VOA News for Thursday, August 8th, 2013 - 20130808
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 2013-08-08

Thanks to http://gandalf.ddo.jp/ for audio and text
VOA NEWS Thursday August 8th, 2013...
From Washington, this is VOA news.  Coming up, a U.S.-Russia summit is off.  Italy accepting migrants stranded in the Mediterranean.  Hello everyone, I'm Steve Norman.
President Obama has canceled a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin that was supposed to take place next month ahead of the G20 summit in Russia.  The Russian government has expressed disappointment at the move.
VOA's senior White House correspondent Dan Robinson has a report.
The White House Wednesday said it was determined there was "not enough recent progress" in the bilateral agenda to hold the summit in early September.
The statement noted key areas on which Washington and Moscow have cooperated, including a new nuclear arms reduction treaty, Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea.
But it said that given the lack of progress on issues such as Syria's civil war, missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations and human rights, it would be "more constructive to postpone the summit."
The biggest recent issue is Russia's decision to grant temporary asylum to Edward Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence contractor who leaked details of U.S. electronic surveillance programs.
Dan Robinson, VOA news, the White House.
Yemeni authorities say they have foiled an al-Qaeda plot to seize two southern cities and storm strategic oil and gas facilities nearby.  They say the plot involved kidnapping or killing foreign workers there.
The announcement came as the U.S. launched a suspected drone strike that killed at least seven al-Qaeda members in Yemen, this following warnings of potential attacks prompted Washington to shut diplomatic missions across the Middle East and Africa last week.
Egypt's interim government says efforts [to] by foreign envoys to mediate the country's political divide have failed and they have issued another stern warning for protesters to disperse.
The presidency said Wednesday it blames ousted President Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood for the failure.
Iraqi officials and hospital sources say a series of bomb blasts in Baghdad and other cities have killed at least 20 people, wounded 65 more.
The deadliest of the attacks took place in the northern city of Kirkuk.  In Baghdad, a car bomb blast hit several Shiite neighborhoods.
Syrian activists say government forces have killed at least 62 rebel fighters in an ambush near Damascus.
State media identified the rebel fighters as "terrorists" who were members of the al-Qaeda-linked group Jabhat al-Nusra.
Here in Washington, State Department spokesperson Jennifer Psaki was asked about the U.S. policy on al-Nusra.
"We've designated them as a terrorist organization.  We have taken many steps to ensure to our best ability that aid and assistance of all kinds is going to the moderate components of the opposition, and that's a message that we've conveyed publicly and privately."
Syrian forces have been on the offensive in recent months in areas around Damascus.
A stand-by defense attorney for U.S. army psychiatrist who has admitted opening fire on soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009 says the defendant is deliberately seeking the death penalty.
[At] As his court-martial hearing began this week, Major Nidal Hasan told a jury of military officers that he was the shooter in the rampage that left 13 people dead and 32 others wounded at the military base in Texas.
He is representing himself in the murder trial and, if convicted, will face the death penalty.
Italy has agreed to take in more than 100 migrants who have been stranded for days on a tanker in the Mediterranean after Malta refused to allow them entry.
Selah Hennessy is following the story.
The migrants arrived in Italy on Wednesday.  They were rescued from their badly damaged inflatable boat by a tanker off the coast of Libya on Sunday and had been stranded since then.
Four pregnant women and a five-month-old baby are believed to be among the group.    But Malta's prime minister had said the migrants were not in distress and refused to allow them into his small island country.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat thanked Italy for accepting the migrants.
Malta is a top gateway for migrants attempting to reach Europe from Africa.  According to the United Nations, last year more than 1,500 people arrived by sea, a large influx for a country with a population of only around 500,000.
Selah Hennessy for VOA news, London.
U.S. stock markets closed lower on Wednesday.  It was the first three-day losing streak for the markets since June.  Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3 percent.  S&P 500 0.4 percent down.  The NASDAQ composite index fell 0.3 percent.
More news is available at voanews.com.