VOA news for Wednesday, October 29th, 2014

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Thanks to http://gandalf.ddo.jp/ for audio and text Wednesday, October 29th, 2014 From Washington, this is VOA news. NASA supply ship rocket to space station explodes on launch. President Obama warns against Ebola quarantines. I'm Ray Kouguell reporting from Washington. An unmanned commercial rocket that was supposed to send a cargo ship to the International Space Station exploded just seconds after liftoff from a NASA launch pad in the southeastern state of Virginia. The privately owned rocket barely got off the ground before it blew up just after sunset Tuesday on Wallops Island off the Atlantic coast. There was no one on board the Antares rocket and no one on the ground was hurt. But NASA says there was significant vehicle and cargo damage. President Obama says no other nation is doing as much as the U.S. to contain or ultimately stop the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He has also praised American health workers who volunteered to fight the virus. White House correspondent Luis Ramirez reports. Without mentioning any state by name, the president on Tuesday said policies on quarantines and isolation of health workers who have had contact with Ebola patients should not be such that they discourage Americans from helping fight the disease. "Those workers who are willing and able and dedicated to go over there in a really tough job, that they're applauded, thanked and supported. That should be our priority.” The administration has rejected calls for a ban on travel to and from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and recommended against automatic quarantines of people arriving from those countries. Mr. Obama reminded Americans Tuesday that only two people have been infected with Ebola on U.S. soil. He said officials should be guided by science, not fear, in dealing with the disease. Luis Ramirez, VOA news, at the White House. This is VOA news. Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters are headed to Kobani, Syria, to help Syrian Kurds fight Islamic State militants for control of the town just south of the Turkish border. Kurdish officials say 80 fighters equipped with artillery and machine guns are expected to join the battle for Kobani Tuesday. Another 72 are expected to arrive today. The fighting continued Tuesday, with the U.S. saying it launched four more aerial attacks on Islamic State positions in Kobani and nine other strikes against jihadists in Iraq. Foreign ministers and representatives from 40 nations met Tuesday in Berlin to focus on helping Syria's neighbors cope with the huge group of refugees who have been pushed from their country by more than years of war. The U.N. has registered more than three million Syrian refugees. Turkey and Lebanon each are hosting more than one million people. At least 18 workers are trapped underground after an accident at a coal mine in southern Turkey. Initial reports say flooding inside the mine near the town of Ermenek in Karaman province caused a cave-in. But later reports say workers were trapped by the water. Turkey's emergency management agency says a broken pipe in the mine caused the flooding. In Hong Kong, protesters marked a one-month anniversary of the student-led pro-democracy demonstrations Tuesday. The anniversary comes amid an impasse between the protesters and authorities in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. Ivan Broadhead reports. Tuesday dawned amid a sea of 2,000 tents and countless democracy activists on the streets of the Hong Kong Central business district. In the cool breeze, a group of students marked the end of the first full month of the democracy protest by singing the lilting refrain of the Umbrella Movement anthem, Under a Vast Sky. Late Tuesday, the students continue to strategize, and sing, at the now nightly rally in Umbrella Square. Ivan Broadhead, Hong Kong. Protesters want Beijing to repeal its decision to screen candidates for the territory's 2017 election for chief executive. Authorities have refused, instead declaring the gatherings to be illegal and cracking down on the protesters several times. Russia will recognize results of upcoming elections in two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the voting scheduled for November 2nd will be important for what he calls the "legitimization of power" in the unrecognized "People's Republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk. And a 50-meter-wide river of lava continues to creep down a mountainside in the U.S. island state of Hawaii. The village's roughly 1,000 residents have been told to evacuate. It's all coming from the Kilauea volcano at 2,000 degrees. I'm Ray Kouguell in Washington. That's the latest world news from VOA.