VOA NEWS

January 28, 2016

From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm David DeForest reporting. No decision yet.



A committee of key Syrian opposition groups is expected to decide later whether to participate in U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva.

U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura sent out invitations to the negotiations, but did not disclose who was on the list.

The High Negotiations Committee says the Syrian government and its allies must lift blockades of besieged areas before it will join the talks scheduled to begin Friday.



The United States and China agreed Wednesday to work together to ensure that North Korea ends its nuclear weapons program.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing, stressing that the North Korean issue is a high priority for the U.S. government.



U.S. lawmakers in Washington, meanwhile, are expected to take another step Thursday toward boosting sanctions on North Korea. Michael Bowman reports.

The committee is expected to approve overwhelmingly an amended version of a sanctions bill that passed the House of Representatives earlier this month.

The House bill requires the U.S. president to investigate and sanction persons and entities contributing to North Korean weapons of mass destruction and involved with money laundering, censorship or human rights abuses.

The Senate bill adds provisions targeting North Korea's sale of minerals and precious metals for hard currency.

Michael Bowman, the Capitol.



Suicide bombers have killed at least 10 people in Chibok, the Nigerian town where Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls nearly two years ago.

Witnesses say one bomber detonated explosives Wednesday at a checkpoint where people were being searched, and at least two others blew themselves up at the town's market.



This is VOA news.



International Criminal Court judges have authorized an investigation into allegations that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed during the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict.

A three-judge panel in the Hague Wednesday gave a prosecutor approval to investigate crimes allegedly committed in and around the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia in August of 2008.



Human Rights Watch says rights crackdowns took place worldwide in 2014, making the year the most tumultuous in a generation.

In its 2015 World Report, the organization says no human rights challenge in the past year has been more significant than the emergence of the Islamic State group.

Speaking to reporters in Turkey Wednesday, Executive Director Kenneth Roth said that authoritarian governments around the world are feeling pressure from civil societies empowered by social media.



France's justice minister stepped down Wednesday after objecting to a government move that would revoke the citizenship of convicted French-born terrorists if they have a second nationality.



South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar is taking his campaign against President Salva Kiir's plan to create 28 states to the African Union Thursday.

Machar is expected to attend the African Union summit in Addis Ababa and will likely urge the African leaders to tell the president to drop his creation of the states.

Rebels leaders have said the division of the country into 28 states will bring about more community unrest and take away land from one tribal group and give it to another.



According to a survey released Wednesday, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders are locked in a tight Democratic presidential nomination contest in the crucial Midwest state of Iowa.

Here is Senator sanders: "We're feeling really good about where we are, and if there is a large voter turnout, I'm not saying we can do what Barack Obama did in 2008, I wish we could, but I don't think we can. But if there is a large turnout, I think we win. If not, I think we're going to be struggling."

Quinnipiac University says Sanders has gained the support of 49 percent of Democrats likely to participate in next Monday's party caucuses in Iowa, compared to 45 percent for Hillary Clinton.



On the Republican side, Donald Trump, the leading Republican contender in the 2016 U.S. presidential race, says he is boycotting the last candidates' debate before next week's first election contest in Iowa.

Trump said he will skip Thursday's debate because he does not feel he would be treated fairly by one of the moderators, Megyn Kelly of Fox News, who has been feuding with Trump since August.



From the VOA news center in Washington, I'm David DeForest.

That's the latest world news from VOA.