News Headlines - 25 April 2019
Ending months of speculation, former Vice President Joe Biden announced Thursday he is launching his third presidential campaign. Instantly joining the race as an early frontrunner, the former vice president and more than a dozen major Democratic candidates seek to deny President Trump a second term.
North Korea issued a $2 million bill for the hospital care of comatose American Otto Warmbier, insisting that a U.S. official sign a pledge to pay it before being allowed to fly the University of Virginia student home from Pyongyang in 2017.
The presentation of the invoice - not previously disclosed by U.S. or North Korean officials - was extraordinarily brazen even for a regime known for its aggressive tactics.
But the main U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions passed down from President Trump, according to two people familiar with the situation. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
▽Japan to Compensate Forcibly Sterilized Patients, Decades After the Fact - The New York Times
More than 20 years after it repealed a eugenics law, Japan has agreed to compensate victims of a decades-long government program under which thousands of people were forcibly sterilized because of intellectual disabilities, mental illness or genetic disorders.
Under a bill passed by Japan’s Parliament on Wednesday, the government will offer 3.2 million yen, or about $28,600, to each of the survivors who were sterilized between 1948 and 1996 under the law.
Of the estimated 25,000 people who were sterilized, the government has identified about 5,400, and it is not known how many are still living.
▽Japan's Hitachi plans to sell chemical unit, sources say - Reuters
Japan’s Hitachi Ltd plans to sell its majority stake in Hitachi Chemical, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters, in what would mark the latest deal by the sprawling conglomerate to streamline its businesses... The sale of Hitachi Chemical could start as early as next month, one of the sources said, adding that the unit could attract strategic suitors as well as buyout funds. Both sources declined to be identified as the information is not public.
▽Sri Lanka says 60 people arrested since Easter Sunday blasts - Reuters
More than 60 people have been arrested since the rash of Easter Sunday suicide bombing attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka that killed at least 359 people, the leader of the country’s parliament said on Wednesday.
