From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm Jee Abbey Lee reporting.
All 100 U.S. senators were invited to extraordinary classified briefings Wednesday. Those attending were able to ask questions to the president's national security team and learned about the range of options to counter nuclear threats from North Korea.
They gathered Wednesday afternoon in an auditorium of the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford led the briefing.
President Donald Trump was also in attendance for a brief time, calling it a very important event.
Senator Chris Coons told VOA the session was sobering.
"I was reassured that the Trump administration, Secretary Tillerson and others, are consulting all of our allies in the region and China to reduce the likelihood of a miscalculation, a misunderstanding. Given the unpredictability of the North Korean regime, though, this is certainly an unsettling situation." :Senator Chris Coons.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said he is running out of strategic patience and is considering possible military options to end North Korea's nuclear threat.
The comments have raised concerns military options will trigger a deadly response that could easily expand into a regional nuclear war.
Rejecting former President Barack Obama's policy that focus on containment and sanctions, the White House has designated Pyongyang's efforts to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile - an urgent existential security threat.
This is VOA news.
President Donald Trump called Wednesday for a dramatic cut in U.S. corporate taxes to boost job growth in the world's largest economy and massive reforms in the country's [complete] complex tax code that would affect millions of American taxpayers.
Trump proposed cutting the U.S. corporate tax rate, the highest among the world's industrialized nations, from 35 to 15 percent. He also called for the one-time repatriation of profits earned by American companies from their overseas operations, a measure Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said would bring back "trillions of dollars" to the U.S. that could be invested in business expansion at home.
Mnuchin called the proposal "the biggest tax cut" in U.S. history.
"The overall economic plan consists of massive tax cuts and tax reform, regulatory relief, and renegotiating trade deals. And with that, we will unlock the economic growth that's been held back for too long in this country." :Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
U.S. military officials are affirming Turkish airstrikes against Kurdish targets in northern Syria, saying Turkey's actions on Tuesday jeopardize both the fight against the Islamic State terror group and the well-being of U.S. forces on the ground.
U.S. Colonel John Dorrian, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, called Turkey's efforts (to) inform and coordinate with the coalition inadequate.
He told Pentagon reporters via video conference it was no coordination you would expect from an ally and a partner.
Dorrian said from Baghdad, "There was less than an hour of notification time before the strikes were conducted," adding that was not enough time.
A new study says a low-cost and widely available drug could save the lives of 1 in 3 mothers who would otherwise bleed to death after childbirth. The global trial of more than 20,000 women also found the drug reduced the need for urgent surgery to control bleeding by more than a third. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
Severe bleeding, known as postpartum hemorrhage, or PPH, is the leading cause of maternal death worldwide, killing more than 100,000 women every year.
The world's poorest countries, especially in Africa and India, are the worst hit.
But there is new hope. In the 1960s, Japanese researchers developed a drug called tranexamic acid, which works by stopping blood clots from breaking down. But they could not persuade doctors to try the drug for treating postpartum hemorrhage.
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has done just that in a trial involving 20,000 women in 21 countries, mainly in Africa and Asia. The results show tranexamic acid reduces the risk of bleeding to death by almost a third.
That's the latest world news from VOA.
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