VOA NEWS

October 26, 2014

From Washington, this is VOA news. The first Ebola-related death in Mali. Iraq's prime minister cites a fatal blow to the Islamic State militants. I'm Vincent Bruce reporting from Washington.



The United Nations has flown one metric ton of emergency relief supplies to Mali after the West African country reported its first Ebola death. The supplies include personal protection kits, gloves and face shields.

A two-year-old girl from Guinea died Friday in neighboring Mali, where she had gone for treatment.

The World Health Organization says the girl arrived by bus and may have exposed others in Mali to the disease.



Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is calling the recapture of the town of Jurf al-Sakhar a "fatal blow" against Islamic State.

Iraqi forces aided by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes say they have completely secured the key town south of Baghdad after heavy fighting with the militants.

Islamic State has threatened to take over Baghdad, and any loss of ground to Iraqi forces is a major setback.

U.S. Central Command said Saturday coalition warplanes carried out 22 airstrikes against militant forces in Iraq on Friday and Saturday.



The United States has condemned Iran for executing a woman who killed a man to defend herself from an alleged sexual attack.

Twenty-six-year-old woman Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged Saturday morning. The death penalty went ahead once the family of her alleged assailant, a former Iranian intelligence agent, refused to pardon her or accept financial compensation.

The U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said there were "serious concerns with the fairness" of the case, including reports that confessions were "made under severe duress."



More on the story at voanews.com. This is VOA news.



Egypt has declared a state of emergency in the northern Sinai after a terrorist attacks Friday that killed at least 30 army soldiers. Edward Yeranian reports for VOA from Cairo.

A group of Egyptians chanted against the violence in Cairo a day after a deadly suicide bombing in the Sinai and a separate gun attack.

A mother of one of the soldiers who died Friday cried and demanded retribution. A man said, "Egyptians are tired of violence, and it's time to put a stop to it."

The government declared a three-month state of emergency in the northern and central Sinai Peninsula, and closed the Rafah border crossing to Gaza until further notice.

Edward Yeranian, for VOA news, Cairo.



In the United States, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has ordered a mandatory 21-day quarantine for so-called high-risk people arriving in the Midwestern American state from Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone.

The directive covers anyone who had direct contact with an Ebola patient.

Quinn says the protective measure is "too important to be voluntary."

Twenty-one days mark the Ebola virus's incubation period.

U.S. President Barack Obama urged Americans in his weekly Saturday radio address to be "guided by the facts, not fear" in the fight against Ebola.

"You cannot get Ebola easily. You can't get it through casual contact with someone. Remember, down in Dallas, even Mr. Duncan's family, who lived with him and helped care for him, even they did not get Ebola. The only way you can get this disease is by coming into direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone with symptoms. That's the science. Those are the facts."



The U.S. State Department is calling for an investigation into the new reports Israeli Defense Forces have killed a 14-year-old Palestinian-American teenager.

The Israeli Defense Forces say "an attack was prevented" when the military fired on Orwah Hammad, who the IDF says was throwing a Molotov cocktail on a highway Friday evening in the West Bank town of Silwad.



Sunday, Tunisia is poised to elect the first permanent parliament since its historic 2011 revolution, which inspired similar popular uprisings across the Arab world.

There are numerous problems, however, right now in the North African country dogged by massive economic and security problems.



Early Saturday, scuffles broke out in a South Korean border town between activists planning to send propaganda leaflets into North Korea and residents who wanted to stop them.



More on this and other stories at our website voanews.com. I'm Vincent Bruce in Washington.

That's the latest world news from VOA.