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From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm Jonathan Jones reporting.
In Nairobi Monday, Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission announced that incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta had won the re-run presidential election. Wafula Chebukati is the chairman of the commission. "Uhuru Kenyatta 7,483,895." The commission said Kenyatta got just over 98 percent of the vote. Turnout for Thursday's voting was just under 39 percent of the country's 19.6 million registered voters. The October vote was a re-run of the August presidential election in which voter turnout was 80 percent. Opposition leader Raila Odinga had called on his supporters to boycott the vote and indeed protesters blocked polling stations from opening in some opposition strongholds. Kenyatta was declared the winner of the vote, but the results were thrown out of the August election by the Supreme Court because of irregularities in the transmission of results. The White House went on the defensive Monday, trying to distance President Trump from charges filed against two former campaign aides by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in connection with the probe into Russia's attempt to influence last year's presidential election. The two are former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime business associate Rick Gates. They were named in a 12-count indictment released Monday charging money laundering, tax evasion and other violations. They pleaded not guilty Monday in a federal court in Washington. The White House emphasized the indictment made no mention of Trump or of any collusion between his campaign and Russia This is VOA news. The World Meteorological Organization reports greenhouse gas emissions in Earth's atmosphere have reached the highest level in 800,000 years. Correspondent Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from the launch of the WMO's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. The report has been released in advance of next week's U.N. climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany. It is meant as a wake-up call to nations that time is running out to take the necessary actions to prevent global warning. WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas says this is already occurring. "We have far exceeded this natural variability that took place in the past and we are giving extra energy for our planet. And we have already started seeing a growing amount of natural disasters related to weather." The report finds CO2 contributes more than 60 percent to the heating of the planet and that human activity and natural climate variability are behind the substantial increase. Lisa Schlein, for VOA news, Geneva. The United States has pledged up to $60 million to support counterterrorism efforts by nations in Africa's Sahel region. The funding was announced Monday by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. It will support the Group of Five Sahel Joint Task Force, a military unit set up by Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger earlier this year. President Trump says American special forces have captured a militant allegedly involved in the deadly 2012 attack of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. In a White House statement, he said, "Our memory is deep and our reach is long, and we will not rest in our efforts to find and bring the perpetrators of the heinous attacks in Benghazi to justice." Trump said he authorized the operation that led to the capture of Mustafa al-Imam in Misrata on the northern coast of Libya. Details of the operation are unavailable. He is in American custody, al-Imam is. He is on his way to the United States for a likely trial. An American court has blocked President Trump's ban on transgender people serving in the military. The judge, however, did not block a ban on funding for sex reassignment surgery. The case was brought by a group of transgender service members who asked the court to block the ban while it considers whether it violates their constitutional rights. In his tweets, Trump said he based his decision on what he said were "tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail." 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 Jones reporting from the world headquarters of the Voice of America in Washington. That's the latest world news from VOA. |