VOA News for 20 Feb 2013 - 20130220

VOA News in regular English
February 20th, 2013
Tunisia's prime minister resigns and NATO coalition forces commander retires. I'm Ray Kugel, reporting from Washington.
Tunisia's Islamist-backed prime minister resigned Tuesday after failing to form a new government in response to the assassination of a leading secular opposition figure earlier this month.
Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali quit hours after saying his own Ennadha party had rejected his plan for government of technocrats.
Mr Jebali had announced his push for a non-partisan government on February just hours after secularist leader Chokri Belaid was shot to death at close range outside his home in the capital, Tunis.
Belaid's supporters had accused Ennadha of being behind the killing, a charge the ruling party denies.
Seven French tourists including four children have been kidnapped in Cameroon by what French President François Hollande says is a Nigeria-based terrorist group. Mr Hollande says the gunmen had crossed the border from Cameroon into Nigeria with the hostages. The seven hostages are members of the same family.
South African Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius appeared for a dramatic day of arguments in a Pretoria court Tuesday, where he faces a murder charge for killing his girlfriend. Peter Cox reports.
"I had no intention to kill my girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp," Oscar Pistorius' lawyer read as the runner dissolved into tears in the steamy courtroom, crammed with spectators and journalists from around the world.
So began Pistorius' account of the events that led to Steenkamp's death, as the two legal teams wrangled over whether the Olympic runner should be released on bail ahead of his murder trial.
Pistorius contends that he thought his girlfriend of three months was a burglar in his heavily guarded home, and that he shot through the bathroom door without realizing that the blonde model was no longer in his bed.
"We were deeply in love and I could not be happier," he said in the affidavit, read by his lawyer, Barry Roux.
Peter Cox for VOA news, Johannesburg.
Syrian opposition activists say a missile attack late Monday leveled several buildings in the northern commercial city of Aleppo. At least 19 people were killed.
In Turkey, police arrested dozens of people as part of a crackdown on a leftist militant group that claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on the US embassy this month. Tuesday's raids focused on suspected members of the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front.
US Marine General John Allen is retiring instead of accepting the top job at NATO.
President Obama accepted General Allen's request to retire. And he is doing so in order to address health issues within his family.
General Allen recently left a 19-month command in Afghanistan where he led the International Security Assistance Force.
President Obama is calling for lawmakers to reach a budget deal to avoid a round of deep spending cuts. Speaking at the White House, Mr Obama said the "brutal" and "arbitrary" cuts would hurt the government and cause people to lose their jobs.
He is urging Republicans to accept a plan proposed by Senate Democrats to raise revenue by ending certain tax exemptions for corporations and wealthy individuals.
In response, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, said "the president offered no credible plan that can pass Congress--only more calls for higher taxes."
Russia's Investigative Committee opened a criminal case Tuesday against a mother in the United States blamed for the death last month of a three-year-old Russian adoptee.
It's a latest development in a diplomatic war between the United States and Russia. Dan Peleschuk has details.
Russian investigators say they will apply for arrest-in-absentia of a Texas mother they believe is responsible for the death of a three-year-old Russian adoptee they identify as Maxim Kuzmin.
Investigators launched a criminal case into the matter on Tuesday, a day after Russia's ombudsman for children, Pavel Astakhov, claimed the boy died after suffering abuse from his mother.
Authorities in Texas are still investigating the case, but a local obituary confirms the January 21 death of a three-year-old Texas boy named Max Alan Shatto.
The accusation is the latest in a diplomatic dispute between Russia and the United States about what Russian officials say is the systemic abuse of Russian adoptees by American parents.
Dan Peleschuk, Moscow.
The US State Department called the death of the three-year-old adopted boy in Texas a terrible tragedy. At the same time, it's warning against making any assumptions about the case before police have completed their investigation.
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