VOA NEWS

June 17, 2017

From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm Jee Abbey Lee reporting.



President Donald Trump is canceling the last administration's agreement with Cuba. President Donald Trump has begun undoing some parts of his predecessor's historic opening to the island country.

New measures include tightening restrictions on tourism travel and prohibiting financial dealings with entities tied to Cuban military and intelligence services. A Cuba's military conglomerate is estimated to control more than half of the country's economy.

In a speech at Miami's Little Havana district, Trump said he took steps toward fulfilling a campaign promise that helped him win last November's election in Florida, where the Cuban-American vote was instrumental in pushing him over the top.



A jury in the U.S. state of Minnesota has acquitted a police officer who fatally shot a black motorist during a traffic stop.

The small city that employed Jeronimo Yanez as a police officer dismissed him immediately after he was found not guilty of second-degree manslaughter.

A statement on the city's website said, "The public will be best served if Officer Yanez is no longer a police officer in our city."

The 29-year-old officer [was not] has not been on active duty since the shooting last July.

Much of the incident in which Philando Castile, 32, was shot in his car was streamed live on social media. Castile's girlfriend, sitting beside him as Yanez fired seven shots, said she recorded video of the scene because she feared that she and her 4-year-old daughter in the car's rear seat were in danger.

The girlfriend's name is Diamond Reynolds.



This is VOA news.



Twenty-two-year-old American student Otto Warmbier's five-day visit as a tourist in North Korea last year turned into a 17-month detention after authorities accused him of hostile acts against the state.

Now back in the states released early by Pyongyang, much of his imprisonment in the North remains unclear.

VOA's Kane Farabaugh reports.

Wyoming, Ohio, is about as far away from North Korea as you can get but the two places are now linked by Fred Warmbier's family tragedy.

"The fact that he was taken and treated this way is horrible and it's tough to process."

Speaking to reporters as Otto Warmbier lies in a Cincinnati hospital in a condition doctors call "unresponsive wakefulness," Fred Warmbier had harsh words, for the North Koreas, he said, brutally treated his son.

"We went for 15 months without a word from or about Otto. It was only a week ago that we were informed that the North Korean government now claims he was in a coma for almost all of that time."

North Korea is still holding three other American citizens.

Kane Farabaugh, VOA news, Wyoming, Ohio.



The International Organization for Migration reports there are ongoing efforts to rescue around 200 migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia who have been kidnapped in Libya. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from IOM headquarters in Geneva.

News of the kidnappings and illegal detentions in Libya first surfaced in a video, which appeared on Facebook on June 9. The International Organization for Migration says families of the missing men and women have received ransom demands based on short video clips depicting scenes of active torture.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman tells VOA the source of the video is not known, but there is little doubt as to its veracity.

The IOM report said it is working with partners to try to locate the migrants. It says IOM staff, in coordination with authorities in Libya, is trying to trace and potentially aid in the rescue of these victims.

Lisa Schlein, for VOA news, Geneva.



Authorities in London say they know where a fire started inside a London high rise apartment building that killed at least 17 people and sent dozens to the hospital this week.

A London fire department spokesman said the investigators are now suspecting arson. "Our specialist investigators and experts have examined what we believe is the original location where the fire started."



I'm Jee Abbey Lee in Washington.

That's the latest world news from VOA.