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

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized Russia for what he called its "irresponsible and profoundly ill-advised decision" to support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Marthe van der Wolf reports.

Kerry gave a grim assessment of the situation in Syria with pointed criticism of Russia and its ally, Syria.

"And together, the Syrian regime and Russia seem to have rejected diplomacy in furtherance of trying to pursue a military victory over the broken bodies, the bombed-out hospitals, the traumatized children of a long-suffering land."

Kerry said the United States is not giving up on the people of Syria and stressed that Washington is not abandoning the pursuit of peace.

Marthe van der Wolf, Brussels.

The United Nations is appealing to the international community to pay more attention to Yemen. Yemen is experiencing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, but most media attention is going to Syria.

U.N. officials fear this focus on Syria is overshadowing the serious need of more than 12 million people in Yemen.

A spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says the war there has destroyed the livelihoods of Yemen's people, robbed them of basic services and pushed the economy to near total collapse.

Hurricane Matthew made landfall in western Haiti Tuesday morning. Winds of 230 kilometers an hour struck the coast early in the day.

The storm brought heavy rain and wind as it swirled on toward Cuba and the Bahamas.

Weather forecasters say Matthew could hit Florida in the U.S. toward the end of the week and push its way up the East Coast of the U.S. over the next weekend.

This is VOA news.

A raft of public opinion polls indicates Democrat Hillary Clinton retains her edge over Republican Donald Trump.

Campaigning Tuesday, Clinton promoted the idea of increased fairness.

"We are going to create more fairness. And by creating more fairness, we're gonna give people more of a chance to have better jobs with rising income. That's the way it should work."

Meanwhile, Republican Trump on the campaign trail accused Clinton of corruption.

"Hillary Clinton made her money as a corrupt public official violating the law and putting her government office up for sale. Remember (when) she left the White House, say (she said) they were broke? And now they're worth $250 million. How did that happen?"

The focus now, though, is on tonight's vice presidential debate in Virginia between Republican candidate Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine.

The International Monetary Fund says global economic growth remains weak. It predicts that advanced economies will expand slowly this year.

IMF economist Maurice Obstfeld briefed the press.

"We project global output growth at 3.1 percent in 2016 and at 3.4 percent in 2017, the same as in early July shortly after the United Kingdom's Brexit vote."

The IMF says slow growth in advanced nations has sparked a political movement that blames economic troubles on globalization.

The lender's experts say effort to create trade barriers will hurt, not help the economic situation.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte again lashed out at Barack Obama, this time telling the U.S. president that he can "go to hell."

"Instead of helping us, (the first to hit was the) State Department. So you can go to hell, Mr. Obama, you can go to hell."

In a speech Tuesday, the Philippine leader also slammed the European Union, which he said should "choose purgatory, hell being filled up already," he said.

The comments were in response to Western criticism of Mr. Duterte's anti-drug campaign. That campaign has killed more than 3,000 people in three months.

More than 12,000 Turkish policemen were suspended Tuesday for alleged ties to U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. Gulen is accused by the government of leading the failed July coup.

The suspensions come just a day after Turkey's government announced it would extend a state of emergency for three months. The state of emergency was enacted shortly after the coup attempt and has allowed the Turkish government to engage in a crackdown on government employees.

Briefly looking at markets, on Wall Street, U.S. stock indexes were down at the close of trade today.

In Washington, I'm David DeForest.

That's the latest world news from VOA.