News Headlines - 20 August 2018

▽Venezuela cuts five zeros from currency as economic plan sows confusion | Reuters

Venezuela on Monday slashed five zeros from prices as part of a broad economic plan that President Nicolas Maduro says will tame hyperinflation but critics call another raft of failed socialist policies that will push the chaotic country deeper into crisis... The price change comes with a 3,000 percent minimum wage hike, tax increases meant to shore up state coffers and a plan to peg salaries, prices and the country’s exchange rate to the petro, an elusive state-backed cryptocurrency.

▽US refuses to give Turkish bank relief in exchange for detained pastor’s release

The Trump administration rejected a proposal from the Turkish government that would free a detained American pastor in exchange for relief of one of its largest banks, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The report, which cites a senior White House official, said Turkey asked the U.S. to drop an ongoing investigation into Halkbank, one of the biggest state-owned Turkish banks. Halkbank faces major fines for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions on Iran.
In exchange, the Turkish government would release Andrew Brunson, an American pastor who has been detained in Turkey since 2016.

▽Japan ministries may have fiddled numbers of disabled employees: media | Reuters

Several ministries in Japan may have been inflating for decades the number of disabled people they employ in order to meet quotas, media said on Friday, even as the government imposes levies on private companies that fail to meet theirs... Government agencies reported in June that disabled employees made up 2.5 percent of their workforces — above the 2.3 percent target — but the real number might be less than half that, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper said.

▽Spanish police treat attempted knife attack as terrorist act | Reuters

A man, wielding a knife and uttering the word “Allah” lunged at an officer in a police station near Barcelona, Spain, on Monday in what police said was a terrorist act, and was shot dead.

▽Endangered baby gibbon introduced to Prague zoo | Euronews

An endangered Silvery Gibbon was introduced to the public at Prague Zoo in the Czech Republic Tuesday.
The Silvery Gibbon is one of the world's rarest primates and native to the island of Java in Indonesia, with less than 4,000 of the species living in the wild.