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From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm Jonathan Jones reporting.
Heavy fog has prevented search teams from combing through the wreckage of an Iranian plane that crashed Sunday in the southern part of country. Reuters correspondent Lucy Fielder reports. A spokesman for the airline says there was 60 passengers and 6 crew on board and that they all have been killed. Rescue helicopters have so far been unable to land at the probable crash site because of heavy fog. Local television reported that emergency workers were instead searching the mountainous area by land. Russian news reports say a gunman opened fire on people leaving a church service in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan, killing at least five people and wounding five others. The Tass news agency said the shooting happened Sunday outside a church in the town of Kizlyar. The assailant was killed by police. The mayor of the town said that two police officers were among those wounded. The attacker was identified as a 22-year-old man local to the region. His name was not released. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shooting, its news agency Amaq reported, but did not provide immediate evidence for its claim. President Trump said Sunday he believes Russia has been wildly successful in disrupting the U.S. political landscape with its interference in the 2016 election because of the subsequent months-long investigations it spawned. In a string of tweets over several hours, Trump continued to assail the investigation into his [campaign's link] campaign's links to Russia and he said, "The Russian 'hoax' was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia - it never did!" This is VOA news. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that Iran is just years away from having a nuclear bomb. He spoke on Sunday at the Munich Security Conference Sunday, delivering a warning about the security of the Middle East region, accusing Iran of posing an existential threat. "Even though Tehran says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, many in Israel dismiss such assurances." "We are working all the time in the international arena, trying keep the issue on the agenda not to let the world believe that in the last couple of years, everything's already fine because a deal was signed and many important players, the United States, China, Russia, European Union, are all behind the deal. We have to provide information and we know for a fact what the Iranians are up to." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has joined the U.S. in its campaign to press European powers to toughen the Iran nuclear deal that they have championed for so long. Speaking later Sunday in Munich, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif dismissed the Israeli prime minister's speech. He told the delegates "You were the audience for a cartoonish circus just this morning, which does not even deserve the dignity of a response." Vandals spray painted swastikas on the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, after the Polish prime minister talked about what he called "Jewish perpetrators" of the Holocaust. Israeli leaders immediately condemned his comment. The prime minister was responding to a reporter's question about Poland's new law punishing anyone who calls the Nazi genocide a Polish crime. The Israeli president said at a conference on Sunday "Saying that our people collaborated with the Nazis is a new low." Afghanistan's political crisis deepened Sunday when a second provincial governor defied a presidential order for his removal. On Saturday, President Ashraf Ghani's office approved and announced the appointment of new heads for five provinces, including Samangan in the north, as part of efforts to improve local Afghan governance. But Abdul Karim Khedam, who has been governing Samangan for about a year, denounced and dismissed his ouster by the president as unacceptable. He said, "I condemn this unfair decision and consider it against the wishes of the people of Samangan" You can find 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. |