Top News Stories for Today – Mar 9, 2019
Top News Stories for Today – Mar 9, 2019
Japanese woman honored as oldest person
A 116-year-old Japanese woman who loves playing the board game Othello was honored Saturday as the world’s oldest living person by Guinness World Records. The global authority on records officially recognized Kane Tanaka in a ceremony at the nursing home where she lives in Fukuoka, in Japan’s southwest. Her family and the mayor were present to celebrate.
Tanaka was born Jan. 2, 1903, the seventh among eight children. She married Hideo Tanaka in 1922, and they had four children and adopted another child. She is usually up by 6 a.m. and enjoys studying mathematics. The previous oldest living person was another Japanese woman, Chiyo Miyako, who died in July at age 117. The oldest person before Miyako was also Japanese. The Voice of America
N Korea may be preparing Missile or space launch
North Korea may be preparing for a missile or space launch, US news outlet NPR has reported, based on satellite image analysis of a key facility near Pyongyang. NPR said the images of Sanumdong, one of the facilities Pyongyang has used to produce inter-continental ballistic missiles and space rockets, were taken days before US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in Hanoi for their high-stakes summit, which ended in failure.
The photos by the firm DigitalGlobe show the presence of cars and trucks at the site on February 22, said NPR – which has exclusive access to the imagery. It added that rail cars and cranes can also be seen at a yard. The Voice of America
US adds 20,000 jobs in February
American businesses and other employers created the fewest new jobs in February in 17 months, the latest sign of a broader slowdown in the US economy. The economy added just 20,000 new jobs last month, the smallest gain since September 2017, the government said Friday.
The number of new nonfarm jobs created last month was well below the 172,000 MarketWatch forecast, but the slowdown was probably exaggerated by heavy snow and other seasonal oddities that are unlikely to persist. The US has been adding more than 200,000 new jobs a month for the past year. Hiring sputtered in February in construction, retail and shipping and was muted in most other industries. Market Watch
US judge rules WH must reunited separated families
A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to reunite thousands of families who were separated at the US-Mexico border. The decision follows an earlier one which initially stated that the administration was responsible for reuniting 2,800 families who were separated after June 26, 2018.
But a watchdog report revealed that thousands of additional families may have been separated as far back as July 1, 2017. The judge, Dana Sabraw, has now included those families in his ruling. Identifying the families will likely prove to be difficult, as the government did not have an adequate tracking system at the time of the separations. But Sabraw said it “can be done.” NPR, The Associated Press via The Week
Trump’s comment on China trade deal
US President Donald Trump says he will not sign a trade deal with China unless it is a “very good deal.” Trump made the comments Friday as he left the White House to tour tornado damage in the southern US state of Alabama. The United States and China have been battling over trade tariffs since last year. The White House is planning a summit between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Florida later this year.
The trade dispute between the United States and China has begun to affect China’s economic growth. Recent economic data reveal the difficulties China faced in the fourth quarter of 2018 as its growth rate slowed to 6.4 percent. China’s government announced major tax cuts, fee reductions and a looser monetary policy to combat the economic growth slowdown. The Voice of America
Chinese FM: Huawei case is deliberate political suppression
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday called the legal clash between Chinese company Huawei and the US government “deliberate political suppression,” and he vowed to protect the rights of Chinese companies and citizens abroad.
“It’s quite obvious to any fair and unbiased person that the recent action against a particular company and Chinese individual is not just a pure judicial case but deliberate political suppression,” Wang said on the sidelines of China’s annual parliament session.
Washington has banned US companies from using Huawei technology, warning that doing so could result in security breaches. The Voice of America
Venezuela blackout continues
A widespread power cut affecting much of Venezuela continued throughout Friday ahead of planned protests on Saturday. President Nicolás Maduro and the US-backed opposition trying to oust him have blamed each other for the outage. Hospitals struggled to cope and at least one hospital patient died when her respirator stopped working.
The power cuts, which started on Thursday, have been caused by problems at a major hydroelectric plant. Venezuela depends on its vast hydroelectric infrastructure, rather than its oil reserves, for its domestic electricity supply. But decades of underinvestment has damaged the major dams, and sporadic blackouts are commonplace. BBC