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From Washington, this is VOA news. Coming up, airstrikes continuing against the Islamic State. Also the latest on the Ebola outbreak.
Syrian activists say more than 800 people have been killed in ground fighting in Kobani in the six-week battle between Islamic State militants and Kurdish fighters for control of the Syrian town just south of the Turkish border. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Sunday that nearly 500 jihadists and more than 300 Kurds have been killed. American fighter jets launched five more airstrikes on Islamic State positions in the last 24 hours, with plumes of black smoke from the blast billowing into the skies over Kobani on Sunday. British and U.S. soldiers have formally marked the end of combat operations in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province by [handling] handing [their] over their control of the country's largest military base to Afghan soldiers. At its peak, the coalition combined base held up to 40,000 personnel including foreign troops and contractors. With an overall drawdown taking place, 12,000 foreign soldiers to train and advise Afghan forces will remain in the country after December. The government of Mali seeks to prevent a major Ebola outbreak after a two-year-old girl died from the virus after traveling across the country from Guinea. Meantime, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has begun a tour of West African countries to assess international support for nations struggling to contain the Ebola outbreak. In Washington, President Obama met Sunday with his public health and national security advisers to discuss what the White House called "appropriate measures" to contain the spread of the domestic Ebola cases. This is VOA news. Exit polls from Ukraine's pro-Europe and nationalist parties have scored a major victory in the country's parliamentary election. The bloc led by current President Petro Poroshenko won 23 percent of the vote ahead of the People's Front party of his ally, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who took 21 percent. The Self-Help party of western Ukraine was in third place with 13 percent of the vote, while the opposition Bloc party of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych finished a surprising fourth with nearly 8 percent. Sunday's election was the first parliamentary poll since street protests in the capital, Kyiv, forced Moscow-backed Yanukovych to flee in February, assuring a pro-Europe leadership under President Petro Poroshenko. Polls are showing a majority of Ukrainian supporting economic and democratic reforms, especially a crackdown on corruption, leading eventually to European Union membership. Tunisians went to the polls on Sunday to elect their first full parliament under a new constitution. We get more now from Lisa Bryant. Sunday's vote dominated Tunisia's airwaves as voters lined up early in the morning to cast their ballots. Tunis resident Mariam Touati waited at a polling station in the old Medina area. What's key, she says, are realistic political programs emphasizing education and economic development, and not just idle talk. Voter Iheb Attia hopes the elections will achieve a national consensus so Tunisia can move forward to prosperity. Lisa Bryant, for VOA news, Paris. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been reelected to a second term to lead the [country's] world's fifth-largest nation. With 98 percent of the vote counted, Ms. Rousseff won 51.5 percent of the ballots over her opponent, center-right senator Aecio Neves. The vote is widely seen as an endorsement of Ms. Rousseff's Workers' Party, which has held the presidency since 2003. An Egyptian court has convicted 23 young democracy activists of staging an illegal demonstration and sentenced them to three years in prison even in the face of international calls for their release. The activists were arrested in June for violating a law that bans all but police-sanctioned protests, the part of a continuing crackdown on dissent in Egypt by the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Some of the activists had supported the military's overthrow last year of the democratically elected government of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. But they since have turned against the el-Sissi government with its severe restrictions on street protests. You can get more news by going to our website at voanews.com. That's the latest world news from VOA. |