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From Washington, this is VOA news. World leaders gather in Australia for the G20 summit, and a showdown is brewing over U.S. immigration policy. I'm David Byrd reporting from Washington.
World leaders are in Brisbane, Australia, for the G20 meeting amid tense rhetoric between Russia and the West. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbot has pledged to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin over his support for separatist rebels in Ukraine, while the Kremlin has announced long-range bomber patrols near American waters. NATO accuses Russia of once again sending its forces into Ukraine -- a charge Moscow denies. The show of force in Ukraine is matched in the warmer crimes of the southern Pacific. Russia sent warships to international waters off Australia ahead of the G20 meeting in Brisbane. Publicly, President Putin has said he wants to reach a compromise over Ukraine. Speaking Friday, he criticized Western sanctions imposed over Moscow's involvement in the conflict. With increasingly bellicose rhetoric in Brisbane, there is little hope that East-West tensions will be eased as leaders gather round the G20 table. Henry Ridgwell, the VOA news, London. President Barack Obama is scheduled to address the G20 leaders at 3:15 Universal Time. We will carry the president's address live over these VOA frequencies and on our website. Ukraine's president says his country's armed forces are "willing and able to fight back" should the cease-fire agreement reached in September between his government and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine unravel. NATO reported the movement of troops, tanks and artilleries from Russia into eastern Ukraine this week. This is VOA news. The militant group Boko Haram has seized the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok, the home of more than 200 schoolgirls the group kidnapped earlier this year. Pogo Bitrus, the chairman of the Chibok elders' forum, told VOA that militants attacked the Borno state town late Thursday. He says locally-based soldiers and civilian fighters put up a fight but were outgunned by a large Boko Haram force. In a separate development, a suicide bomber killed at least six people Friday in the northern city of Kano. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Boko Haram militants have previously attacked the city. Boko Haram has seized a number of towns in Borno and Adamawa states this year for a "caliphate" proclaimed by the group's leader, Abubakar Shekau. Officials in Mali are trying to trace at least 200 contacts of people linked to Ebola patients in that country even as it struggles to contain an outbreak of the virus. Health officials say they have identified [that] at least that many people who had contact with one of at least four confirmed cases of Ebola since last month. Mali shares a border with Guinea, one of the three countries at the center of the epidemic, along with Liberia and Sierra Leone. The first victim of Mali's recent outbreak was a two-year-old girl from Guinea. The White House has announced a plan to grant refugee status in the United States to certain children living in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Vice President Joe Biden announced the new program on Friday at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington. "It's not about what we can do for the region. It's about what we can do with or what we can do together. We all have an obligation to help the most vulnerable and to keep families together." Under the plan, those 21 years and younger with at least one parent who is a legal resident of the U.S. can qualify. President Barack Obama has promised to take executive action on immigration reform by the end of the year, meaning that it would need no approval from the U.S. Congress. The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, has said that lawmakers will "fight the president tooth and nail if he continues down this path." Israeli police say a Jerusalem holy site at the heart of recent tensions between Israelis and Palestinians was quiet on Friday after Muslims of all ages were allowed to worship there. Israel had restricted worship at the Temple Mount, or known to Muslims as the al-Aqsa Mosque, to people under 35, fearing youths would cause violence. That's the news. I'm David Byrd in Washington. That's the latest world news from VOA. |