News Headlines - 12 May 2019
▽South Africa's ANC wins re-election with reduced majority | Al Jazeera
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has won South Africa's parliamentary elections with 57.5 percent of the vote, the electoral commission said, announcing the official results.
Saturday's win assured a sixth straight term in power for the ANC. But the result was the worst-ever electoral showing for the party, which has ruled South Africa since the end of apartheid 25 years ago.
▽Wide divide remains among NPT states - NHK WORLD
Disagreement between nuclear and non-nuclear countries has prevented the meeting of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, from adopting a consensus document.
About 190 member states took part in the preparatory session for the 2020 review conference of the treaty which was held over two weeks at UN headquarters in New York. It ended on Friday.
▽Mexico will produce all its own gasoline in three years: president - Reuters
Mexico will be self sufficient in its gasoline needs in three years, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday, once a major new refinery he wants to build is due to be completed... Many oil industry analysts believe a three-year time frame for the refinery is optimistic, but the president doubled down on the target during his news conference.
▽Chinese court hands Japanese man 5 1/2 years in prison over spying - Japan Today
A court in northeastern China's Liaoning Province has sentenced a Japanese man in his 60s to five years and six months in prison for spying, sources well-informed about Sino-Japanese relations said.
The Intermediate People's Court in Dalian also ordered the man, an executive of a company in Shikoku, to forfeit personal assets totaling 200,000 yuan (about $29,000), the sources said... He was in May 2017 detained in the province on suspicion of spying, and indicted in March last year.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo agreed Thursday to closely coordinate their response to North Korea's recent launches of projectiles.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting in Washington, Suga said he briefed Pompeo about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's intention to hold talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un -- without preconditions -- to try and resolve the issue of Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.
Suga and Pompeo also agreed to jointly seek a swift resolution to the abduction issue, and to effect the full enforcement of U.N. sanctions on North Korea in tandem with the international community to force Pyongyang to give up nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
