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For the first time in over 20 years, there were two American semifinalists in both men’s and women’s tournaments at the U.S. Open. One of them was Frances Tiafoe, an alumnus of the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Maryland. VOA Russian visited the center, where Tiafoe still trains between tennis tournaments. Rafael Saakyan and Karina Bafradzhian have the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Sergii Dogotar.

NABLUS, West Bank — The Western-backed Palestinian Authority held a funeral procession Monday for a U.S.-Turkish dual national activist who a witness says was shot and killed by Israeli forces while demonstrating against settlements in the occupied West Bank.  Dozens of mourners — including several leading PA officials — attended the procession. Security forces carried the body of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi which was draped in a Palestinian flag while a traditional black-and-white checkered scarf covered her face. The 26-year-old's body was then placed into the back of a Palestinian ambulance.  Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Oncu Keceli said Turkey was working on repatriating Eygi's remains for burial in the Aegean coastal town of Didim as per her family's wishes, but "because the land crossing from the Palestinian territories to Jordan was closed as of Sunday, the ministry was trying to have the body flown directly to Turkey."  U.S. officials did not respond to a request for comment.  Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli peace activist who participated in Friday's protest, said Israeli forces shot her on Friday in the city of Nablus while posing no threat, adding that the killing happened during a period of calm after clashes between soldiers and Palestinian protesters. Pollak said he then saw two Israeli soldiers mount the roof of a nearby home, train a gun in the group's direction and fired, with one of the bullets striking Eygi in the head.  The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an "instigator of violent activity" in the area of the protest.  The West Bank has seen a surge of violence since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, with increasing Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis, and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians.   

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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — One month after a judge declared Google's search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology. The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends in court papers. Google says the government's case is based on an internet of yesteryear, when desktop computers ruled and internet users carefully typed precise World Wide Web addresses into URL fields. Advertisers now are more likely to turn to social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services like Peacock to reach audiences. In recent years, Google Networks, the division of the Mountain View, California-based tech giant that includes such services as AdSense and Google Ad Manager that are at the heart of the case, actually have seen declining revenue, from $31.7 billion in 2021 to $31.3 billion in 2023, according to the company's annual reports. The trial over the alleged ad tech monopoly begins Monday in Alexandria, Virginia. It initially was going to be a jury trial, but Google maneuvered to force a bench trial, writing a check to the federal government for more than $2 million to moot the only claim brought by the government that required a jury. The case will now be decided by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton and is best known for high-profile terrorism trials including Sept. 11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui. Brinkema, though, also has experience with highly technical civil trials, working in a courthouse that sees an outsize number of patent infringement cases. The Virginia case comes on the heels of a major defeat for Google over its search engine. which generates the majority of the company's $307 billion in annual revenue. A judge in the District of Columbia declared the search engine a monopoly, maintained in part by tens of billions of dollars Google pays each year to companies like Apple to lock in Google as the default search engine presented to consumers when they buy iPhones and other gadgets. In that case, the judge has not yet imposed any remedies. The government hasn't offered its proposed sanctions, though there could be close scrutiny over whether Google should be allowed to continue to make exclusivity deals that ensure its search engine is consumers' default option. Peter Cohan, a professor of management practice at Babson College, said the Virginia case could potentially be more harmful to Google because the obvious remedy would be requiring it to sell off parts of its ad tech business that generate billions of dollars in annual revenue. “Divestitures are definitely a possible remedy for this second case,” Cohan said “It could be potentially more significant than initially meets the eye.” In the Virginia trial, the government's witnesses are expected to include executives from newspaper publishers including The New York Times Co. and Gannett, and online news sites that the government contends have faced particular harm from Google's practices. “Google extracted extraordinary fees at the expense of the website publishers who make the open internet vibrant and valuable,” government lawyers wrote in court papers. “As publishers generate less money from selling their advertising inventory, publishers are pushed to put more ads on their websites, to put more content behind costly paywalls, or to cease business altogether.” Google disputes that it charges excessive fees compared to its competitors. The company also asserts the integration of its technology on the buy side, sell side and in the middle assures ads and web pages load quickly and enhance security. And it says customers have options to work with outside ad exchanges. Google says the government's case is improperly focused on display ads and banner ads that load on web pages accessed through a desktop computer and fails to take into account consumers' migration to mobile apps and the boom in ads placed on social media sites over the last 15 years. The government's case “focuses on a limited type of advertising viewed on a narrow subset of websites when user attention migrated elsewhere years ago,” Google's lawyers write in a pretrial filing. “The last year users spent more time accessing websites on the ‘open web,’ rather than on social media, videos, or apps, was 2012.” The trial, which is expected to last several weeks, is taking place in a courthouse that rigidly adheres to traditional practices, including a resistance to technology in the courtroom. Cellphones are banned from the courthouse, to the chagrin of a tech press corps accustomed at the District of Columbia trial to tweeting out live updates as they happen. Even the lawyers, and there are many on both sides, are limited in their technology. At a pretrial hearing Wednesday, Google's lawyers made a plea to be allowed more than the two computers each side is permitted to have in the courtroom during trial. Brinkema rejected it. “This is an old-fashioned courtroom,” she said.

Taipei, Taiwan — Efforts to maintain exchanges between Taiwanese and Chinese citizens face new challenges after Beijing last month sentenced a Taiwanese activist to nine years in jail, a move that analysts say will create a chilling effect within Taiwan’s civil society. On September 6, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) confirmed that a court in the eastern city of Wenzhou earlier had sentenced Taiwanese political activist Yang Chih-yuan to nine years in jail under secession charges. TAO said Yang, who was arrested in 2022 while teaching and participating in competitions for the board game Go, has long been involved in secessionist activities, playing a key role in organizations that advocate Taiwan’s independence. “His acts are egregious and the court reached the decision according to law,” the office said in a statement. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees cross-strait exchanges, condemned the Chinese court’s ruling and asked Beijing to make public the verdict and the evidence that supports the charges. “Beijing is trying to use Yang’s case to intimidate Taiwanese people and use the pretext of penalizing Taiwan independence as a way to exercise long-arm jurisdiction,” the MAC wrote in a statement released last week. Yang’s case marks the first time that China used secession charges against Taiwanese people. It comes after Beijing in June introduced 22 new guidelines to punish what they called “die-hard Taiwan independence activists.” The maximum sentence could be the death penalty. Analysts say the sentencing of Yang represents Beijing’s attempt to take a “more hardline stance” against Taiwanese who promote the island’s sovereignty. His case “shows that Beijing means business when it comes to using legal instruments to crack down on what it regards as ‘separatism,’” said J. Michael Cole, a Taipei-based senior fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute. “This will inevitably affect people-to-people and civil society exchanges [between Taiwan and China,]” Cole told VOA in a written statement. Indefinite delay of cross-strait academic exchanges, city-to-city forum Meanwhile, the scheduled visits by two academic delegations from China’s Xiamen University have reportedly been postponed as Taiwanese authorities review their paperwork. While some local media outlets said the postponement may be caused by “obstacles” imposed by Taiwanese authorities, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said the review of the Chinese delegations’ applications is based on existing procedures, adding that Taipei has no intention to prevent certain groups from visiting Taiwan. Despite clarification from Taiwanese officials, China’s state-run tabloid Global Times characterized the postponement as the Taiwanese government’s attempt to “block” the Chinese delegations from visiting Taiwan. “The Xiamen University delegations have completed the preparations in terms of formalities and materials, but related ‘security authorities’ in Taiwan have put ‘a technical hold’ in place while they carry out a review,” Zhang Wensheng, deputy dean of the Taiwan Research Institute at Xiamen University, told the Global Times in an interview. Some experts say the delay in the Chinese delegation’s trips to Taiwan shows the Taiwanese government may be reviewing how to facilitate cross-strait exchanges amid growing military and political pressure from Beijing. “In light of Beijing’s heightened pressure against Taiwan, the Taiwanese government may be reviewing what might be a more reciprocal approach to manage cross-strait academic exchanges,” Wen-ti Sung, a Taipei-based political scientist for the Australian National University, told VOA by phone. In addition to the delay of cross-strait academic exchanges, the annual Shanghai-Taipei City Forum, which remains one of the few occasions for municipal officials from Taiwan and China to meet, has yet to announce a date for a potential 2024 gathering. When asked in August about the forum, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an told Taiwanese media outlets that at a time when cross-strait tensions are high, it is more necessary for Taiwan and China to maintain communication. “Such delays serve as a clear reminder that even lower-level engagement is difficult to sustain when one side rejects core aspects of the other’s existence,” Timothy Rich, a political scientist at Western Kentucky University, told VOA in a written response. Since Taiwan President Lai Ching-te took office in May, Beijing has increased military pressure against Taiwan. Against this backdrop, Cole in Taipei said the lack of engagement between Taipei and Beijing may increase the risks of miscalculation, which could lead to accidents and escalation. In his view, Beijing will likely maintain a two-pronged approach against Taiwan in the near future. They will uphold “a suspension of official dialogue with the Taiwanese government led by the Democratic Progressive Party while keeping the door open to sub-state interaction with other elements of Taiwan’s society, with the aim of dividing both,” he told VOA.

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IMI N'TALA, Morocco — The rescue crews and bystanders are long gone but the remnants of homes still sit in piles off to the side of the jagged roads. A year after nearly 3,000 people died when a record earthquake shook communities throughout Morocco's High Atlas, it still looks like a bomb just went off in villages like Imi N'tala, where dozens of residents died after a chunk of mountainside cracked off and flattened the majority of buildings. Broken bricks, bent rods of rebar and pieces of kitchen floors remain but have been swept into neater piles alongside plastic tents where the displaced now live. Some await funds to reconstruct their homes. Others await approval of their blueprints. The region shaken by the earthquake is full of impoverished agricultural villages like Imi N’tala, accessible only via bumpy, unmaintained roads. Associated Press reporters revisited half a dozen of them last week ahead of the first anniversary. In some places, residents who say they're awaiting governmental action have begun reconstructing buildings on an ad hoc basis. Elsewhere, people tired of the stuffiness of plastic tents have moved back into their cracked homes or decamped to larger cities, abandoning their old lives. Streets have been neatly swept in towns like Amizmiz and Moulay Brahim, although cracked buildings and piles of rubble remain, much as they were in the days after the quake. The rhythms of normal life have somewhat resumed in some of the province’s larger towns, where rebuilding efforts on roads, homes, schools and businesses are underway and some residents have been provided metal container homes. But many of those displaced from the more than 55,000 homes destroyed by the temblor remain vulnerable to summer’s heat and winter’s cold, living in plastic tents, impatient to return. Mohamed Soumer, a 69-year-old retiree who lost his son in last year's earthquake, is angry because local authorities have forbidden him from rebuilding his home on the same steep mountainside due to safety concerns. He now spends his days with his wife in a plastic tent near his now-rubbled home and fears moving elsewhere and restarting his life in a larger, more expensive area. “Residents want to stay here because they have land where they grow vegetables to make a living,” he said. “If they go somewhere else and abandon this place, they will not be able to live there.” The government early on promised households monthly stipends in the aftermath of the earthquake and additional funds for seismically safe reconstruction. It said last week that both had been provided to the majority of eligible families and households. “Specific solutions are being deployed on the ground for difficult cases,” Morocco's Prime Minister's Office said in a statement. But on the ground, its disbursal has been uneven, residents say, with many still waiting for funds or reconstruction to commence. Anger has mounted against local authorities in towns like Amizmiz and villages like Talat N'Yaqoub, where residents have protested against their living conditions. They have criticized the slow pace of reconstruction and demanded more investment in social services and infrastructure, which has long gone neglected in contrast with Morocco's urban centers and coastline. Officials have said rebuilding will cost 120 billion dirhams ($12 billion) and take about five years. The government has rebuilt some stretches of rural roads, health centers and schools but last week the commission tasked with reconstruction acknowledged the need to speed up some home rebuilding.

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HANOI — A bridge collapsed and a bus was swept away by flooding Monday as more rain fell following a typhoon Vietnam that has caused at least 59 deaths in the Southeast Asian country and disrupted businesses and factories in the export-focused northern industrial hubs, state media reported. Nine people died when Typhoon Yagi made landfall in Vietnam on Saturday before weakening to a tropical depression, and at least 50 others have died in the consequent floods and landslides, state media VN Express reported. The water levels of several rivers in northern Vietnam were dangerously high. A passenger bus carrying 20 people was swept into a flooded stream by a landslide in mountainous Cao Bang province Monday morning. Rescuers were deployed but landslides blocked their path. In Phu Tho province, rescue operations were continuing after a steel bridge over the engorged Red River collapsed Monday morning. Reports said 10 cars and trucks along with two motorbikes fell into the river. Three people were pulled out of the river and taken to the hospital, but 13 others were missing. Pham Truong Son, 50, told VNExpress that he was driving on the bridge on his motorcycle when he heard a loud noise. Before he knew what was happening, he was falling into the river. “I felt like I was drowned to the bottom of the river,” Son told the newspaper, adding that he managed to swim and hold on to a drifting banana tree to stay afloat before he was rescued. Dozens of businesses in Haiphong province hadn't resumed production by Monday because of the extensive damage to their factories, reported state media Lao Dong newspaper. The report said that the roofs of several factories were blown apart while water had seeped into industrial units, damaging finished goods and expensive equipment. Some companies said they still didn’t have electricity on Monday and that it would take at least a month to be able to resume production. Toppled electricity poles meant that Haiphong and Quang Ninh provinces were still without power on Monday. The two provinces are industrial hubs, housing many factories that export goods, including EV maker VinFast and Apple suppliers Pegatrong and USI. Authorities are still assessing the damage to industrial units but initial estimates show that nearly 100 enterprises were damaged by the typhoon, resulting in losses amounting to millions of dollars, reported the newspaper. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh visited Haiphong city on Sunday and approved a package of $4.62 million to help the port city recover. Typhoon Yagi was the strongest typhoon to hit Vietnam in decades when it made landfall Saturday with winds up to 149 kph. It weakened Sunday, but the country’s meteorological agency warned the continuing downpours could cause floods and landslides. On Sunday, a landslide killed six people including an infant and injured nine others in Sa Pa town, a popular trekking base known for its terraced rice fields and mountains. Overall, state media reported 21 deaths and at least 299 people injured from the weekend. Skies were overcast in the capital, Hanoi, with occasional rain Monday morning as workers cleared the uprooted trees, fallen billboards and toppled electricity poles. Heavy rain continued in northwestern Vietnam and forecasters said it could exceed 40 centimeters in places. Yagi also damaged agricultural land where rice is mostly grown. Before hitting Vietnam, Yagi caused at least 20 deaths in the Philippines last week and four deaths in southern China. Chinese authorities said infrastructure losses across the Hainan island province amounted to $102 million with 57,000 houses collapsed or damaged, power and water outages and roads damaged or impassable due to fallen trees. Yagi made a second landfall in Guangdong, a mainland province neighboring Hainan, on Friday night. Storms like Typhoon Yagi are “getting stronger due to climate change, primarily because warmer ocean waters provide more energy to fuel the storms, leading to increased wind speeds and heavier rainfall,” said Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore.

New York — A poignant phrase echoes when 9/11 victims' relatives gather each year to remember the loved ones they lost in the terror attacks. “I never got to meet you.” It is the sound of generational change at ground zero, where relatives read out victims' names on every anniversary of the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people were killed when al-Qaida hijackers crashed four jetliners into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in southwest Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. Some names are read out by children or young adults who were born after the strikes. Last year’s observance featured 28 such young people among more than 140 readers. Young people are expected again at this year's ceremony Wednesday. Some are the children of victims whose partners were pregnant. More of the young readers are victims' nieces, nephews or grandchildren. They have inherited stories, photos, and a sense of solemn responsibility. Being a “9/11 family” reverberates through generations, and commemorating and understanding the Sept. 11 attacks one day will be up to a world with no first-hand memory of them. “It’s like you’re passing the torch on,” says Allan Aldycki, 13. He read the names of his grandfather and several other people the last two years, and plans to do so on Wednesday. Aldycki keeps mementoes in his room from his grandfather Allan Tarasiewicz, a firefighter. The teen told the audience last year that he’s heard so much about his grandfather that it feels like he knew him, “but still, I wish I had a chance to really know you,” he added. Allan volunteered to be a reader because it makes him feel closer to his grandfather, and he hopes to have children who’ll participate. “It’s an honor to be able to teach them because you can let them know their heritage and what to never forget,” he said by phone from central New York. He said he already finds himself teaching peers who know little or nothing about 9/11. When it comes time for the ceremony, he looks up information about the lives of each person whose name he’s assigned to read. “He reflects on everything and understands the importance of what it means to somebody,” his mother, Melissa Tarasiewicz, said. Reciting the names of the dead is a tradition that extends beyond ground zero. War memorials honor fallen military members by speaking their names aloud. Some Jewish organizations host readings of Holocaust victims’ names on the international day of remembrance, Yom Hashoah. The names of the 168 people killed in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City are read annually at the memorial there. On Sept. 11 anniversaries, the Pentagon’s ceremony includes military members or officials reading the names of the 184 people killed there. The Flight 93 National Memorial has victims’ relatives and friends read the list of the 40 passengers and crew members whose lives ended at the rural site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The hourslong observance at the 9/11 Memorial in New York is almost exclusively dedicated to the names of the 2,977 victims at all three sites, plus the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. All are read by relatives who volunteer and are chosen by lottery. Each is given a subset of names to render aloud. Readers also generally speak briefly about their own lost kin, frequently in touching detail. “I think often about how, if you were still here, you would be one of my best friends, looking at colleges with me, getting me out of trouble with Mom and Dad, hanging out at the Jersey Shore,” Capri Yarosz said last year of her slain uncle, New York firefighter Christopher Michael Mozzillo. Now 17, she grew up with a homemade baby book about him and a family that still mentions him in everyday conversation. “Chris would have loved that” is a phrase often heard around the house. She has read twice at the trade center ceremony. “It means a lot to me that I can kind of keep alive my uncle’s name and just keep reading everybody else’s name, so that more of the upcoming generations will know,” she said by phone from her family’s home in central New Jersey. “I feel good that I can pass down the importance of what happened.” Her two younger sisters also have read names, and one is preparing to do so again Wednesday. Their mother, Pamela Yarosz, has never been able to steel herself to sign up. “I don’t have that strength. It’s too hard for me,” says Pamela Yarosz, who is Mozzillo’s sister. “They’re braver.” By now, many of the children of 9/11 victims — such as Melissa Tarasiewicz, who was just out of high school when her father died — have long since grown up. But about 100 were born after the attacks killed one of their parents, and are now young adults. “Though we never met, I am honored to carry your name and legacy with me. I thank you for giving me this life and family,” Manuel DaMota Jr. said of his father, a woodworker and project manager, during last year’s ceremony. One young reader after another at the event commemorated aunts, uncles, great-uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers whom the children have missed throughout their lives. “My whole life, my dad has said I reminded him of you.” “I wish you got to take me fishing.” “I wish I had more of you than just a picture on a frame.” “Even though I never got to meet you, I will never forget you.”

Islamabad — Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Monday that a roadside bomb explosion injured at least 10 people, including anti-polio vaccinators and police personnel escorting them.     The bombing in the South Waziristan district near the border with Afghanistan targeted a convoy carrying polio workers and their guards on the opening day of a nationwide immunization campaign.     Area security and hospital officials reported that three health workers and six security personnel were among the victims. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the violence in a region where security forces are fighting militants linked to the outlawed Pakistani Taliban.     Last week, Pakistan reported its 17th wild poliovirus case of the year from Islamabad, saying it paralyzed a child and marked the first infection in 16 years in the national capital.     Pakistani health officials said in the lead-up to Monday’s polio campaign that it is designed to vaccinate more than 33 million children under five in 115 districts nationwide.    Muhammad Anwarul Haq, coordinator of the National Emergency Operations Center for Polio Eradication, stated that the immunization drive would primarily focus on districts where "the virus has been detected and the risk of continued transmission and spread is really high.”    Haq encouraged all parents and caregivers to ensure their children get vaccinated, lamenting that “parents have not always welcomed and opened their doors to the vaccinators when they visit their homes.”    Pakistan and Afghanistan, which reported nine paralytic polio cases so far in 2024, are the only two remaining polio-endemic countries globally. Polio immunization campaigns have long faced multiple challenges in both countries, such as security and vaccine boycotts, dealing setbacks to the goal of eradicating the virus from the world.

ASUNCION — South America's Paraguay River, a key thoroughfare for grains, has hit a record low in Paraguay's capital Asuncion, with water levels depleted by a severe drought upriver in Brazil that has hindered navigation along waterways in the Amazon. The depth of the Paraguay River, measured versus a "zero" index rather than the riverbed, has dropped below minus 0.82 meter, breaking the previous record low in October 2021, data from the national Meteorology and Hydrology Directorate shows. The body expects the river will keep falling with no rain forecast. The Parana River in Argentina is also near year lows around grains hub Rosario. Both the Paraguay and Parana rivers start in Brazil, eventually joining and flowing into the sea near Buenos Aires. They are important routes for soy, corn and other trade. "In the northern section [of the Paraguay waterway], navigation is practically halted due to the extreme drop in water levels," the Paraguayan oilseed and grain crushing chamber CAPPRO told Reuters in written comments. The chamber, whose grain-trader members handle some 60% of Paraguay's soybean exports, said the low river was hitting shipments, though the impact was capped as it was not peak trading season. "Vessels have had to transport volumes below the average of their normal cargo capacity," said CAPPRO. "This has generated delays and made travel times longer." The chamber's members include ADM, Bunge and Cargill. Expected rains not enough The Paraguay-Parana system is a waterway of more than 3,400 kilometers that runs through Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, as well as landlocked Paraguay and Bolivia. Paraguay is the world's No. 3 soybean exporter and roughly 80% of grains travel along waterways to seaports downriver. Argentina is the top exporter of processed soy, most of which goes down the Parana from around river port city Rosario. Paraguay's deputy director for the Meteorology and Hydrology Directorate, Jorge Sanchez, said the outlook for river levels in the coming months was not encouraging, even with the traditional October-November rainy season ahead. "This would alleviate the level of the river, but it's not expected to be enough," Sanchez said. Less rain than normal is expected in the second half of the year due to the La Nina weather phenomenon, which brings drier, cooler conditions in Paraguay and Argentina, though it usually heralds wetter weather farther north in Brazil. Sanchez said this year, however, La Nina was delayed and its effects would be seen only between October and November. "There is a lot of variability due to climate change," he added. In Brazil, where record wildfires have also occurred, the low water levels are leaving some communities in the Amazon isolated, as well as hitting soy and corn shipments in center-west states such as Mato Grosso, Brazil's number one grains growing area.

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SAN SALVADOR — The head of El Salvador's police forces and a man accused of a multi-million dollar embezzlement were killed when the military helicopter in which they were traveling crashed on Sunday night, the government said.  Police director Mauricio Arriaza was escorting former cooperative manager Manuel Coto back to El Salvador.  Coto, who was is accused of embezzling $35 million, had been arrested earlier on Sunday in Honduras after attempting to flee to the United States. He was subsequently handed over to Salvadoran police.  According to the Salvadoran Armed Forces, the helicopter crashed in the Pasaquina district, in the southeast of the country near the border with Honduras. The total number of people in the helicopter when it crashed remains unknown.  President Nayib Bukele said on X: "What happened cannot remain a simple 'accident'. It must be investigated thoroughly and to the last consequences."  He praised Arriaza for his significant contribution to national security and his roles in various police operations. 

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.

DILI, East Timor — Pope Francis arrived in East Timor on Monday to encourage its recovery from a bloody and traumatic past and celebrate its development after two decades of independence from Indonesian rule. Francis arrived in Dili from Papua New Guinea to open the third leg of his trip through Southeast Asia and Oceania. He'll meet with Timorese leaders and diplomats later Monday. The overwhelmingly Catholic East Timor, one of the world’s poorest countries, eagerly awaited Francis’ arrival, which came on the heels of the 25th anniversary of the U.N.-backed referendum that paved the way for independence from Indonesia. “Our great hope is that he may come to consolidate the fraternity, the national unity, peace and development for this new country,” said Estevão Tei Fernandes, a university professor. It was a far different atmosphere than when the last pope visited. St. John Paul II came in 1989, when Timor was still an occupied part of Indonesia and fighting for its freedom. As many as 200,000 people were killed during the 24 years of Indonesian rule. Francis will confront that legacy, and another one more close to home involving Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the Timorese bishop who, along with the Catholic Church as a whole, is regarded as a hero for his efforts to win independence. Belo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 with fellow East Timorese independence icon José Ramos-Horta, today the country’s president, for campaigning for a fair and peaceful solution to the conflict. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, in its citation, praised Belo’s courage in refusing to be intimidated by Indonesian forces. The committee noted that while trying to get the United Nations to arrange a plebiscite for East Timor, he smuggled out two witnesses to a bloody 1991 massacre so they could testify to the U.N. human rights commission in Geneva. In 2022, the Vatican acknowledged that it had secretly sanctioned Belo in 2020 for sexually abusing young boys. The sanctions included limitations on his movements and exercise of ministry and prohibited him from having voluntary contact with minors or contact with East Timor itself. The sanctions were reinforced in 2021. Despite the sanctions, which were confirmed at the time by the Vatican spokesman and reaffirmed last week ahead of Francis’ trip, many people in East Timor have stood by Belo, either dismissing, denying or diminishing the victims’ claims. Some even hoped Belo, who lives in Portugal, would be on hand to welcome Francis.