VOA NEWS

January 30, 2016

From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm David Byrd reporting. U.N.-sponsored peace talks on ending the war in Syria started Friday in Geneva despite a boycott from the main Syrian opposition group.



The talks began Friday afternoon with a meeting at the U.N. offices in Geneva between U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura and a Syrian government delegation headed by the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations.

After the meeting, de Mistura said he hoped to meet with representatives of the opposition group, the Higher Negotiations Committee, on Sunday.

"The best way to actually discuss the implementation of important signals toward the population of Syria is to come to Geneva, and of course, be also an occasion of talking about what we call the political process."

The HNC said it would send a small team of representatives to Switzerland late Saturday to talk with U.N. officials.

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that he welcomed the participation of the HNC.



Attackers wearing suicide belts and carrying assault rifles targeted a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia during Friday prayer services. Five people were killed and 18 others were wounded.

Amateur video shows panic among worshipers inside the Imam Reda Mosque as a bomb goes off, shattering windows, doors and ceiling tiles.

A Saudi Security Ministry spokesman said that security forces traded fire with the attackers outside the building as they tried to go around them and enter the mosque.

It is not immediately clear if there were two or three gunmen. Al Arabiya TV reported that security forces arrested two men, while other media reported a third man blew himself up.



This is VOA news.



The outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus in the Americas comes as tens of thousands of people prepare to travel to Brazil later this year for the Olympics. That could make the games a springboard to transmit the virus around the world when those visitors return home.

Dr. Beth Bell of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told VOA "For most people, the Zika virus is not a problem. It can cause mild, flu-like symptoms, but the virus can also cause babies to be born with a serious condition called microcephaly."

Bell says the CDC is working to understand how Zika and microcephaly are linked.

"We're doing everything we can to understand a little bit more about many of the basics -- how often does it happen, what are the risk factors, are there certain things that make this sort of transmission from pregnant women to babies more likely."

Zika virus has been tentatively linked to 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly in Brazil.

There is no treatment for the disease.



Authorities in Burundi have released two foreign journalists one day after they were arrested in the capital city.

VOA's Central Africa service reports that British photographer Phil Moore and the Africa chief for the French daily Le Monde, Jean-Philippe Remy, were released on Friday.

None of the two men's equipment was returned after they refused to disclose the passwords to their smartphones.

Burundi's security minister said the two men were arrested Thursday in Bujumbura in the company of what he called armed criminals. A presidential spokesman said the two journalists were among 17 people arrested by police.

Le Monde says Moore and Remy were arrested while meeting with government opponents. It says both men were working for the paper and were doing their jobs.



The U.S. economy, the world's largest, barely advanced in the last three months of 2015.

The Commerce Department said Friday that the anemic growth - just seven-tenths of a percent - reflected weaker consumer spending, investment cutbacks by businesses and slowing exports.

For all of 2015, the U.S. economy advanced 2.4 percent. That's the same as in 2014 and just slightly ahead of the 2.1 percent average since 2010.



The bad economic news didn't damp in rallies on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up nearly 2.5 percent. The S&P500 rose by almost the same amount, while the NASDAQ was up 2.19 percent. European and Asian markets also finished the week higher.



For more on these stories, log on to our website voanews.com. I'm David Byrd in Washington.

That's the latest world news from VOA.