Top News Stories for Today – Jan 26, 2019
Top News Stories for Today – Jan 26, 2019
Trump signs bill to end shutdown
he U.S. Office of Management and Budget sent a memo late Friday to closed federal government departments and agencies to inform them that their divisions are now open and their employees can return to work. The memo called on the agencies to “reopen offices in a prompt and orderly manner.” The memo said the OMB appreciates the “cooperation and efforts during this difficult period” of the government shutdown.
Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a three-week spending bill, ending the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. VOA
US appoints new Venezuela envoy
wo European leaders said Saturday they would recognize Venezuela’s opposition leader as president if no election is called within eight days. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and French President Emmanuel Macron each said their countries are set to acknowledge Juan Guaido as the leader of Venezuela.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has appointed foreign policy veteran Elliott Abrams to be a special envoy overseeing U.S. policy on Venezuela, tasked with helping “restore democracy” to the South American nation. Pompeo made the announcement Friday afternoon in Washington, ahead of a special session of the United Nations Security Council Saturday. Pompeo said Abrams will travel with him to the meeting, which was initiated by the United States. VOA
US to send asylum seekers to Mexico
The United States was expected to send a first group of 20 Central American asylum seekers back to Mexico through the border city of Tijuana on Friday as part of President Donald Trump’s hardening of longstanding U.S. immigration policy.
Under a policy dubbed the Migrant Protection Protocols, announced on Dec. 20, the United States will return non-Mexican migrants who cross the U.S. southern border back to Mexico while their asylum requests are processed in U.S. immigration courts. Mexican Foreign Ministry spokesman Roberto Velasco said U.S. authorities were expected to send the first group of 20 Central American asylum seekers back to Mexico’s territory on Friday through Tijuana, but as of about 7:00 p.m. local time there were no reports of the group crossing the border. US News
Oldest earth rock found
Scientists analyzed a rock that was collected by Apollo 14 astronauts in 1971 and determined that it may be a piece of Earth. The rock, made up of quartz, feldspar, and zircon, likely hurtled toward the moon about 4 billion years when an asteroid or comet hit the earth’s surface, researchers theorize. Upon reaching the moon, it may have been buried beneath the lunar surface, where it remained until astronauts collected extraterrestrial rock for research. The 2-gram fragment is about the same age as the oldest minerals found on Earth, and could be the best-preserved piece of prehistoric earth ever discovered. The Guardian
Facebook to merge Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp features
Facebook plans to combine the messaging features of Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, therefore allowing their users to interact, The New York Times reports. Although Facebook will still keep all three apps separate, the company is moving toward “stitching the apps’ infrastructure together,” which “requires thousands of Facebook employees to reconfigure how WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger function at their most basic levels.”
This merge is reportedly intended, in part, to keep users engaged with messaging systems that Facebook owns rather than those operated by their competitors. Some Facebook employees are reportedly “confused” about this plan, with some finding it “jarring” because CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously promised Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp would remain separate. The New York Times