Trump says he will speak to Putin over reported plague death in Russia

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would speak very soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the reported plague death of a laboratory technician, as Washington pressured Moscow for transparency. Russian authorities denied that they were imposing anti-plague measures and played down the reports of an incident at an anti-plague institute in Siberia's Irkutsk region last week. But Washington is showing growing concern, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling on Russia to be open about the situation. "We encourage Russia to be transparent and share more information with the world so that all of us could react accordingly and appropriately," Rubio said during a trip to Iceland. "Depending on what we learn about it, we would learn how to respond." Trump later said he would be speaking to Putin about what happened. "I have a call scheduled, yes," Trump told reporters at the White House when asked if he had spoken to Putin on the issue yet, adding that it would happen "very soon." The Wall Street Journal reported that the US State Department had sent Russia a confidential diplomatic communication known as a demarche warning Moscow that failure to disclose details runs co...