routes for imports including food.

They accuse Doha of supporting Islamic extremism and of being too close to their regional rival Iran, which Qatar has strongly denied.

They are demanding that Doha end support for the Muslim Brotherhood, close broadcaster Al-Jazeera, downgrade diplomatic ties with Iran and shut down a Turkish military base in the emirate.

Qatar Monday handed its official response to the demands to the emir of Kuwait, which is acting as a mediator, a Gulf official told AFP.

It was delivered hours after the four nations had accepted a call by Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah to extend the 10-day deadline for another 48 hours.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Monday travelled to the region, where he was to meet his Saudi counterpart Adel al-Jubeir and visit the UAE before heading to Qatar and Kuwait on Tuesday.

Another reported no-show at the Group of 20 meeting will be Brazilian President Michel Temer, who is under pressure at home in a bribery case.

Masao Gunji, who spent his working life on the trail of hardened criminals, now spends his retirement tracking down pink and white soft toys to keep in a Hello Kitty-themed house, which he built specially and has become a magnet for tourists.

“Kitty has been like the love of my life,” he said at his one-storey property, which is surrounded by regular houses.

“I love Kitty,” he added, calling her “adorable, especially her facial expressions”.

Hello Kitty, Japan’s global icon of cute, was introduced in 1974 and is now one of the country’s most famous exports — adorning everything from pencil cases to pyjamas.

To the surprise of fans, brand owner Sanrio said in 2014 the feline-inspired character was not actually a cat but a “happy little girl”, sparking uproar from Internet users who spluttered: “But she’s got whiskers!”

Though he doesn’t live in the property, Gunji was recognised last November by Guinness World Records for his collection, having spent around 30 million yen ($267,000) on thousands of items, including the house.

More than 5,000 items he owns bear Kitty’s iconic red bow, propelling Gunji past the previous record holder, also Japanese.

Gunji’s wife Yoshiko says she fully supports her husband’s passion.

“I don’t care how much he spends on Hello Kitty,” she said.

“People need to make a mark on the world, and Hello Kitty is the one he lives for,” she added.

“This is his dream.”//AFP

The unemployed man said in a chatroom linked to a video game that he wanted to buy a machine gun to kill Macron, the RMC radio station reported, adding that he had previously been convicted for condoning terrorism and was thought to be a far-right nationalist.

“We are realistic and will have several dead to report at the end of the day,” police spokesman Juergen Stadter told rolling news channel NTV.

There was “only a glimmer of hope” that 17 people missing after the collision would be found alive outside the coach, which was completely gutted, he added.

“Maybe someone ran away in shock,” Stadter said.

Another police spokeswoman, Anne Hoefer, also told AFP that “it is completely possible that some people did not make it out of the bus, it’s unclear where 17 of them are”.

The bus carrying 46 passengers and two drivers rammed into the trailer in a traffic jam on the motorway A9 close to the Bavarian town of Stammbach.

The crash shortly after 7 am (0500 GMT) sent the bus up in flames.

Some 31 injured people were pulled out of the bus, said Hoefer.

Images on television showed only a charred skeleton of the bus remaining.

It was unclear what kind of tour group the bus was carrying.

According to the Bild newspaper, the coach was travelling from the eastern region of Lausitz and heading for Nuremberg.

The accident struck near the town Bayreuth, which draws thousands of classical music lovers every summer to its opera festival.

The region close to the Czech border is also dotted with spas and castles, and the A9 is a trunk motorway leading to many popular summer holiday spots.

An emergency team, including firefighters and rescue workers, were at the scene, while traffic on the motorway was halted in both directions.

Those hurt were being flown by rescue helicopters to hospitals, many with life-threatening injuries.

If those missing are confirmed killed, the accident at the start of the summer holiday season would be one of the worst to hit Germany.

Among the deadliest in recent years was a collision in June 2007, when 13 people were killed as their tour bus drove off the road and plunged several metres down a slope in eastern Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt state.

In September 1992, 21 people died when a bus swerved out of its lane and struck a truck before ramming into the road divider in the southern Black Forest region, a key tourist destination.

Across Europe, the last such fatal accident struck on January 21 in Italy, when an accident involving a Hungarian bus carrying teenagers left 16 dead.

In France, a head-on crash in October 2015 between a truck and a bus carrying pensioners claimed 43 lives as both vehicles burst into flames.

Lee and the two younger children of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding leader, have since last month been waging a bitter war of words on social media over their revered father’s legacy, an unprecedented spectacle in a nation long used to censorship and libel suits against critics of the family.

“Their allegations are entirely baseless,” Lee told a regularly scheduled session of parliament.

His sister Wei Ling and brother Hsien Yang accuse the premier of exploiting their father’s legacy for his own political agenda, and seeking to groom his son to one day become leader of the city-state.

It is an escalation of a feud over what to do with a family bungalow that has simmered since the death in March 2015 of the elder Lee, who ruled Singapore with an iron hand but transformed the city-state into one of the world’s wealthiest societies.

The prime minister called for an open debate in parliament after the attacks on Facebook against him and his wife Ho Ching, who heads state investment fund Temasek Holdings.

Lee, who had earlier apologised to the nation for the open squabbling and admitted it had damaged Singapore’s reputation, Monday firmly rejected the claims in a statement to the legislature.

He said the allegations “have already damaged Singapore’s reputation”.

“Unrebutted, they can affect Singaporeans’ confidence in the government.”

He added that Singaporeans were “tired of the subject, and wish it would end. I too am upset that things have reached this state”.

At the centre of the dispute is the bungalow which the patriarch wanted destroyed after he passed away to prevent the creation of a personality cult.

The siblings said the prime minister is attempting to block the house’s demolition to exploit their father’s legacy, including grooming his own son to be a third-generation leader — a charge Lee and his wife denied.

The Lees are the closest thing Singapore has to royalty, dominating the now wealthy island’s politics for nearly six decades.

The patriarch served as prime minister from 1959 to 1990, and the current leader has been in power since 2004. The city-state has had only one other prime minister, Goh Chok Tong.

During a phone call, President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe “reaffirmed that the United States-Japan Alliance stands ready to defend (against) and respond to any threat or action taken by North Korea”, the White House said in a statement.

It added that the pair expressed “unity with respect to increasing pressure on the regime to change its dangerous path.”

During a separate phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the White House said it was Trump who “raised the growing threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”

“Both leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.”

But the White House made no mention of possible discussions between Trump and Xi over disputed islands in the South China Sea, even though the call took place just hours after a US warship sailed near an island in the waterway.

Beijing termed the incident a “serious political and military provocation.”

The destroyer, the USS Stethem, sailed less than 12 nautical miles from tiny Triton Island in the Paracel Islands archipelago, which is claimed by China as well as Taiwan and Vietnam, a US official told AFP.

On the call, Trump also “reiterated his determination to seek more balanced trade relations with America’s trading partners,” the White House said, a reference to the US administration’s aggressive stance on trade matters, especially as concerns China.

Pinning hopes on China

The Trump administration has been growing increasingly exasperated with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s regime, which has staged a barrage of missile tests in recent months.

Trump had been pinning his hopes on China — North Korea’s main diplomatic ally — to bring pressure to bear on Pyongyang, but declared last week that their efforts had failed.

He has presented sanctions as the best way to proceed with the hermit state, opting for that approach over dialogue with the regime.

During talks with South Korean leader Moon Jae-In — who has pushed for a policy of engagement with Pyongyang — on Friday, Trump called for a “determined response” to the North. But the pair failed to map out a joint strategy on how to handle North Korean threats.

“The era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed, many years it has failed. Frankly, that patience is over,” Trump said.

There was also deep anger in the United States after Otto Warmbier, an American student who was detained in North Korea on a tourist trip around 18 months ago, was returned home in a coma earlier this month. He died several days later.