The Trump administration is again warning Syria against using chemical weapons.
Associated Press correspondent Ben Thomas reports.
The White House says if Syrian "President Bashar al-Assad chooses to again use chemical weapons, the U.S. and its Allies will respond swiftly and appropriately."
In a statement, the White House says it's "closely monitoring the situation" in rebel-held Idlib province, where it says millions of innocent civilians are under threat of a Syrian government attack backed by Russia and Iran.
Russia has been a key supporter of Assad and has complained about militants in Idlib targeting Russian facilities.
Ben Thomas, Washington.
There about three million people in Idlib and the United Nations has said it is worried about the potential humanitarian toll that may come with a Syrian military campaign there.
The U.S. embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli denying earlier reports that its buildings had caught fire. Fighting has raged in southern districts of the city and Libyan officials say 50 people have died in more than a week of fighting.
Correspondent Edward Yeranian reports for VOA from Cairo.
The United Nations continued to urge warring militias to lay down their arms as fighting raged along the old airport road south of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
U.N. Special Envoy Ghassan Salame invited the warring factions to take part in talks Tuesday at an undisclosed location, but it was not clear if the parties had reached any agreement.
The United Nations has also urged the warring factions to "avoid indiscriminate attacks" and not to target "migrants and internally displaced people."
Edward Yeranian, for VOA news, Cairo.
Lawyers for two Reuters journalists sentenced to seven years in prison in Myanmar told reporters they're considering appealing the sentences.
This is VOA news.
More than a million people have been ordered to leave their homes as Hurricane Jebi sweeps over parts of Japan's west coast. The storm has caused heavy rain to flood western Japan's main offshore international airport.
Associated Press correspondent Charles De Ledesma reports.
Jebi is the strongest typhoon to make landfall in Japan since 1993.
According to Japan's Kyodo News service, in the hard-hit city of Osaka, high seas poured into Kansai Airport, flooding one of its two runways and the cargo storage area, forcing the airport to shut down. More than 700 flights have been cancelled.
According to Japanese media tallies, while the high-speed bullet train service from Tokyo west to Hiroshima got suspended, a massive near 3,000-ton tanker slammed dramatically into the side of a bridge connecting the airport to the mainland, damaging both the bridge and the vessel.
I'm Charles De Ledesma.
Weather forecasters expect Tropical Storm Gordon to gain strength during the day Tuesday before making landfall somewhere along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Hurricane warnings are in effect for coastal areas in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Journalist Bob Woodward is about to publish a book that tells about the inside workings of the Trump administration.
Associated Press Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports.
Bob Woodward's book is called Fear: Trump in the White House. Among the anecdotes as published in The Washington Post, chief staff John Kelly privately calling the president "an idiot," Pentagon chief Jim Mattis comparing him to "a fifth- or sixth-grader, " aides taking sensitive papers off his desk to prevent rash actions.
Current and former officials estimate nearly all their colleagues talked with Woodward. The president himself did not until after the manuscript is done.
The Post released a recording in which Woodward tells the president he reached out several times for an interview.
"... I'm just hearing about it. So we're going to have a very inaccurate book, and that's too bad."
Sagar Meghani, at the White House.
Amazon on Tuesday became the second American company to be valued at $1 trillion. It happened just a month after Apple hit the same mark.
Amazon stock increased by almost two percent Tuesday afternoon, briefly pushing its shares to more than $2,050. That's the mark it needed to reach a trillion dollars.
Amazon stock has increased in value about 75 percent since the start of the year. The stock has doubled in value over the past 15 months.
If it continues at that pace, amazon will soon displace Apple to become the most valuable American tech company.
When amazon first began publicly trading its stock in 1997, its shares were worth one dollar fifty cents.
You can find more on these and other late breaking and developing stories, from around the world, around the clock, at voanews.com and on the VOA news mobile app. I'm Christopher Cruise, VOA news.
