VOA NEWS

July 21, 2018

This is VOA news. I'm David Byrd in Washington.



Israel carried out wide-scale airstrikes and deployed tanks against what it described as militant sites in Gaza Friday. Four Palestinians were killed.

Israel's military said it struck eight Hamas positions after its soldiers came under fire by Hamas militants. It later said that fighter jets commenced the wide-scale attack against Hamas military targets throughout the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Defense Force said one of its soldiers had been killed, the first Israeli soldier to die in and around Gaza since 2014.

More than 135 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since border protests began on March 30.

Late Friday, a Hamas spokesman said his organization and Israel have agreed to restore calm to the area. An Israeli army spokeswoman said there was no activity early Saturday.



President Donald Trump is spending the weekend in his New Jersey resort after a tumultuous week.

As AP's Sagar Meghani reports, Trump's onetime lawyer Michael Cohen says he has a recording of the president, discussing a payment to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Trump a decade ago.

A person familiar with an FBI investigation into Cohen says the attorney secretly recorded then-candidate Trump, talking about potentially buying the rights to a former Playboy model's account of having an affair with Trump a decade earlier, which he denies.

The conversation came weeks after the National Enquirer's parent company reached a deal to pay Karen McDougal $150,000 for her story effectively silencing her through the campaign.

The source says the FBI seized the recording during a raid on Cohen's belongings.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani says the recording shows Trump did nothing wrong and no payment was actually made.

Sagar Meghani, at the White House.



This is VOA news.



The United States has called on North Korea to act on its promise to give up nuclear weapons and said the world, including China and Russia, must continue to enforce sanctions until it does so.

Speaking at the U.N., Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said all members of the Security Council need to keep sanctions in place for them to work.

"Chairman Kim made a promise. Chairman Kim told not only President Trump, but President Moon that he was prepared to denuclearize. The scope and scale of that is agreed to. The North Koreans understand what that means."

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said there had been 89 violations of oil sanctions in the first five months of the year. Haley complained that China and Russia had blocked a U.S. move this week to halt all additional shipments of refined petroleum to North Korea.



Seventeen people, including nine members of one family, were killed when a tourist boat capsized and sank during a storm late Thursday in the resort of Branson, Missouri.

Thirty-one people were on the vehicle, which can travel on water as well as land. Officials say 14 people were rescued.

Jim Pattison is the president of the Ripley Entertainment company that owns the craft. "When they went in, the water was flat, and by the reports that we are receiving, but it was a very sudden microburst of energy with high winds such as came very, very fast and furious."

A National Weather Service meteorologist said the agency had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the Branson area. Winds were reaching speeds of more than 100 kilometers per hour.



The maker of a permanent contraceptive implant says it is ending sales of the device in the United States.

As AP correspondent Jennifer King reports, Bayer says it will stop selling the device because of poor sales, not because of patient complaints.

Bayer company says it will stop selling its Essure implant in the United States. The company stopped selling the device in New York last year.

Essure is a permanent contraceptive device. Two nickel-titanium coils spur the growth of scar tissue, block the fallopian tubes and prevent sperm from fertilizing a woman's eggs.

The FDA put multiple restrictions on the device after some women reported pain, bleeding, allergic reactions and uterine punctures.

Over 16,000 women in the United States are suing the company over Essure.

I'm Jennifer King.



Republican senators Friday dropped legislation that would block the Chinese telecommunications giant, ZTE, from buying component parts from the United States.

The company is accused of selling sensitive technologies to Iran and North Korea despite a U.S. trade embargo.

In April, the Commerce Department barred ZTE from importing American components for its telecommunications products, practically putting the company out of business.

However, President Trump later announced a deal in which the Chinese company would pay a $1 billion fine for its violations, as well as replace its entire management and board.