VOA NEWS

February 15, 2015

From Washington, this is VOA news. Authorities in Denmark are searching for at least one gunman who attacked a free speech event in Copenhagen.



Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has called Saturday's deadly shooting at an event in Copenhagen a "terrorist attack."

Thorning-Schmidt added that all of Denmark is on high alert and police have been deployed across the country.

"We take this situation extremely seriously. We are on high alarm all over the country and our main priority at this stage is to catch the perpetrators and make sure that we find them as soon as possible."

One person was killed and three others were wounded.

Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks was scheduled to speak a the cafe. Vilks is known for provocative drawings, including a 2007 cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog. He was not harmed in the shooting.



A fragile cease-fire began in Ukraine at 22 hours Saturday, but it was not immediately clear if all the fighting raging in the east of the country had stopped.

In a live midnight broadcast, Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko issued the order for the country's armed forces to hold their fire.

Under the terms of the European-brokered deal, Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatist rebels are to begin pulling back their heavy weaponry to form a wide buffer zone.

The U.N. Security Council is expected to meet Sunday for an emergency session to shore up the cease-fire. U.N. diplomats say that the 15-member body will vote on a Russian-drafted resolution that calls on all parties to implement the deal.



For more on these stories, visit our website voanews.com. This is VOA news.



The governor of Nigeria's Gombe state has imposed a 24-hour curfew in response to a Boko Haram attack that sparked raging gunfire Saturday.

The governor spokesman announced the move, saying though the fighting is taking place in Gombe city, the curfew will take effect across the entire state.

He said residents are to remain indoors until further notice as security forces try to track down the gunmen and restore order.

There is no word on casualties.



Sierra Leone has quarantined a neighborhood in its capital city, Freetown, following the emergence of several new cases of Ebola.

The coastal district of Aberdeen, which is home to slams and upscale hotels, was shut down Friday.

The quarantine is a setback for the West African country that had the most cases of Ebola in a recent outbreak, which killed almost 9,000 people.



U.S. President Barack Obama has laid out his plan to ensure that more children graduate from school fully prepared for college and a career.

In his weekly media address Saturday, Mr. Obama said there have been signs in recent years that elementary and second elementary school students are doing better. But he said students will only do better than their predecessors did if they are educated better than those who came before them.

"But in the 21 century economy, our kids will only do better than we did if we educate them better than we were educated. So we have to do more to make sure they graduate from school fully prepared for college and a career."

Mr. Obama also criticized a Republican-led education bill in Congress, saying it would lock in cuts to schools for the rest of this decade. He said if the bill were in place, the United States would end up investing less in education in 2021 than it did in 2012.



Meanwhile, in the Republican media message, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin called on President Obama to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Fallin said that the project would create thousands of jobs and generate millions in tax revenue.

"Keystone has now been through more than six years of scrutiny - far more than any project of its kind - and it's passed every test and cleared every hurdle. But still, the president just drags his feet."

The House and the Senate have approved the pipeline, but lacked the votes to override a threatened presidential veto.

Critics say the pipeline will increase pollution and put communities along its length at risk of an environmental disaster.



And tens of thousands of Yemenis protested Saturday against the country's takeover by the Shiite Muslim Houthi movement.

In the central town of Ibb, Houthi gunmen fired on protesters and wounded four of them.

Meanwhile in southern Yemen, heavy fighting continued between Houthi rebels and Sunni tribesmen.



For more, visit voanews.com. I'm David Byrd in Washington.

That's the latest world news from VOA.