VOA news for Friday, August 1st, 2014

Thanks to http://gandalf.ddo.jp/ for audio and text Friday, August 1st, 2014 From Washington, this is VOA news. Coming up, a cease-fire in the Middle East. Also ahead the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Hello everyone, I'm Steve Norman. The United States and the United Nations have announced that Israel and Hamas have agreed on a cease-fire. Stephane Dujarric is U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson: "This humanitarian cease-fire will commence at 8am local time on Friday, August 1st, 2014. It will last for a period of 72 hours unless extended. During this time the forces on the ground will remain in place. We urge all parties to act with restraint until this humanitarian cease-fire begins, and to fully abide by their commitments during the cease-fire.” Hamas says it accepts the truce while Israel has not yet commented. But U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Mr. Ban say they have assurances that both parties agree to the unconditional cease-fire. Three weeks of Israeli ground and air campaign in response to Hamas's rocket attacks from Gaza have killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians. 56 Israeli soldiers and 3 civilians have died. An international team of investigators on Thursday managed to reach the crash site of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 for the 1st time since it was brought down by a missile 2 weeks ago as fighting continues to rage on in eastern Ukraine. Ertugrul Apakan is the chief monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine: "All parties, you know, were responsive in the manner that the international team reach over there, and we count on the arrangements that our team will be able to go there each day, every day, in order to carry out this investigation in the upcoming 2 or 3 weeks' time.” Clashes along routes to the wreckage site between government troops and pro-Russian separatist rebels had kept the delegation from reaching the area to retreat bodies that have been lying in open fields, where mid-summer temperatures have hovered around 32 degrees Celsius for the last several weeks. Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Volodimir Groysman vowed to maintain a route leading to the crash site safe so it can continue to [use access] be used to access to the embattled region. The plane was shot down on July 17th, killing all 298 passengers and crew, including 43 Malaysians and 195 Dutch. Now the latest on the Ebola outbreak, here is Anne Look at the VOA West Africa bureau. This is the worst outbreak of Ebola since the disease was discovered in 1976, but the strategy for fighting it is the same: containment. That means isolating the sick and monitoring those who have had contact with a sick person. Ebola spread into Sierra Leone and Liberia from Guinea in April. Health experts say it's unlikely the outbreak will move beyond West Africa, but further cross-border contagion within the region is still a concern. Ebola has killed more than 700 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since March. It has reached the densely populated capitals of all 3 countries. There is no cure for the virus. But available statistics show that just over 1/3 of those infected during this outbreak have been able to fight off the infection. Anne Look, VOA news, Dakar. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with India's finance minister Thursday during a visit aimed at boosting economic relations between the world's largest democracies. Mr. Kerry is in New Delhi to urge India to drop its opposition to global trade reforms that economists say would stimulate the world economy. Thursday was the World Trade Organization's deadline for adopting the reforms. Secretary Kerry said earlier this week that India's willingness to support a rules-based trading system would attract greater investment from the United States and around the world. U.S. electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors and the Japanese company Panasonic agreed to build the world's largest battery manufacturing plant. According to the deal signed Thursday, the plant known as Gigafactory will be built in the U.S. and be managed by Tesla, while Panasonic will supply equipment for the mass production of lithium-ion cells. I'm Steve Norman in Washington. That's the latest world news from VOA.