From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm David DeForest reporting.

At least 76 people were killed when a plane carrying members of a Brazilian soccer team crashed late Monday near Medellin, Colombia. Several people aboard the chartered plane are said to have survived.

The team departed Bolivia to play in the final game of the Copa Sudamericana tournament.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye Tuesday expressed her willingness to step down from office in an orderly manner. Without [words] using the words "impeachment" or "resignation," she said she would leave her future course to the national assembly.

She spoke in a hastily scheduled televised address to the nation.

Opposition leaders reacted with the skepticism to the speech. Some suspect she might be using a political maneuver to delay impeachment efforts or to shore up support within her party.

United Nations Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura told the European Parliament Tuesday that he is uncertain how long the eastern part of Aleppo will last. He said the escalation of military attacks on the sector put its continuing existence in doubt.

"The perception we are having at the moment is that while everybody is claiming and will continue claiming, because it is politically correct to say so, that there is only a political solution, there is clearly an acceleration of a military outcome, which then can be in a way packaged into a political framework." :Staffan de Mistura.

A U.S. general is blaming human error for a coalition airstrike in September that killed Syrian government-aligned forces near Deir Ezzor.

Brigadier General Richard Coe says the coalition forces thought they were striking the Islamic State.

He said the strike killed at least 15 people.

This is VOA news.

A United Nations human rights spokeswoman said Tuesday civilians in the Iraqi city of Mosul are being killed by Islamic State extremists if they attempt to flee or refuse to help jihadists.

Ravina Shamdasani said IS jihadists have carried out hundreds of execution style murders of civilians.

The United Nations envoy to Yemen is strongly criticizing the Houthi rebels for forming a new government on their own, calling it a setback to peace efforts.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said in a statement from Geneva Tuesday that there is still time to pull Yemen back from the brink if all parties agree to stop airstrikes and halt fighting on the ground in favor of diplomacy.

Meanwhile, the U.N. refugee agency is reporting thousands of refugees from the Horn of Africa are continuing to make the perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden to war-torn Yemen. Lisa Schlein takes a look.

The U.N. refugee agency reports nearly 106,000 people, mostly from Ethiopia and Somalia, have risked their lives on the high seas to reach Yemen so far this year. This is 13,000 more than all of 2015.

The UNHCR says many of them embark from coastal towns in Somalia and Djibouti and that they are ill-informed about the worsening conflict and deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Yemen.

Lisa Schlein, Geneva.

A fire at a school in the southern Turkish province of Adana has killed 12 people, including 11 teenage girls. Twenty-two people were injured.

The fire broke out in a girls' dormitory late Tuesday. The cause of the fire is unknown.



U.S. National Guard troops have been deployed to help battle wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of buildings in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Mike Werner is Gatlinburg's mayor: "Over the 10 square miles of our city, about half of it has been impacted. We have over confirmed 100 structures that have been damaged."

Wildfires are moving through the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.

The Islamic State group says the man who carried out Monday's attack at Ohio State University was what he called a "soldier of the caliphate."

A statement posted by the group's news agency says Abdul Razak Ali Artan had responded to calls to attack the citizens of what it called "international coalition countries."

The U.S. Department of Commerce reported Tuesday that the U.S. economy grew significantly faster than expected between July and September due primarily to strong consumer spending.

The gross domestic product or GDP, the total output of all goods and services in the U.S., expanded at an annual rate of 3.2 percent. That's its fastest pace in two years.

Apparently the markets like that news. On Wall Street, U.S. stock indexes were up at the close of today's trading session.

In Washington, I'm David DeForest.

That's the latest world news from VOA.