News Headlines - 20 April 2018

▽North Korea’s Kim Strikes Milder Tone on Nuclear Tests, Detainees - WSJ

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would close its nuclear-test site and suspend long-range missile launches but hinted that he didn’t intend to give up his nuclear arsenal—at least not immediately... Mr. Kim’s remarks come after the U.S. made public a visit to Pyongyang by Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo, who was given assurances by Mr. Kim that a summit with Mr. Trump could be paired with the release of three detained U.S. citizens, according to people briefed on the meeting.

▽Syria hands back Assad award to US 'slave' France | Daily Mail Online

Syria returned to France the prestigious Legion d'Honneur it gave to President Bashar al-Assad, saying Thursday he would not wear the award of a "slave" to America... The office of French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that "a disciplinary procedure for withdrawing the Legion d'Honneur (Legion of Honour) is underway".

▽The BBC will now let you download thousands of its sound effects free | Metro News

As long as you agree to a few simple rules, you can visit the BBC’s website and download 16,000 sounds to use as you please. A lot of these old sounds were stored on tape or even records like the one in the video below, but now they are available as high-resolution WAV files for anyone to access.

▽Cotton buds and plastic straws could be banned in England next year | The Guardian

Cotton buds, plastic drinking straws and other single-use plastics could be banned from sale in England next year in the next phase of the campaign to try to halt the pollution of the world’s rivers and oceans... Cotton buds, often flushed down the lavatory, are one of the most serious sources of marine pollution... Altogether it is estimated that there are 150m tonnes of plastic in the world’s oceans, and over 100,000 sea mammals die from eating or getting tangled up in plastic waste.

▽Deutsche Bank blames ‘operational error’ for accidental €28bn transfer

Deutsche sent the €28bn to an account at Deutsche Boerse Eurex about a week before Easter, Bloomberg reported on Thursday evening. Deutsche, whose market value is €24bn, had intended to make a much smaller transfer... News of the blunder comes the day after Deutsche’s chief operating office Kim Hammonds, who was responsible for overhauling Deutsche’s creaking IT systems, became the third member of Deutsche’s top executive team to depart in a matter of weeks.