VOA NEWS

January 4, 2015

From Washington, this is VOA news.

A former volunteer in Sierra Leone is diagnosed with Ebola in Britain. A Greek ferry continuing to smolder off Italy. I'm Vincent Bruce reporting from Washington.



London's Royal Free Hospital says a Scottish nurse who has been volunteering on the anti-Ebola effort in Sierra is in critical condition.

The nurse named Pauline Cafferkey is the first Ebola patient to be diagnosed in Britain.

The hospital said Saturday that the condition of the nurse has deteriorated sharply over the past two days.



Intense heat from a slow-burning blaze is hampering efforts by firefighters and investigators to search a Greek ferry for any more remains of people killed after the vessel caught fire at sea last month.

The ferry was towed to the Italian port of Brindisi in a 17-hour operation across the Adriatic Sea.

Hercules Haralambides of the port authority of Brindisi holds out hope for what searchers may eventually find.

"At this moment, we do not know what we are going to find when we are possible to enter into the garage of the ship. And we can only hope that we are not confronted with a real tragedy."

Prosecutors say they fear unregistered migrants were smuggled in cars and trucks on the ferry and may have perished in the flames.



Reports of an attack Thursday in Nigeria now in which 11 people reportedly died in a Boko Haram offensive.

Reports Saturday said the attack took place in the region of Waza, where militants opened fire on a bus full of passengers.

A local military official told Reuters news agency as many as 25 people may have been killed, and that 10 others who were injured were taken to a hospital in the regional capital of Maroua.



More at voanews.com. This is VOA news.



An Israeli official says Israel has decided to freeze about $125 million in tax revenues it collects for Palestinians in response to Palestinians' efforts to join the International Criminal Court.

The action was taken a day after Palestinian officials submitted documents to the United Nations to join the ICC.

Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour: "It is an option that anyone who upholds the law should not be afraid of. And it is an option that we are seeking in order to seek justice for all the victims that have been killed by Israel, the occupying power."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened unspecified retaliation for the Palestinians' bid to join the ICC.



Special U.N. representative to Somalia Nicholas Kay says there has been "considerable success" by the U.S. and pro-government forces in the 2014 push against the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab.

Kay spoke with VOA, saying the combined U.S. and pro-government efforts have led to the liberation of nearly 20 Somali towns from al-Shabab militants and brought the country closer to full federal control.



Indonesian search and recovery teams hunting for the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet have located four large objects in the Java Sea as searchers try to reach the plane's fuselage to retrieve bodies believed to be inside and the aircraft's "black boxes."

The head of Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency said all four objects were spotted in the priority search area. He said the largest one measured 18 meters long.



Uniformed police officers from across the U.S. lined up in Brooklyn, New York, Saturday for the wake of Wenjian Liu, one of two police officers killed in a surprise attack shooting two weeks ago.

New York's police commissioner made clear in a memo read to police Saturday he did not want officers to make any political statements at Liu's wake Saturday or his funeral on Sunday.

The commissioner, William Bratton, was referring to hundreds of police who turned their backs to a giant television monitors displaying the remarks of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio a week ago at the funeral for the other slain officer, Rafael Ramos.



Pakistan's military says its fighter planes bombed and destroyed several "terrorist hideouts" near the Afghan border Saturday. Reports say at least 31 militants were killed.

The Pakistan activity is part of stepped-up counter-militancy army operations in tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan since a militant raid against an army-run school in Peshawar on December 16 killed 150 people.



More on all these stories at voanews.com 24 hours a day. I'm Vincent Bruce reporting from Washington.

That's the latest world news from VOA.