VOA News for Friday, August 16th, 2013 - 20130816
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 2013-08-16

Thanks to http://gandalf.ddo.jp/ for audio and text
VOA NEWS  Friday August 16th, 2013
From Washington, this is VOA news.  Coming up, Cairo crackdown on protesters could escalate.  Philippines and U.S. talk more troops visits but no permanent bases.  Hello everyone, I'm Steve Norman.
Egyptian police are threatening to use live weapons to protect themselves against anti-government protesters who say they will not give up their fight.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which is demanding the reinstatement of ousted President Mohamed Morsi, is defying the interim government and calling for another big protest rally later today.
Even in the aftermath of Wednesday's deadly crackdown on demonstrators, more people were out on the streets of Cairo as well as Alexandria on Thursday.
Egyptian authorities accuse the Brotherhood and the Morsi supporters of terrorism and sabotage.  The Brotherhood says the country is returning to military tyranny.
In response to Egypt's crackdown, President Obama has canceled U.S. joint military exercises with Egypt.
We get more now from White House correspondent Kent Klein.
President Obama strongly condemned the mounting violence, the military-declared state of emergency and the crackdown on supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted last month.
"While we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back."
With that in mind, Mr. Obama said the United States would not hold its regularly scheduled drills with Egypt's military.
But the president did not refer to the military takeover from the Morsi government as a "coup."  By U.S. law, such a designation would require Washington to cut off more than $1-billion a year in aid to Egypt, most of it to the military.
Kent Klein, VOA news, the White House.
And for the latest on the situation in Egypt, go to our website at voanews.com.
Iraq is blaming al-Qaeda for a series of car bomb blasts that ripped across the Iraqi capital, killing at least 33 people and wounding dozens more.
The deadliest blast Thursday hit the Kadhimiyah neighborhood in northern Baghdad, killing at least seven people.    So far, no one has claimed responsibility.
At least 18 people were killed and more than 200 others wounded Thursday by a car bombing in a suburb of the Lebanese capital controlled by Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
This attack is the second on the same area since Hezbollah fighters joined forces earlier this year with neighboring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to battle Syria's Sunni-led rebels.
A nearby bombing last month wounded more than 50 people.
The websites of The Washington Post newspaper, CNN and Time magazine have been hacked by supporters of the Syrian president.
The Syrian Electronic Army took credit for the attacks in a posting on Twitter.  Earlier in the week, the Syrian Electronic Army hacked into the Facebook and Twitter accounts of  The New York Post.
Somalia's government has asked aid group Doctors Without Borders to [consider] reconsider its planned withdrawal from the country.
The medical aid group said Wednesday it is ending all programs in Somalia because of attacks on its staff and what it called the government's tolerance for such attacks.
This week American and Philippine officials held talks on expanding maritime security support from Washington, at a time of escalating tensions in the South China Sea.
That story now from Simone Orendain in Manila.
Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Carlos Sorreta says Philippine negotiators stressed their country's major concerns in the first round of talks between the two countries Wednesday.
"Particularly full respect for Philippine sovereignty, non-permanence of U.S. troops and no U.S. basing in the Philippines, full Philippine control and authority over facilities."
At a news briefing in Manila Thursday with no U.S. negotiators present, officials emphasized they are still working on general outlines for the deal and said they could not give specifics of what it would allow.
Simone Orendain for VOA news, Manila.
Former pilots for Korean Airlines tell VOA that training and cultural issues may have contributed to last month's Asiana Airlines' crash at San Francisco International Airport.
Concerns were raised by air safety investigators in the U.S., Britain and Canada after a number of mishaps and disasters dating back to the 1990s.
Last month, the Asiana captain flew into San Francisco's international airport using a visual [reproach] approach, that is, instead of an automated control.
The jet flew too low and too slow with resulting crash, killing three people and injuring 180 others.
Get more news at our website voanews.com.