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This is VOA News. I'm Scott Walterman.
A pro-Palestinian demonstration on New York's Wall Street demanding justice for Palestinians as European Union leaders urged pauses in Israeli bombing and Hamas rocket attacks so humanitarian aid could be delivered to Gaza. U.S. President Joe Biden told Iran's supreme leader not to target U.S. personnel in the Mid-east after a warning from Iran for the United States at the United Nations on Thursday. "But I warn if the genocide in Gaza continues, they will not be spared from this fire. It is our home and West Asia is our region." :Iran's foreign minister. He said that Hamas has told Iran it was ready to release civilian hostages, adding the world should push for the release of 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The Russian military has been executing its own soldiers. Here's White House national security spokesperson John Kirby. "We have information that the Russian military has been actually executing soldiers who refuse to follow orders. We also have information that Russian commanders are threatening to execute entire units if they seek to retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire." Kirby says it shows how badly the Russians have executed the war. They believe Russia has suffered thousands of casualties in the offensive. He says they are using what you call a "human wave," where you just throw soldiers at the front line and more soldiers behind them. This is VOA News. One year after South Korea's deadly Halloween crowd crush, Park Young-soo still can't bring herself to open her late son's bedroom door. Reuters correspondent Christy Kilburn reports she's one of more than 100 family members fighting for government accountability and says she cannot move on until she gets it. Twenty-nine-year-old Lee Nam-hoon was one of the 159 people killed in Seoul's nightlife district Itaewon, where hundreds of thousands of people were crammed in the district's hills and narrow alleys. Experts say the crush - one of the worst disasters in South Korean history - was avoidable. A police probe acknowledged authorities' crowd control negligence and poor response. It also held 23 officials accountable. But no senior government official has resigned or been fired over the incident so far. Reuters correspondent Christy Kilburn, who says the government has rejected calls to dismiss top officials. President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday the first segment of Russia's new orbital space station, which Moscow sees as the next logical development in space exploration, should be put into operation by 2027. In a meeting with space industry officials, Putin vowed to proceed with Russia's lunar program despite the failure in August of its first moon shot in 47 years. Putin said Moscow's decision to extend to 2028 its participation in the ISS, which is now 25 years old, was a temporary measure. New data shows few people in the United States have received the new coronavirus shot. The AP's Ed Donahue says, in fact, very few. One expert calls it "abysmal." The CDC says a national survey of thousands of Americans conducted two weeks ago shows 7 percent of adults and 2 percent of children have gotten a shot. The data also shows nearly 40 percent of adults said they probably or definitely will not get the shot. A similar percentage of parents said they did not plan to vaccinate their children. The apparent lack of interest in the new shots comes as virus deaths and hospitalizations fell to lower levels than seen in the previous three years. But about 18,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths are still being reported each week. I'm Ed Donahue. It's been a year since Elon Musk took over Twitter and renamed it X. Now one year later, the data indicates the platform has been virtually destroyed. The Wall Street Journal published a report citing data from analytics firm Sensor Tower showing that [it] from a year ago, active mobile users on X fell about 15 percent. I'm Scott Walter... |