Top News Stories for Today – Feb 25, 2019
Top News Stories for Today – Feb 25, 2019
91st Academy Awards
At the 91st Academy Awards on Sunday, Green Book came out on top, winning the Best Picture award. The night’s other winners include: Roma’s Alfonso Cuaron for Best Director and Best Cinematography; The Favorite’s Olivia Colman for Best Actress; Bohemian Rhapsody’s Rami Malek for Best Actor; If Beale Street Could Talk’s Regina King for Best Supporting Actress; Green Book’s Mahershala Ali for Best Supporting Actor; Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse for Best Animated Feature; and Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando, Andrew Wyatt, and Benjamin Rice won for Best Original Song for A Star is Born’s “Shallow.” Variety via The Week
How Many Push-Ups You Can Do Could Predict Your Risk of Heart Disease
Trump optimistic about summit with Kim
US President Donald Trump is predicting good relations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their summit this week in Vietnam, with the White House saying the main goal of the talks is the denuclearization of North Korea.
The two leaders met last June, after which Trump declared, “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” But as he meets Wednesday and Thursday with Kim in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, there is little concrete evidence that progress has been made to set the specific terms of North Korea’s promised denuclearization. When asked about what the definition of such denuclearization would be, a senior Trump administration official declined to discuss those details citing the ongoing talks. VOA
Trump postpones tariffs on China
Stocks markets in China closed up more than 5 percent Monday, rallying after US President Donald Trump announced he was postponing new tariffs on China because of what he said were “substantial progress” in trade talks between the world’s two largest economies. The president had set a March 1 deadline to hike tariffs on $200 million in Chinese goods from 10 to 25 percent if there was no deal.
While there is still no final agreement, Trump had said he would postpone those tariffs if a deal were close. Senior US and Chinese officials have been holding a series of trade talks in Beijing and Washington since Trump and Xi declared a 90-day truce in their trade war in December so a deal can be worked out. VOA
Tariffs: A history of repeated failure
Ex-national security officials dispute Trump
A bipartisan group of former national security officials is releasing an 11-page statement Monday arguing “there is no factual basis” for President Trump’s declared national emergency to build his border wall.
“Under no plausible assessment of the evidence is there a national emergency today that entitles the president to tap into funds appropriated for other purposes to build a wall at the southern border,” write the 58 officials, including former Secretaries of State Madeline Albright and John Kerry, former Defense Secretaries Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, and several officials from previous Republican administrations. The statement, released one day before the House will vote to terminate Trump’s emergency order, is partly intended to bolster legal challenges against the declaration. The Washington Post and The Associated Press via The Week
Pence to meet Guaido in Lima
Vice President Mike Pence is en route to Bogota, Colombia, where he is due to meet with the US-recognized interim president of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, and deliver a speech to the Lima Group on the growing crisis in Venezuela.
Pence and regional leaders are expected to discuss strategy to hasten the departure of disputed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and how to get humanitarian aid currently piling up on the border in Brazil and Colombia into Venezuela, where supplies of food and medicine have run low. Pence is expected to hold meetings with Guaido and Colombian president Ivan Duque, before delivering his remarks. The vice president is also scheduled to meet with Venezuelan exiles and their families before heading back to Washington. VOA
Pressure on May to consider Brexit delay
Theresa May is facing growing calls to say she would delay Brexit rather than leave the EU if no deal is in place by the end of March. A new plan from some Tory MPs suggests ministers postpone Brexit until 23 May “to conclude negotiations”. It is being suggested as an alternative to cross-party proposals which would see MPs take control of the process.
Dutch PM Mark Rutte warned May the UK was “sleepwalking into a no-deal scenario” and needed to “wake up”. The pair met at a summit in Egypt, as she presses EU leaders for more concessions to her deal. Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described a no-deal Brexit as a “lose-lose-lose scenario for everyone”, but he told reporters ahead of a meeting with May that he thought the outcome was unlikely. BBC
Britain and the European Union after Brexit