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From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm Jonathan Smith reporting.
Pakistan's military has rescued a U.S.-Canadian family from a tribal region bordering Afghanistan nearly five years after they were abducted by militants. American Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle went missing in Afghanistan in 2012. The Taliban later claimed responsibility for kidnapping them. President Trump on Thursday said he hoped others will be rescued. "We hope to see this type of cooperation and teamwork in helping secure the release of remaining hostages and in our future joint counterterrorism operations." In a statement the Pakistani military said the rescue operation was conducted based on "action of all intelligence from the United States." Egyptian officials say an attack on a checkpoint in the northern Sinai Peninsula has killed six people. The attack happened Thursday on the outskirts of the city of el-Arish. Egypt has been battling an insurgency in the northern Sinai that has been led by an Islamic State affiliate since 2014. Ethiopian government forces killed four people and wounded 18 others Thursday in the town of Soda in the restive Oromia region. Residents, who asked for anonymity out of fear of retaliation by the Ethiopian government, told VOA's Horn of Africa service that eight trucks escorted by federal forces were stopped by residents of Soda and surrounding villages, suspecting the trucks were transporting weapons to special "Liyu" police in the neighboring Somali region. The security chief of the Dirre district in the Oromia region said, "The federal forces were angered by the residents' demand to stop the trucks and opened fire." This is VOA news. The United Arab Emirates announced Thursday it will halt the issuance of visas to North Korean workers. Kuwait and Qatar have already done so. The decisions limit North Korea's ability to evade sanctions and make money off the laborers it sends to work in Middle Eastern nations. The UAE also said it would block North Korean companies from operating in any of its seven emirates. The Trump administration says the U.S. will withdraw from the United Nations top cultural and educational program, UNESCO, at the end of the year. Reuters correspondent Matthew Larotonda has the story. The announcement coming in a press release from the state Department citing "continuing anti-Israel bias at the agency" and "need for fundamental reform." The U.S. actually stopped paying to the institution altogether back during the Obama administration after it recognized the Palestinian Authority as a member, taking with it about a fifth of its funding. This is now the third major international body that Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from. The U.S. withdrawal is to take effect December 31, 2018. Hours later, Israel announced that it would also be leaving the U.N. body. The United Nations secretary-general says early action by the international community has helped avert widespread famine, but the number of people in need is continuing to grow. In February, António Guterres warned that 20 million people were facing starvation in South Sudan, North East Nigeria and Yemen, and he appealed for more than $5.6 billion for 2017. On Thursday, he told the U.N. Security Council "While we have succeeded in keeping famine at bay, we have not yet kept suffering at bay." And, rescue workers in northern California are using cadaver-sniffing dogs to search for bodies in the ruins of homes burned to the ground by wildfires. The fires north of San Francisco have killed at least 27 people since Sunday while no one has yet heard from nearly half of the 900 people officially listed as missing. Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano said identifying the victims is going to be hard. Twenty-two fires were burning Thursday, with firefighters partially containing just one. More than 75,000 hectares have burned so far, including some of Northern California's world famous vineyards and wineries. At least 3,500 homes and businesses have been destroyed. There is more on these and other late breaking and developing stories, from around the world, around the clock, at voanews.com and on the VOA news mobile app. I'm Jonathan Smith reporting from the world headquarters of the Voice of America in Washington. That's the latest world news from VOA. |