Voice of America’s immigration news

Academic institutions in Israel say they are making plans to welcome students who want to leave U.S. universities as campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza cause many American Jewish students to say they feel unsafe. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Jerusalem. VOA footage by Ricki Rosen.

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Israel warns civilians to leave Rafah as a military operation appears imminent, plus possible ramifications from the Israeli shut-down of Al-Jazeera. Russia claims to be training with tactical nuclear weapons near Ukraine and Sweden prepares to host Eurovision.

BANGKOK — A powerful ethnic minority armed group battling Myanmar's army in the country's west claimed Monday to have taken hundreds of government soldiers prisoner when it captured a major command post. The Arakan Army, the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement, has been on the offensive against army outposts in the western state of Rakhine — its home ground — for about six months. The group said in a video statement posted on the Telegram messaging app that soldiers belonging to the military government's Operational Command No. 15 headquarters in Rakhine's Buthidaung township surrendered after a siege. Buthidaung is about 385 kilometers (240 miles) southwest of Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city. The reported capture of the base could not be independently confirmed. Myanmar's military government made no immediate comment, and the spokesperson of the Arakan Army did not respond to questions sent by The Associated Press. The fight in Rakhine is part of the nationwide conflict in Myanmar that began after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and suppressed widespread nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule. Despite its advantages in arms and manpower, Myanmar's army has been on the defensive since October, when an alliance of three ethnic rebel groups launched an offensive in the country's northeast. The video released by the Arakan Army was described as having been made Saturday. It shows Arakan Army fighters guarding men in military uniforms and civilian clothes, some injured, as they walk through a field and down a roadside accompanied by women and children — families of soldiers often live at their posts. A caption accompanying the video says it shows the deputy commander of the group and his troops after a "final assault in which (they) faced total defeat and surrendered." The video does not specify the total number of captured soldiers and their family members, but in one part about 300 men can be seen sitting in rows in an open field. In a statement released Sunday, the Arakan Army said it captured the command post Thursday after attacking it for two weeks. It claimed another army post was seized the next day, along with others over the past two months. The attackers captured "weapons, ammunition, military equipment and surrendered prisoners of war," the statement said. Some parts of the video released Monday show young men who appear to be members of the Muslim Rohingya minority. Myanmar's military has been accused of filling its depleted ranks with Rohingya men in Rakhine under the recently activated conscription law. The army has lost personnel to casualties, surrender and defections while facing increasingly tough opposition on the battlefield. The Rohingya were the targets of a brutal counterinsurgency campaign incorporating rape and murder that saw an estimated 740,000 flee to neighboring Bangladesh as their villages were burned down by the army in 2017. Ethnic Rakhine nationalists aligned with the Arakan Army were also among the persecutors of the Rohingya minority, but now the Arakan Army and the Rohingya are uneasy allies in opposition to the military government. The Arakan Army, which seeks autonomy from Myanmar's central government, is part of an alliance of ethnic minority armies that launched an offensive in October and gained strategic territory in Myanmar's northeast bordering China. Its success was seen as a major defeat for the military government, and boosted the morale of restive ethnic minorities as well as the pro-democracy resistance. On Sunday, the Kachin Independence Army, another major ethnic armed group, claimed to have captured Sumprabum, a township in the northern state of Kachin.

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Nairobi, Kenya — The United States Agency for International Development last week launched a $6 million program to support small businesses and financial institutions in northern Kenya that are looking to implement climate-smart practices and enhance their resilience to climate-related challenges. The region suffers from recurring droughts; when it does rain, it often floods and causes people to lose their livelihoods. Residents of 10 northern Kenyan counties heavily depend on their livestock for food and income. Over the years, alternating periods of drought and floods have killed animals, pastures and crops, leaving millions in need of humanitarian assistance. USAID recently set aside $38 million in loans and investments to build resilience among small businesses in these arid and semi-arid regions. The $6 million investment is part of the larger program. Abubakar Aidarus is the head of Solargen, an organization that provides power sources and irrigation tools to farmers in Garissa and Wajir counties. Solargen received $500,000 from USAID last year. Aidarus said the new investment has helped his business reach more places and people. "We are from this area. We understand that the services are needed, and they are excluded from the financial systems and the grid as well,” Aidarus said. “There is no access to energy. Being able to get this investment first gave us the opportunity to put up and the courage to move to Wajir and establish an operation there. It gave us an opportunity to turn fewer customers away." Venny Mayaka works with a nongovernmental organization that implements the USAID Kuza program in northern Kenya. Kuza is the Swahili word for nurture. Mayaka said USAID will address the community's most urgent needs in managing the impact of climate change in their homes. "USAID KUZA is coming in to bridge the gap in terms of providing access to financial services but also providing incentives in form of financing, catalytic financing,” Mayaka said. “This financing goes into [addressing] the missing links in terms of provision of water, provision of technical assistance to some of the clients, providing the access to finance but also providing some of the services to the communities. And this is cascaded down to the communities." Aidarus said the financial support his company received enabled it to support its customers and give them more time to repay the loans. "Within 18 months they're able to take full advantage of the resource that they have, which is the farm, and be able to pay us back and continue with the system,” Aidarus said. “So that really increases their ability to produce.” For small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Aidarus added, having constant, reliable and affordable power increases their income. Mayaka said USAID wants to finance people and businesses attempting to overcome climate change issues. "We want to see a scale up of the number of SMEs reached in terms of climate finance investments, best practices in environmental conservation and innovations towards addressing aspects of climate change,” Mayaka said. “We’d want to see more micro and small enterprises reached through the financial institutions and we also wish to see more products developed that are agile to address some of the challenges." USAID said it is developing a digital tool that allows data entry and captures data points about reducing carbon emissions, energy access and financial inclusion in its clients' funds. The agency says the tool will ensure that the investments align with its climate change objectives.

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.

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.

Yaounde — Chad’s presidential election concludes Monday with civilians going to the polls, a day after members of the military cast their ballots. Transitional President General Mahamat Idriss Deby is facing nine challengers, including his current prime minister. The election, designed to end three years of a military government, has been peaceful so far. However, there is tension over a ban on taking pictures of election result sheets at polling stations. Hundreds of people started arriving at polling stations in Chad's capital N'djamena as early as 5:30 am local time. Among the voters at the University of N'djamena was 29-year-old student Abdel Koura. He says he came out early to vote because he wants a president that will bring peace and provide jobs for youths who are unemployed after completing their education. Koura says voting is his civic right. He says he is calling on all civilians, especially youths, to come out in huge numbers and vote for their leader in peace. He says he is also pleading with Chad's transitional government to avoid chaos by ensuring that the elections are transparent and free and the winner would be who civilians have voted for. Early voting was peaceful. However, Chad’s National Election Management Agency, known as ANGE, said that several thousand polling stations opened late due to what they call logistical difficulties. Chad's transitional president General Mahamat Idriss Deby voted in N'djamena’s second district and pleaded with civilians to go out en masse and perform their civic duty of voting for the person who will manage Chad's affairs for the next five years. ANGE says 8.2 million people are registered to vote. It says Chad's military has been deployed to protect voters’ safety in over 26,500 polling stations. Chad says over 2,500 national and international observers from 120 groups are accredited to monitor the elections. It says applications from another 60 groups were rejected for not respecting the country’s laws. Cyrille Nguiegang Ntchassep is the spokesperson for observers from the six-nation Central African Economic and Monetary Commission. He has concerns that peace will not hold. He says perceivable tensions over a ban on filming or taking photos of result sheets in polling stations and publishing them on social media and radio and television are likely to degenerate into violent clashes because civilians think that the central African state’s elections management body is controlled by Deby who created it. Ntchassep says he does not understand why Chad is reluctant to proclaim election results in a day or two as was the case in Senegal's March 24 presidential polls. Opposition and civil society groups, including the Transformers Party of Deby’s main challenger Succces Masra, said they planned to photograph the election result sheets and distribute them to the international community. They say the move is to prevent ANGE from rigging the elections in favor of Deby. Tahir Oloy Hassan is ANGE’s spokesperson. Hassan says ANGE is a permanent, independent and impartial body that does not receive orders from any state authority including Deby. He says the ban on filming and taking photos of result sheets and prohibition of media organs from having access to some polling stations and sensitive areas is to reduce tensions that may arise from misinformation and manipulation by people who want to see Chad in chaos. He said claims by opposition candidates that Chad's military was instructed to vote for Deby when they went to the polls on Sunday are unfounded. ANGE says it has up to May 21 to publish provisional results and only Chad's Constitutional Council has the powers to proclaim definitive results. The elections are design to end three years of transition that followed the death of Idriss Deby Itno in 2021. Chad's opposition and civil society says the younger Deby's rule was marked by political tensions including October 2022 pro-democracy protests during which the central African state's security forces killed at least 50 people, injured 300 and arrested several hundred others.

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New York — Columbia University is canceling its large university-wide commencement ceremony amid ongoing pro-Palestinian protests but will hold smaller school-based ceremonies this week and next, the university announced Monday. "Based on feedback from our students, we have decided to focus attention on our Class Days and school-level graduation ceremonies, where students are honored individually alongside their peers, and to forego the university-wide ceremony that is scheduled for May 15," Columbia officials said in a statement. The protests stem from the conflict that started Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants. The University of Southern California earlier canceled its main graduation ceremony while allowing other commencement activities to continue.

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London — Scottish political veteran John Swinney on Monday was named head of the pro-independence SNP party, leaving him poised to become Scotland's leader. Swinney, 60, said on X, formerly Twitter, he was "deeply honored to have been elected as leader of the SNP" after Humza Yousaf resigned last week after little more than a year as Scottish leader and head of the Scottish National Party (SNP). The SNP confirmed Swinney's election after nominations for the post closed at 12 noon (1100 GMT) without any other challengers emerging. Humza stepped down last Monday as he faced a confidence vote in the Scottish parliament that he was set to lose having ditched his junior coalition partners, the Scottish Green Party, in a row over climate policy. Swinney is likely to become the next first minister, head of the devolved Scottish government, but will still need enough votes in the Scottish parliament to be elected first minister. Launching his bid last week, Swinney said he was running "to unite the SNP and unite Scotland for independence", despite polls showing stalled support for a split from the UK. "I want to build on the work of the SNP government to create a modern, diverse, dynamic Scotland that will ensure opportunity for all of our citizens," Swinney told supporters in Edinburgh. Swinney inherits a difficult political legacy with former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon embroiled in a party funding scandal and a challenging domestic policy landscape. With the SNP heading a minority government in the 129-seat Scottish parliament, he will need the support of another party to form a governing coalition or pass pieces of legislation.