VOA NEWS

June 17, 2014

From Washington, this is VOA news. Coming up, the latest on tensions in Iraq. Crises worsening while aid cooperation remains underfunded.



President Obama is sending 275 U.S. military personnel to Iraq to help provide security to the embassy in Baghdad and to U.S. personnel.

While Mr. Obama has ruled out sending ground forces back into Iraq, he met with his national security team Monday to consider other options, including cooperation, that is, with Iran.

On U.S.-Iran cooperation, David Schenker, director of the Programs on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, spoke with AP: "the administration is looking to Iran as part of a solution to the ISIL problem. In fact, Iran is part of the problem. It will not be, I think in any productive way, part of the solution."

Pentagon says it has no plans to enter into military cooperation with Iranians in any action in Iraq.



The Somali militant group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for an attack on a Kenyan town that killed at least 48 people.

A statement posted to a pro-Shabab website says gunmen attacked hotels, police stations, banks and other public places in the coastal town of Mpeketoni.

Al-Shabab says the attack was retaliation for the slaying of Muslim clerics in the Kenyan city of Mombasa.

The group blames Kenyan security forces for the killings -- an accusation Kenyan officials have denied.



Officials in Nigeria say more than 20 people were killed when gunmen believed to be Boko Haram militants attacked a village in the country's northeast.

Residents in the town of Daku say gunmen surrounded the village market on Sunday and fired indiscriminately at people in the market.

The violence is the latest to hit Nigeria's troubled northeastern region.

Militants from Boko Haram are holding more than 200 schoolgirls they kidnapped from the nearby town of Chibok in mid-April.



A senior [U.S. official] U.N. official, that is, says millions of people caught in crises are unable to get the aid they need due to a lack of funding. Lisa Schlein has details from the U.N. in Geneva.

The United Nations has appealed for a record $16.9 billion to assist 54 million people in 28 countries this year. Nearly half the year has passed and only 30 percent of that money, or $5.2 billion, has been received.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos says people should do the math and they will see the difficulties aid agencies face.

She cites Syria, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan as the three top-level crises. She says Syria is the biggest of the three, with more than nine million internally displaced people and nearly three million refugees in neighboring countries in need of help.

Lisa Schlein, for VOA news, Geneva.



Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko says he has ordered the army to take "decisive actions" this week to regain control of the Ukrainian-Russian frontier.

In an address on Monday to top security officials, Mr. Poroshenko said he expects the military push to last more than a week and he said it will pave the way for a truce and peace talks with pro-Russian separatists.

The Poroshenko address came hours after Russian energy giant, Gazprom, cut natural gas shipments to its energy dependent neighbor after Kyiv dismissed and missed a deadline to pay down a nearly $2 billion energy debt.

Gazprom said Ukraine must now pay in advance for any natural gas.



Pakistan's military says air strikes have killed at least 28 militants in the North Waziristan tribal agency a day after the army announced the start of a comprehensive operation in the region.

Pakistan said most of those killed were fighters of the fugitive Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan entrenched along the Afghan border.

During a speech to parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif laid out his reasons for abandoning peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban and ordering the military offensive.

Mr. Sharif said efforts to establish peace through dialogue have not succeeded.



The International Monetary Fund says the U.S. economy will grow two percent this year.

This is slightly faster than last year, but well below earlier predictions from the IMF.

Economists say unusually foul winter weather crippled business activity and made the world's biggest economy shrink in a bit in the first three months of the year.



That's the latest world news from VOA.