Voice of America’s immigration news

GENEVA — Every year, many of the hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking asylum or jobs in Europe are “at great risk of harm and death” because few protection services are available to help them on their perilous journey, according to a report issued by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, Tuesday. “The absence of critical services is placing refugees and migrants at great risk of harm and death and is also triggering dangerous secondary onward movements,” Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR special envoy for the central Mediterranean situation told journalists at a briefing Tuesday in Geneva. “Some refugees and migrants underestimate the risks, while many fall victim to the narratives of smugglers and traffickers,” he said. The report highlights the horrors faced by refugees and migrants who risk their lives moving on dangerous routes stretching from the East and Horn of Africa and West Africa towards North Africa’s Atlantic coast, and across the Central Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The UNHCR reports refugees and migrants from about 20 different African countries “die while crossing the desert or near borders.” As well as Sub-Saharan Africans, it says an increasing number of people from countries in Asia and the Middle East, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Syria are arriving in North Africa. The report says most of the refugees and migrants “suffer serious human rights violations en route” including ‘’sexual and gender-based violence, kidnappings for ransom, torture, and physical abuse.” “Protection services along the routes that can help mitigate the risks these people face — such as immediate humanitarian assistance, shelter for people who have been exposed to violence, and access to justice — are often not available,” Cochetel said. “In many countries, the services that were there in 2022-2023 are no longer there. This is the case, in particular, in Morocco, in Mauritania, in Sudan because of the conflict, in the northern part of Niger, in the southern part of Algeria. So, basically these are in key hubs, key crossing routes that are used by migrants and refugees,” he said. Aside from the conflict in Sudan, several other crises emerged in 2023 that forced people to flee their homes. “Regrettably, more emergencies cannot be ruled out in 2024,” authors of the report warn. “Neither can the human need of people to flee or abandon their homes to find safety and or better… basic life conditions for themselves and their families.” Cochetel observed that the lack of sustained funding threatens the limited services that currently are available, including search and rescue missions. “In the past, la gendarmerie nationale [the national military police] in Agadez, Niger, would pick up people who had been stranded or abandoned by smugglers and traffickers in the desert. But such rescue missions,” he said, “no longer occur along that route.” “The only country on the African continent where I know that this concept is implemented is in Djibouti,” Cochetel said. He said Djiboutian authorities are patrolling the land side of their coast “to see people that have been abandoned by smugglers in the desertic areas or people who have returned with the same smugglers from Yemen and who are dropped in the middle of nowhere,” adding that such search and rescue projects needed to be developed in partnership with local authorities in Nigeria, southern Morocco, Mauritania, and other desert regions. “We would need that to save more lives and bring back to safety people stranded or abandoned there,” Cochetel said. Since the publication of the previous report in July 2022, the UNHCR says an estimated 3,045 individuals have been reported dead or missing along the combined Central and Western Mediterranean and Northwest Africa Maritime routes. “However, the real figures could be significantly higher, as many incidents likely go undetected and remain unrecorded,” it said. While the report is meant to make governments aware of the shortcomings in support services, UNHCR’s Cochetel said it also is intended to provide useful information on the availability of services for refugees and migrants who are “lost, stranded, and abused along the routes.” For example, he said the report contains GPS coordinates and WhatsApp numbers that refugees and migrants can use to locate essential, possibly life-saving protective services.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Islamabad — A senior Taliban leader in Afghanistan, wanted by the United States for terrorism, has concluded a rare visit to the United Arab Emirates, where he met with the host country's leadership, an Afghan official said Wednesday. Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani traveled abroad for the first time since the Taliban took over the war-torn South Asian nation nearly three years ago. Reward for Justice, a U.S. Department of State program aimed at combating international terrorism, offers $10 million for information that will lead to Haqqani’s arrest. UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Yazed Al Nahyan received Haqqani in Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital, on Tuesday. The state-run WAM news agency reported the meeting and included a picture of them shaking hands. “The two sides discussed strengthening the bonds of cooperation between the two countries and ways to enhance ties to serve mutual interests and contribute to regional stability,” WAM reported. It added that the discussions “focused on economic and development fields, as well as support for reconstruction and development in Afghanistan.” There was no immediate U.S. response to Haqqani’s visit and meeting with the UAE president.     Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief spokesman of the Taliban government in Kabul, also confirmed the meeting but shared no other details. He said the Taliban’s spy chief, Abdul Haq Wasiq, accompanied Haqqani in the talks. Wasiq was held for years in the U.S. military’s Guantanamo Bay detention center before being released with four other Taliban insurgents in 2014 in exchange for American soldier Bowe Bergdahl. The Haqqani network of militants led by the Afghan interior minister captured Bergdahl after he left his post in 2009. The network staged high-profile suicide and road bombings as well as guerrilla attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces during their nearly two-decades-long presence in Afghanistan until the then-insurgent Taliban returned to power in August 2021 as foreign militaries exited the country. The U.S. FBI’s list of most wanted men identifies Haqqani as a specially designated global terrorist who maintains close ties to al-Qaida. It says the militant leader is wanted for questioning in connection with the January 2008 attack on a Kabul hotel that killed six people, including an American citizen. While in Kabul, Haqqani regularly meets foreign diplomats and speaks in public. Regional diplomats say the interior minister meets visitors in secrecy and keeps changing venues, fearing a U.S. drone strike. Haqqani appeared on CNN in 2022 with a conciliatory message for Americans. “In the future, we would like to have good relations with the United States,” he told the U.S. media outlet. A U.S. drone strike in a posh neighborhood in the Afghan capital killed fugitive al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022. U.S. officials said the slain terror leader was residing in a three-story safe house that was linked to Haqqani. The Taliban protested the strike, saying it was a breach of the 2020 Doha agreement they signed with Washington, which paved the way for the U.S. to withdraw from the longest U.S. war in history. The Taliban also pledged in line with the terms of the agreement not to harbor al-Qaida and other transnational militant groups seeking to attack America and its allies. No country has recognized the Taliban government, citing human rights concerns and bans on Afghan women’s access to education and work. While the U.S. and other Western nations moved their diplomatic missions out of Afghanistan, mostly to Qatar after the Taliban takeover, neighboring and regional countries, including China and Russia, have retained their diplomatic posts in Kabul and allowed Taliban envoys to run Afghan embassies. U.S. officials have since held several meetings with Taliban representatives in Qatar’s capital, Doha, but they have had no interaction with Haqqani. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and neighboring Pakistan were the only countries that had recognized the previous Taliban government until it was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion for sheltering al-Qaida planners of the September 2001 terror strikes on America.   Haqqani’s visit to the UAE comes as the United Nations prepares to convene another international gathering in Doha of special envoys for Afghanistan later this month. The Doha meeting on June 30 aims to increase, facilitate, and coordinate the world’s engagement with the country facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world amid deepening economic and financial troubles stemming from the Taliban takeover. The Taliban were invited to two previous huddles but refused to join the Doha process of consultations. Kabul, however, has said it is conducting internal consultations after receiving a U.N. invitation to decide whether to attend the coming meeting.   De facto Afghan rulers had previously linked their participation to their acceptance as the sole official representatives of the country, meaning that Afghan civil society activists and members of opposition groups would not be present. The U.N. rejected those conditions, and it was not known if the world body would review its stance to ensure the Taliban’s participation. 

US President Joe Biden is in France to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landing and to underscore the need for a strong transatlantic alliance in the face of Russian aggression. He’ll also take part in a formal state visit hosted by France’s president, and will meet face-to-face with Ukraine’s president, who has been invited to (somber ceremonies marking this decisive battle that led to the end of the World War II. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Paris. Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Portsmouth, United Kingdom — King Charles III on Wednesday led commemorations to mark the 80th anniversary for the World War II D-Day landings, joining British veterans, other senior royals and political leaders. The 75-year-old monarch, who only recently resumed public engagements as he battles cancer, spoke at a remembrance event in Portsmouth, on England's south coast, organized by the Ministry of Defense. Allied troops began departing from the port city and other sites on the southern English coast on June 5, 1944, crossing the Channel and battling to land the next morning on beaches in northern France. "As we give thanks for all those who gave so much to win the victory whose fruits we still enjoy to this day, let us once again commit ourselves always to remember, cherish and honor those who served that day," Charles told the flag-waving audience. As head of state, Charles is commander-in-chief of Britain's armed forces and served himself in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. He and his wife Queen Camilla will be in France on Thursday for further commemorations. Senior royals, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and WWII veterans will join dozens of heads of state including US President Joe Biden, French leader Emmanuel Macron and other dignitaries at services across Normandy. It will be Charles's first overseas visit since his cancer diagnosis was announced in February. 'Lucky' Wednesday's UK commemorations, which included readings, music and reenactments from the period, also featured recollections from D-Day veterans, mainly in pre-recorded videos. However, Roy Hayward — who was aged 19 at the time — took to the stage to speak of his emotions eight decades on. "I always considered myself one of the lucky ones that survived, because so many of us didn't," said the veteran, who later in WWII lost both his legs below the knees to amputation. "I represent the men and women who put their lives on hold to go and fight for democracy and this country. "I'm here to honor their memory and their legacy, and to ensure that their story is never forgotten," Hayward added. Charles's elder son and heir Prince William — an RAF search and rescue pilot before becoming a full-time royal — also addressed the assembled dignitaries. "Today, we remember the bravery of those who crossed the sea to liberate Europe, those who waited for their safe return," he said after reading aloud an extract from a veteran's diary. The leaders of some of Britain's main political parties took a break from general election campaigning ahead of the country's July 4 poll. Sunak penned a message in the event program and read out a message that was delivered to all D-Day troops. Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer looked on from the audience. Just hours earlier, the political rivals were clashing fiercely in the first live TV debate of the election campaign.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Brussels, Belgium — Voters in the European Union are set to elect lawmakers starting Thursday for the bloc's parliament, in a major democratic exercise that's also likely to be overshadowed by online disinformation. Experts have warned that artificial intelligence could supercharge the spread of fake news that could disrupt the election in the EU and many other countries this year. But the stakes are especially high in Europe, which has been confronting Russian propaganda efforts as Moscow's war with Ukraine drags on. Here's a closer look:  What's happening? Some 360 million people in 27 nations — from Portugal to Finland, Ireland to Cyprus — will choose 720 European Parliament lawmakers in an election that runs Thursday to Sunday. In the months leading up to the vote, experts have observed a surge in the quantity and quality of fake news and anti-EU disinformation being peddled in member countries. A big fear is that deceiving voters will be easier than ever, enabled by new AI tools that make it easy to create misleading or false content. Some of the malicious activity is domestic, some international. Russia is most widely blamed, and sometimes China, even though hard evidence directly attributing such attacks is difficult to pin down. “Russian state-sponsored campaigns to flood the EU information space with deceptive content is a threat to the way we have been used to conducting our democratic debates, especially in election times,” Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign policy chief, warned on Monday. He said Russia's "information manipulation" efforts are taking advantage of increasing use of social media penetration “and cheap AI-assisted operations." Bots are being used to push smear campaigns against European political leaders who are critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said. Has any disinfo happened yet? There have been plenty of examples of election-related disinformation.  Two days before national elections in Spain last July, a fake website was registered that mirrored one run by authorities in the capital Madrid. It posted an article falsely warning of a possible attack on polling stations by the disbanded Basque militant separatist group ETA.   In Poland, two days before the October parliamentary election, police descended on a polling station in response to a bogus bomb threat. Social media accounts linked to what authorities call the Russian interference “infosphere” claimed a device had exploded. Just days before Slovakia’s parliamentary election in November, AI-generated audio recordings impersonated a candidate discussing plans to rig the election, leaving fact-checkers scrambling to debunk them as false as they spread across social media. Just last week, Poland’s national news agency carried a fake report saying that Prime Minister Donald Tusk was mobilizing 200,000 men starting on July 1, in an apparent hack that authorities blamed on Russia. The Polish News Agency “killed,” or removed, the report minutes later and issued a statement saying that it wasn’t the source. It's “really worrying, and a bit different than other efforts to create disinformation from alternative sources," said Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of EU DisinfoLab, a nonprofit group that researches disinformation. “It raises notably the question of cybersecurity of the news production, which should be considered as critical infrastructure.” What's the goal of disinformation? Experts and authorities said Russian disinformation is aimed at disrupting democracy, by deterring voters across the EU from heading to the ballot boxes. “Our democracy cannot be taken for granted, and the Kremlin will continue using disinformation, malign interference, corruption and any other dirty tricks from the authoritarian playbook to divide Europe,” European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova warned the parliament in April. Tusk, meanwhile, called out Russia's “destabilization strategy on the eve of the European elections.” On a broader level, the goal of “disinformation campaigns is often not to disrupt elections," said Sophie Murphy Byrne, senior government affairs manager at Logically, an AI intelligence company. “It tends to be ongoing activity designed to appeal to conspiracy mindsets and erode societal trust," she told an online briefing last week. Narratives are also fabricated to fuel public discontent with Europe’s political elites, attempt to divide communities over issues like family values, gender or sexuality, sow doubts about climate change and chip away at Western support for Ukraine, EU experts and analysts say.  What has changed? Five years ago, when the last European Union election was held, most online disinformation was laboriously churned out by “troll farms” employing people working in shifts writing manipulative posts in sometimes clumsy English or repurposing old video footage. Fakes were easier to spot. Now, experts have been sounding that alarm about the rise of generative AI that they say threatens to supercharge the spread of election disinformation worldwide. Malicious actors can use the same technology that underpins easy-to-use platforms, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to create authentic-looking deepfake images, videos and audio. Anyone with a smartphone and a devious mind can potentially create false, but convincing, content aimed at fooling voters. “What is changing now is the scale that you can achieve as a propaganda actor,” said Salvatore Romano, head of research at AI Forensics, a nonprofit research group. Generative AI systems can now be used to automatically pump out realistic images and videos and push them out to social media users, he said. AI Forensics recently uncovered a network of pro-Russian pages that it said took advantage of Meta’s failure to moderate political advertising in the European Union. Fabricated content is now “indistinguishable” from the real thing, and takes disinformation watchers experts a lot longer to debunk, said Romano.  What are authorities doing about it? The EU is using a new law, the Digital Services Act, to fight back. The sweeping law requires platforms to curb the risk of spreading disinformation and can be used to hold them accountable under the threat of hefty fines. The bloc is using the law to demand information from Microsoft about risks posed by its Bing Copilot AI chatbot, including concerns about “automated manipulation of services that can mislead voters.” The DSA has also been used to investigate Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms for not doing enough to protect users from disinformation campaigns. The EU has passed a wide-ranging artificial intelligence law, which includes a requirement for deepfakes to be labelled, but it won't arrive in time for the vote and will take effect over the next two years.  How are social media companies responding? Most tech companies have touted the measures they're taking to protect the European Union's “election integrity.” Meta Platforms — owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — has said it will set up an election operations center to identify potential online threats. It also has thousands of content reviewers working in the EU’s 24 official languages and is tightening up policies on AI-generated content, including labeling and “downranking” AI-generated content that violates its standards. Nick Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs, has said there’s no sign that generative AI tools are being used on a systemic basis to disrupt elections. TikTok said it will set up fact-checking hubs in the video-sharing platform’s app. YouTube owner Google said it’s working with fact-checking groups and will use AI to “fight abuse at scale.” Elon Musk went the opposite way with his social media platform X, previously known as Twitter. “Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone,” he said in a post in September. 

The White House; Paris — U.S. President Joe Biden landed Wednesday in France to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasion — and plans to use the occasion to underscore the need for a strong transatlantic alliance in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine. Biden will meet Ukraine’s president, and with surviving American veterans of the 1944 beach invasion, said national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Biden will use the events, Sullivan said, to “talk about, against the backdrop of war in Europe today, the sacrifices that those heroes and those veterans made 80 years ago and how it’s our obligation to continue their mission to fight for freedom.” Sullivan, who spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Paris, said Biden will also deliver a speech on Friday at Normandy that will cover “the existential fight between dictatorship and freedom” — all while overlooking a 30-meter tall cliff that Army Rangers had to scale under enemy gunfire to win the battle that eventually led to France’s liberation and the demise of Nazi Germany. "And he’ll talk about the dangers of isolationism and how, if we bow to dictators, fail to stand up to them, they keep going and ultimately America and the world pays a greater price,” he said. Biden will also attend a state visit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, in addition to face-to-face talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been invited to the somber ceremonies marking this decisive battle that led to the end of World War II. American presidents have regularly made the journey for this critical anniversary, and Biden is no exception. “The president is very much looking forward to going to Normandy over the course of the next two days of this week to commemorate the service and the sacrifice, the bravery of the soldiers, Allied and American alike, who fought in D-Day in that invasion, conducted Operation Overlord and really spelled through that operation, the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany, and the beginning of something even more impactful, and that's this rules-based international order that we all still continue to enjoy today,” John Kirby, White House national security communications adviser, told VOA at the White House. Here, analysts say, history offers lessons. “The D-Day landings were the Western Allies’ military statement that authoritarian regimes could not change boundaries by force,” said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ”That countries could not just be invaded, and that authoritarian regimes of the type that Nazi Germany constituted — particularly with its terrible oppression of subjugated peoples, particularly the Jews — were not acceptable and not just not acceptable, but would be destroyed.” Analysts say Biden’s Ukraine goals will be overshadowed by his increasingly unpopular support of another conflict. “Even though obviously Ukraine is the top priority for the Europeans, they are seeing how the Biden administration's policy on Gaza is undermining European security in two different ways,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. “First of all, it is really destroying Western credibility in the broader international community and in the Global South — any talk about the rules-based international order at this point, will get laughed at, given what the Biden administration has done.” This trip to France, a close ally, comes at the start of six weeks of high-level U.S. involvement in high-stakes summits — including a peace summit on Ukraine, a summit of leaders of the Group of Seven, or G7, leading industrialized countries, and a summit of NATO members. VOA asked Sullivan what this set of diplomatic events could mean for peace in Europe, and beyond. “I think we need to send a clear message to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that he cannot outlast us, and that he cannot divide us,” he replied. “And we have been very good at holding the line on those two messages, and this is going to be a great opportunity over the coming weeks to not just put a period at the end of that sentence, but an exclamation point.” Patsy Widakuswara contributed from the White House.

FLORENCE — An Italian court re-convicted Amanda Knox of slander on Wednesday, even after she was exonerated in the brutal 2007 murder of her British roommate while the two were exchange students in Italy. The court found that Knox had wrongly accused an innocent man, the Congolese owner of the bar where she worked part time, of the killing. But she will not serve any more jail time, given the three-year sentence counts as time already served. Knox, who had returned to Italy for only the second time since she was freed in 2011 to participate in the trial, showed no visible emotion as the verdict was read aloud. But her lawyer, Carlo della Vedova, said shortly afterward that “Amanda is very embittered.” Knox had written on social media ahead of the hearing that she hoped to "clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me. Wish me luck.” The slaying of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher in the idyllic hilltop town of Perugia fueled global headlines as suspicion fell on Knox, a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle, and her new Italian boyfriend of just a week, Raffaele Sollecito. Flip-flop verdicts over nearly eight years of legal proceedings polarized trial watchers on both sides of the Atlantic as the case was vociferously argued on social media, then in its infancy. Knox’s retrial was set by a European court ruling that Italy violated her human rights during a long night of questioning days after Kercher’s murder, deprived of both a lawyer and a competent translator.  Earlier in the hearing, Knox had asked the eight Italian judges and civil jury members to clear her of the slander charge. In a soft and sometimes breaking voice, Knox had told the court that she wrongly accused Patrick Lumumba under intense police pressure.  “I am very sorry that I was not strong enough to resist the pressure of police,'' Knox told the panel in a 9-minute prepared statement, sitting alongside them on the jury bench. She told them: ”I didn't know who the murderer was. I had no way to know." The case continues to draw intense media attention, with photographers massing around Knox, her husband Christopher Robinson and their legal team as they entered the courtroom about an hour before the hearing. A camera knocked her on the left temple, her lawyer Luca Luparia Donati said. Knox's husband examined a small bump on her head as they sat in the front row of the court. Despite Knox’s exoneration and the conviction of an Ivorian man whose footprints and DNA were found at the scene, doubts about her role persisted, particularly in Italy. That is largely due to the accusation she made against Lumumba. Knox is now a 36-year-old mother of two small children. She returned to Italy for only the second time since she was freed in October 2011, after four years in jail, by a Perugia appeals court that overturned the initial guilty verdict in the murder case against both Knox and Sollecito. She remained in the United States through two more flip-flop verdicts before Italy’s highest court definitively exonerated the pair of the murder in March 2015, stating flatly that they had not committed the crime. In the fall, Italy’s highest Cassation Court threw out the slander conviction that had withstood five trials, ordering a new trial, thanks to a 2022 Italian judicial reform allowing cases that have reached a definitive verdict to be reopened if human rights violations are found.  This time, the court has been ordered to disregard two damaging statements typed by police and signed by Knox at 1:45 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. as she was held for questioning overnight into the small hours of Nov. 6, 2007. In the statements, Knox said she remembered hearing Kercher scream, and pointed to Lumumba for the killing. Hours later, still in custody at about 1 p.m., she asked for pen and paper and wrote her own statement in English, questioning the version that she had signed. “In regards to this ‘confession’ that I made last night, I want to make clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressure of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion," she wrote. 

AMMAN — Jordan has foiled two plots to smuggle millions of captagon pills through a border post to Saudi Arabia, the biggest seizure in years of drugs bound for lucrative Gulf markets from what Jordanian security officials say are Syria-based gangs with ties to Iran. The haul was discovered hidden in a shipment of construction vehicles at the Omari crossing in Jordan's eastern desert before it was due to enter Saudi Arabia, officials told Reuters on Wednesday. Law enforcement authorities had for weeks tracked two separate operations bringing the consignment of drugs into Jordan across the northern border with Syria. Unlike in previous busts that were carried out as drugs entered Jordan, the authorities waited to make the seizure until the drugs transited through the country and were due to leave. War-ravaged Syria has become the region's main site for the mass production of the addictive, amphetamine-type stimulant known as captagon, with Jordan a key transit route to the oil-rich Gulf states, Western anti-narcotics officials say. Jordanian officials, like their Western allies, say that Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group and pro-Iranian militias who control much of southern Syria are behind a surge in the multi-billion-dollar drugs and weapons trade. Iran and Hezbollah deny the allegations. U.N. experts and U.S. and European officials say the illicit drug trade finances a proliferation of pro-Iranian militias and Syrian pro-government paramilitary forces, after more than a decade of conflict in Syria. Since last year, Jordan's army has conducted several pre-emptive airstrikes inside Syria that Jordanian officials say targeted militias linked to the drug trade and their facilities, in a bid to stem a rise in cross-border incursions. Jordanian officials say they were forced to take matters into their own hands following meetings with their Syrian counterparts at which they expressed frustration that Damascus was not firmly acting to stem the smuggling. Amman says it has provided names of key drug dealers and locations of manufacturing facilities and smuggling routes to Syrian authorities. Jordan's King Abdullah called last month on Arab states to confront what the U.S. ally has called an alarming rise in incursions of drugs and weapons smugglers linked to Iranian militias operating in southern Syria. "They seek to exploit the regional tensions to target Jordan and its neighbors. They are trying to flood the region with drugs to amass profits and harm the security and stability of our countries," said a senior Jordanian official who requested anonymity. Jordan has also received extra U.S. military aid to improve security on its 375 km (230 mile) Syrian border. Jordanian officials say Washington has poured in hundreds of millions of dollars to establish border posts since the Syrian conflict began in 2011.  

Yangon — Hundreds of mourners turned out Wednesday to pay their respects to a former Myanmar general turned democracy activist and confidant of Aung San Suu Kyi, in a rare sanctioned public gathering in the junta-controlled commercial capital. Foreign ambassadors and senior figures in Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party were among those who attended the funeral in Yangon for Tin Oo, who died on Saturday aged 97. Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year prison sentence imposed by a junta court.    Tin Oo served as commander of the army under former strongman Ne Win, before being forced out for allegedly withholding information over a failed coup plot. He co-founded the NLD with Suu Kyi in the aftermath of mass protests against a former junta in 1988, and went on to become one of her closest confidants. The ambassadors of India and Singapore joined hundreds of other people paying their respects to Tin Oo, whose body was displayed in a glass-topped coffin draped with the NLD's peacock flag. A cortege of cars, one decked with wreaths and bearing Tin Oo's portrait, carried the coffin slowly through the rain-washed streets to the Yay Way cemetery, where hundreds more mourners were waiting and soldiers kept watch. While Suu Kyi was not allowed to attend, there was a bouquet of white roses at Tin Oo's house with a card that said "from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi." The cemetery is also home to the remains of Sein Lwin, a former home minister accused of leading a bloody crackdown on the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations. Tin Oo was detained by the military in that crackdown, before being released. He was arrested again along with Suu Kyi in 2003 after a pro-junta mob attacked their motorcade, killing dozens of people. In 2017, the NLD stalwart suffered a stroke and in recent years receded from the political arena due to old age and poor health. He avoided arrest in the sweeping crackdown that accompanied the 2021 coup, likely due to his advanced age, analysts say. The NLD has been targeted in the junta's bloody crackdown on dissent following its coup, with one former lawmaker executed in Myanmar's first use of capital punishment in decades. The junta dissolved the NLD in 2023 for failing to re-register under a tough new military-drafted electoral law, removing the party from polls it has indicated it may hold in 2025. Suu Kyi's closed-door trial in the military-built capital Naypyidaw was condemned by rights groups as a sham to shut her out of politics. The Nobel laureate, 78, has largely been hidden from view since the coup and has reportedly suffered health problems. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Nairobi — South Africans say they are excited and eager to see what a coalition government is going to look like days after elections show no party won an outright majority. "I'm excited because the ANC is finally going to be in a position where they have to reconsider how they've been approaching running the country, governing the country," 30-year-old architect Simphiwe Malambo tells VOA. “This is going to be a very challenging era for South Africans' politics," especially for the ruling party, 40-year old Pafana Zempe, an artist and educator said to VOA, adding the ANC will now have to think “which coalition they should do because with the DA it's something else, with EFF it's something else, with the latest MK, it's also something else,” he said. "Depending on the coalitions, if it's the DA/ANC coalition together, the DA can actually get in and do some good where the ANC has failed," Mark Fleming, an animator who didn’t share his age, told VOA. Possible coalitions: The African National Congress secured 40% of the vote, followed by the Democratic Alliance with about 22%. A coalition between the two could reconcile the country, says Tendai Mbanje, election analyst from the African Center for Governance. "The DA/ANC coalition promotes non-racialism. The DA/ANC coalition promotes unity in the country among two races. It could also strike a balance between competing differences in terms of addressing issues of poverty...economic issues affecting the country." Other coalitions could be with the newly formed party led by former president Jacob Zuma, uMkhonto We Sizwe or MK, which won about 15% or the Economic Freedom Party (EFF), which won about 10% of the final vote tally. Edgar Githua is a professor at Strathmore University in Kenya. "Unfortunately, Zuma has already… said he will only have a coalition with the ANC on conditions that Cyril Ramaphosa is not going to be the president… it looks like ANC EFF, and they need one of the other tiny ones to help them pretty much get to 50-51% to be able to form a government comfortably." The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) grabbed about 4% of the vote while the Patriotic Alliance took 2% according to the country’s Independent Electoral Commission. The ANC says its leader will not resign following election results but is open to working with everyone to form a government that will serve South Africa’s people. "At this stage in time, Cyril Ramaphosa is the best foot forward for the ANC, simply because of his reputation within and globally," Mbanje noted. Effects of coalitions internally and globally While internally, the economy and governance could improve with a coalition government, South Africa's stance on global issues could face some opposition. For example, Mbanje said there could be “contradictions or fights within the coalition government in regards… to South Africa's positions regarding certain countries for example, Israel Palestine issue, issue of Zimbabwe within the SADC [Southern African Development Community], Ukraine Russia issues among others." Views echoed by Githua. "These are some of the things that will now have to be renegotiated within the coalition government because all the political parties have their manifestos, have how they want to project themselves." South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in a case they brought to the International Court of Justice. Israel argues that its ground offensive which the Gaza health ministry says has killed about 36 thousand Palestinians is in response to Hamas militants' attack on Israel last year that killed 1,200 people according to Israeli tallies.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.