From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbarale. This is The Daily.

Today, President Trump abruptly cancels a historic summit with Kim Jong-un.

The world and North Korea in particular, he writes, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace.

It's Friday, May 25th.

I'm here at North Korea's nuclear test site at Punggady, a place that foreign journalists have never been allowed before.

And we are here. The North Korean government says to witness the destruction of this site, they say it will never be able to be used again.

Thursday began with this carefully selected group of journalists who had been flown into North Korea to witness the demolition, the blowing up of an underground nuclear testing facility.

Mark Landler covers the White House for the times.

The North Koreans had made a very big show of inviting this group of outsiders to witness this act.

We travel around 15 hours to get here, first by bus, through the coastal city of Wonsan.

Compartment 7, here we are.

Then, some 12 hours by train.

They had to truck them to a very remote site, by plane, by car. They even had to hike a certain amount of distance to get to this place, this viewing site, where they could watch this facility buried into a hillside blow up in front of them.

They had three tunnels that were still remaining at the site, and they blew them up. These were major explosions.

And why did North Korea demolish this site in such a public fashion?

This was meant to be one of a series of confidence building gestures by the North Koreans, halting missile tests, releasing three Americans who had been detained in North Korea.

Gestures to the United States and to South Korea, that the North Koreans were serious when they said they were ready to give up their nuclear arsenal.

And all of this, of course, was aimed at building confidence in advance of the big show, the meeting between Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, and President Trump.

So yes, Thursday started off on a very promising note.

Welcome again to our viewers here in the United States and around the world, significant breaking news on this Thursday morning, the Plan Summit, the historic summit in just a few weeks between Kim Jong-un and President Trump is now off this coming in a letter.

So very soon after the end of this highly public exercise in North Korea, the demolition of this nuclear site, the White House puts out a letter at about 9.45 in the morning, late afternoon in North Korea, from President Trump to Kim Jong-un in which the President essentially says our meeting is off.

And did anyone know that this letter was coming? No, it came completely out of the blue, and frankly, even more so because President Trump had recorded an interview with Fox, which aired early in the morning on Thursday.

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