VOA NEWS

January 13, 2016

From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm David DeForest reporting. Terrorist strike Turkey.



A suicide bomber affiliated with the Islamic State group [blew up] blew himself up in Istanbul Tuesday, killing at least 10 people, nine of them German tourists. Fifteen people were wounded in the attack.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu pledged to fight the IS until it no longer remains a threat to Turkey or the world.



The crews of two small U.S. Navy vessels are being held by Iran, but Pentagon officials say Iran has assured them that the crew and the boats will be promptly returned.

A senior U.S. official says 10 U.S. sailors were aboard two boats, traveling in the Persian Gulf near Farsi Island when the U.S. lost contact with them.



German police arrested more than 200 far-right extremists who went on a rampage in the eastern city of Leipzig, setting cars on fire and damaging property.

The anti-immigrant violence began late Monday.



A new study sys more than half of the children in South Sudan are currently not in school. That's the highest proportion of any country in the world.

The United Nations Children's Fund said Tuesday 51 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 15 in South Sudan are not being educated.



For the seventh and final time of his presidency, Barack Obama will stand before Congress this evening just hours from now and deliver a State of the Union address.

Mr. Obama likely will not lay out specific legislative proposals for Congress. He is expected to call on lawmakers to take care of unfinished business before he leaves office.

You can hear the address live on our website voanews.com. This is VOA news.



The United Nations says it expects agencies to deliver more aid this week to tens of thousands of starving people in Madaya and other besieged Syrian cities. Lisa Schlein reports.

Representative for the U.N. refugee agency in Syria, Sajjid Malik, traveled on the first convoy to reach Madaya. By telephone from Damascus, he describes his horror at seeing so many starving people fighting for survival in the freezing cold.

"Very frail, very weak, you could see that they are malnourished, not only the kids, but also young and the youth that were around the trucks that we were offloading."

Malik is calling for the sieges on Madaya and other hard to reach places in Syria to be lifted.

Lisa Schlein, Geneva.

And the United Nations is calling for a major humanitarian aid effort to cope with the Syrian refugee crisis.

U.N. humanitarian and development agencies appealed Tuesday for $7.73 billion in new funding for 2016 to help 22.5 million people in Syria and across the region.



Iraq's prime minister vowed Tuesday to press forward with the fight against Islamic State extremists. He toured the wreckage of a Baghdad shopping mall hit by suicide bombers the day earlier.



The top U.S. officials reaffirmed their security commitment to the Philippines on Tuesday. They applauded a ruling by the Philippine Supreme Court to uphold a defense accord with the U.S.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ash Carter met with Filipino Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert del Rosario and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin in Washington for a second so-called "two-plus-two" talks on revitalizing the alliance between the U.S. and the Philippines.



U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to accept a sanctions bill that would block North Korea's access to hard currency.

Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce sponsored the bill, which is seen as a response to North Korea's announcement last week that it had conducted a fourth nuclear test.



U.S. President Barack Obama proclaimed Monday that South Africa has until March 15 to allow U.S. poultry into the country or lose duty-free access for its farming exports under the African Growth and Opportunity Act.



Kentucky Senator Rand Paul says he will not take part in Thursday's Republican primary debate after it was announced that he and former business executive Carly Fiorina would not be included in the main group of candidates.

The Fox Business [news-cable said] cable-news network said it decided to shift Paul and Fiorina from the so-called "top-tier" to the lower-tier candidates.



I'm David DeForest.

That's the latest world news from VOA.