Top News Stories for Today – Oct 8, 2018
Top News Stories for Today – Oct 8, 2018
Second Trump-Kim Summit
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made his fourth trip to Pyongyang Sunday. During his day-long trip to North Korea, Pompeo and leader Kim Jong Un agreed to arrange a second summit with US President Donald Trump “as soon as possible.” Pompeo called the talks with Kim, productive and “another step forward” to denuclearization. However, experts aren’t as confident.
Secretary Pompeo traveled to Seoul immediately after his meeting with Kim, where he met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha. Moon expressed hope that a second Trump-Kim summit would make “irreversible, decisive progress in terms of denuclearization as well as the peace process.” VOA
Scientists warn climate change disaster
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a dire report on Monday, warning that in order to avoid catastrophic climate change by as early as 2040, governments around the world must take “unprecedented” action to limit global warming to “well below” 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The report was written by 91 scientists from 40 countries who examined more than 6,000 scientific studies.
They found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, by 2040, the atmosphere will heat up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels, causing a mass die off of coral reefs, intense droughts, coastal flooding, and food shortages. Bill Hare, author of previous IPCC reports and a physicist, told The New York Times the report is “quite a shock, and quite concerning. We were not aware of this just a few years ago.” The New York Times
Brazil’s presidential election
Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right candidate who has drawn comparison to President Trump, won almost half of the vote in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday. With 98 percent of ballots counted, Bolsonaro has 46.43 percent of the vote; had he reached 50 percent, Bolsonaro would have hit the threshold needed to avoid a runoff on Oct. 28.
His closest competitor was Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers Party, who received 28.7 percent of the vote. Bolsonaro, a seven-term congressman, has praised the country’s former military dictatorship, made inflammatory comments about women, minorities, and the LGBT community, and said he will push for development in the Amazon. He was stabbed last month while campaigning. The Washington Post
Yazidi community reacts to Murad’s Nobel Prize
The Yazidi community in Iraq and around the world expressed joy and hope after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2018 Peace Prize to Nadia Murad, a Yazidi activist and survivor of sexual slavery by the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq. Murad will be sharing the prize with Dr. Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist who treated thousands of women victims of rape and sexual violence.
The Nobel Peace Committee praised Murad’s courage because she did not accept the social codes that require women to remain silent and shamed after abuse. Members of the Yazidi community told VOA their voices are now being heard and their plea for justice after the Sinjar massacre is being acknowledged by the world. VOA
Tropical Storm Michael
The National Hurricane Center announced Sunday that Tropical Storm Michael, which is expected to bring heavy rains to parts of Cuba and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula through Monday, will likely soon become a hurricane. Brian Fortier, a senior meteorologist at the Weather Channel, said Michael will probably become a hurricane within the next 24 hours, and “stay a low-grade hurricane before it comes onshore and moves northeast across Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.”
Michael is expected to pick up speed over the next few days, reaching the US on Wednesday, and could bring heavy rains, winds, and dangerous storm surge to areas that experienced flooding during Hurricane Florence in September. NBC News
Taylor Swift breaks political silence
In an Instagram post on Sunday, Taylor Swift announced she is backing Tennessee Democrats Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives, adding that while she’s been “reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions,” she feels “very differently about that now” due to “several events in my life and in the world in the past two years.” Swift said she will be voting in Tennessee during the Nov. 6 midterm elections, and has always voted for candidates who “will protect and fight for the human rights we all deserve in this country.”
Citing her vote against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and belief that businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples, Swift shared she “cannot support” Republican Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn, saying her “voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me.” Swift has 112 million followers on Instagram.
Two win Nobel Economics Prize
This year’s Nobel Prize for economics has been awarded to William Nordhaus and Paul Romer for their work on sustainable growth. The US economists’ research focuses on how climate change and technology have affected the economy.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said they had addressed “some of our time’s most… pressing questions” on how to achieve sustainable growth. The duo will receive nine million Swedish krona. Prof Nordhaus, of Yale University, was the first person to create a model that described the interplay between the economy and the climate, the academy said. BBC