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From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm David DeForest reporting. A wave of bombings in Baghdad kills at least 68 people. More than a hundred are wounded.
The deadliest attack occurred in the mainly Shiite district of al-Shaab in northern Baghdad. Officials say a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a busy market. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility. And there were three other attacks in Iraq Tuesday. Following a meeting of the International Syria Support Group, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sought to dispel the notion that Russian airstrikes against rebel advances have made the U.S. lose traction with the Syrian government. He spoke a news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura. "You're correct that leverage is important in any negotiation. But you're incorrect in your supposition, I think, that there isn't leverage in this situation." Kerry also spelled out measures the group had agreed on to reduce violence and spur the delivery of humanitarian aid. Yemen's government has walked out of U.N.-sponsored peace talks with Houthi rebels, accusing them of having "contempt" for the peace process. Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdul-Malik al-Mekhlafi called the talks in Kuwait "a waste of time." He said the Houthis insist on power-sharing instead of abiding by a Security Council resolution that says such matters need to be negotiated. A spokesman for the U.S. Africa Command says the U.S. military has looked at 11 locations for a potential second base in Africa. Colonel Mark Cheadle would not disclose the locations the military is considering other than to say that "Nigeria isn't one of them." This is VOA news. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders faced each other in nominating contests in the U.S. states of Kentucky and Oregon Tuesday. Voting is still going on in the West Coast state of Oregon, but in Kentucky early vote tabulations show a very close election, with Senator Sanders just slightly ahead. Meanwhile, NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll Tuesday showed Clinton with a narrow national edge over presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump 48-45 percent down from a five-point margin a week ago. After a long discussion, the U.S. Senate has approved $1.1 billion to combat the Zika virus - significantly less than the Obama administration's request, but almost double the funding being considered in the House of Representatives. Michael Bowman takes a look. In the end, the Senate approved $800 million less than the White House wanted but as a stand-alone measure with no cuts to other programs. The Senate-approved measure faces an uncertain fate in the House of Representatives, where majority Republicans are considering a proposal to redirect $622 million previously appropriated to fight Ebola. Michael Bowman, the Capitol. In a major crackdown on Olympic drug cheats, the International Olympic Commission announced that 31 athletes could be banned from this year's Olympic Games in Rio. The crackdown came after a re-testing of the athletes' samples from the 2008 Olympic Games. All of them came back positive for banned substances. Dick Pound is a former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency: "We are delighted that the IOC has departed from its normal rules, saying anything related to a previous edition of the games has to be resolved before the opening of the next games. Now we can go back ten years and this is the sword of Damocles hanging over their head each year." The IOC says it has begun disciplinary actions against the 31 athletes who come from 12 countries and competed in six sports in the Beijing Games. The court-martial of U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl for alleged desertion has been postponed until February. Bergdahl was to have been put on trial in August on charges of walking away from his post in Afghanistan in 2009. But a military judge at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, put off the trial for [six-month] six months, rather, to give legal teams more time to prepare. The U.S. Senate approved legislation Tuesday that would allow the survivors and relatives of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States to sue Saudi Arabia's government for damages. Saudi Arabia denies any involvement in the attacks, but 15 of the 19 airline hijackers involved were from Saudi Arabia. This is VOA news. That's the latest world news from VOA. |