Raised voices could be heard through the thick door to the Oval Office as John Kelly — then secretary of Homeland Security — offered some tough talk to President Donald Trump.

Kelly, a whip-cracking retired general who was sworn in as White House chief of staff on Monday, had demanded to speak to the president alone after Trump complained loudly that the U.S. was admitting travelers from countries such as Afghanistan, Iran and Haiti.

President Nicolas Maduro brushed off new U.S. sanctions on him and condemnation at home and abroad of the newly chosen constitutional assembly, saying the vote has given him a popular mandate to radically overhaul Venezuela's political system.

Maduro said Monday evening he had no intention of deviating from his plans to rewrite the constitution and go after a string of enemies, from independent Venezuelan news channels to gunmen he claimed were sent by neighboring Colombia to disrupt the vote as part of an international conspiracy led by the man he calls "Emperor Donald Trump."

North Korea after decades of effort has a missile potentially capable of reaching the continental United States, but analysts say Pyongyang has yet to show the ICBM can inflict serious damage once it gets there.

U.S. and South Korean experts on Tuesday said Japanese video footage capturing the Hwasong-14's re-entry vehicle shortly before it crashed into the sea suggests it failed to survive the extreme heat and pressure after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere following its launch from northern North Korea on Friday.

George Clooney's foundation is planning to open seven public schools for Syrian refugee children.

The second round of an exchange between Lebanon's Hizbullah and Syria's former al-Qaida affiliate al-Nusra Front has been postponed to Tuesday due to "logistical problems," TV networks said on Monday.

The process was supposed to begin with the evacuation of Nusra's militants and their families from the outskirts of the Lebanese border town of Arsal to north Syria.

Iraq's influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is on a rare visit to Saudi Arabia.

Al-Sadr's office released a statement Sunday saying he'd been invited to the Sunni kingdom.

Hizbullah's al-Manar TV station reported Sunday that the group was exchanging the bodies of dead fighters with al-Nusra Front along the Lebanese-Syrian border in the first stage of a settlement that would restore order to the border region.

Hizbullah said it is handing over the bodies of nine Nusra fighters in exchange for the bodies of five of its own who were killed in two weeks of battles along the frontier.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat hailed on Saturday Hizbullah's fighters who were killed during a battle to “eliminate” al-Nusra Front group militants from the outskirts of Arsal.

“We are waiting for the Lebanese army to conclude the operation in Arsal's outskirts, meanwhile we greet the martyrs of Hizbullah who have fallen during the first stage of the mission,” said Jumblat in a tweet.

The tenure of Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff has ended after six months.

President Donald Trump announced via Twitter on Friday that he's replacing the former Republican Party chairman with the secretary of homeland security, John Kelly.

The Senate's decisive vote to approve a new package of stiff financial sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea sends the popular bill to President Donald Trump, who will be under pressure to sign it after weeks of intense negotiations.

Trump's likelihood of supporting the measure is a remarkable concession that the president has yet to sell his party on his hopes for forging a warmer relationship with Moscow. Trump's vow to extend a hand of cooperation to Russian President Vladimir Putin has been met with resistance as skeptical lawmakers look to limit the executive power's leeway to go easy on Moscow over its meddling in the 2016 presidential election.