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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.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing back against a new wave of pressure to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza after hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested and went on strike. We talk to Rajan Menon with Defense Priorities and a senior research scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University. Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, on Monday urged European countries to work together to develop a "clear and future orientated" strategy for Europe's relations with Russia. And Oasis' reunion tour has put the spotlight on Ticketmaster again.

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.

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.

caracas, venezuela — The Venezuelan attorney general's office on Monday requested that an arrest warrant be issued for opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez, after Gonzalez failed to respond to three summonses to testify about an opposition website that published detailed results of the country's disputed presidential election.  The website is being investigated for "usurping the function" of the electoral authority, which said President Nicolas Maduro won the July 28 contest but has not published detailed results.  Venezuela's national electoral authority and its top court have said Maduro won the election with just over half of the votes, but tallies posted by the opposition show a resounding victory for Gonzalez.  The opposition, some Western countries and international bodies like a U.N. panel of experts have said the vote was not transparent and have demanded the publication of full tallies; some have asserted that there was fraud. Ruling party officials including Maduro have accused the opposition of stoking violence, and Attorney General Tarek Saab has launched criminal probes into opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, Gonzalez and the website where the opposition posted its copies of ballot box-level vote tallies.  Protests since the vote have led to at least 27 deaths. 

Ankara, Turkey/Washington — A nationalist Turkish youth group physically assaulted two U.S. soldiers Monday in western Turkey, the U.S. Embassy in Turkey and the local governor's office said, adding that 15 assailants had been detained over the incident. In a statement, the Izmir governor's office said members of the Turkey Youth Union (TGB), a youth branch of the nationalist opposition Vatan Party, "physically attacked" two U.S. soldiers dressed in civilian clothes in the Konak district. It added that five U.S. soldiers joined in after seeing the incident, and that police intervened. All 15 attackers had been detained and an investigation was launched into the matter, it said. A White House spokesperson said Monday, Washington was "troubled" by the assault but added it was "appreciative that Turkish police are taking this matter seriously and holding those responsible accountable." The U.S. Embassy to Turkey also confirmed the attack and said the U.S. soldiers were now safe. "We can confirm reports that U.S. service members embarked aboard the USS Wasp were the victims of an assault in Izmir today, and are now safe," it said on social media platform X. Earlier, the TGB posted a video on X showing a group holding down a man on the street and putting a white hood over his head, while shouting slogans. The group said the man was a soldier on board the USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship. The U.S. Embassy in Ankara had said earlier Monday that the ship was carrying out a port visit to the Aegean coastal town of Izmir this week. "U.S. soldiers who carry the blood of our soldiers and thousands of Palestinians on their hands cannot dirty our country. Every time you step foot in these lands, we will meet you the way you deserve," TGB said. U.S.-Turkey ties have been strained in recent years by the U.S. alliance with Syrian Kurds that Turkey deems extremists, and over Turkey's purchase of Russian S-400 defenses that prompted U.S. sanctions and removal from a F-35 jet program. There has also been divergence over Israel's war in Gaza, where over 40,000 people have been killed according to Gaza authorities, and over which Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has sharply criticized Washington's ally. Earlier this month, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey said U.S.-Turkey relations are now "in a better place than we've been in a while" and noted the "useful role" Turkey played in a recent prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia.

dili, east timor — When the Vatican acknowledged in 2022 that Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning East Timorese independence hero, had sexually abused young boys, it appeared that the global clergy sexual abuse scandal that has compromised the Catholic Church's credibility around the world had finally arrived in Asia's newest country.  And yet, the church in East Timor today is stronger than ever, with most downplaying, doubting or dismissing the claims against Belo and those against a popular American missionary who confessed to molesting young girls. Many instead focus on their roles in saving lives during the country's bloody struggle against Indonesia for independence.  Pope Francis will come face to face with the Timorese faithful on his first trip to the country, a former Portuguese colony that makes up half of the island of Timor off the northern coast of Australia. But so far, there is no word about whether he will meet with victims or even mention the sex abuse directly, as he has in other countries where the rank-and-file faithful have demanded an accounting from the hierarchy for how it failed to protect their children.  Even without pressure from within East Timor to address the scandals, it would be deeply meaningful to the victims if Francis did, said Tjiyske Lingsma, the Dutch journalist who helped bring both abuse cases to light.  "I think this is the time for the pope to say some words to the victims, to apologize," she said in an interview from Amsterdam.  The day after Lingsma detailed the Belo case in a September 2022 report in De Groene Amsterdammer magazine, the Vatican confirmed that Belo had been sanctioned secretly two years earlier.  In Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni's statement, he said the church had been aware of the case since 2019 and had imposed disciplinary measures in 2020, including restrictions on Belo's movements and a ban on voluntary contact with minors.  Despite the official acknowledgement, many in East Timor still don't believe it, like Dili university student Martinha Goveia, who is still expecting Belo will show up to be at Francis' side during his upcoming visit.  Vegetable trader Alfredo Ximenes said the allegations and the Vatican's acknowledged sanctions were merely rumors, and that he hoped Belo would come to welcome the pope and refute the claims in person.  "Our political leaders should immediately meet him to end the problem and persuade him to return, because after all he has contributed greatly to national independence," Ximenes said.  Timorese officials refused to answer questions about the Belo case, but there's been no attempt to avoid mentioning him, with a giant billboard in Dili welcoming Pope Francis, whose visit starts September 9, placed right above a mural honoring Belo and three others as national heroes.  Only about 20% of East Timor's people were Catholic when Indonesia invaded in 1975, shortly after Portugal abandoned it as a colony.  Today, 98% of East Timor's 1.3 million people are Catholic, making it the most Catholic country in the world outside the Vatican.  A law imposed by Indonesia requiring people to choose a religion, combined with the church's opposition to the military occupation and support for the resistance over years of bloody fighting that saw as many as 200,000 people killed, helped bring about that flood of new members.  Belo won the Nobel Peace Prize for his bravery in drawing international attention to Indonesian human rights abuses during the conflict, and American missionary Richard Daschbach was widely celebrated for his role in helping save lives in the struggle for independence.  Their heroic status and societal factors in Asia, where the culture tends to confer much power on adults and authority figures, help explain why the men are still revered while elsewhere in the world such cases are met with outrage, said Anne Barrett Doyle of the online resource Bishop Accountability.  "Bishops are powerful, and in developing countries where the church is dominant, they are inordinately powerful," Barrett Doyle said.  "But no case we've studied exhibits as extreme a power differential as that which exists between Belo and his victims. When a child is raped in a country that is devoutly Catholic, and the sexual predator is not only a bishop but a legendary national hero, there is almost no hope that justice will be done."  In 2018, as rumors built against Daschbach, the priest confessed in a letter to church authorities to abusing young girls from at least 1991 to 2012.  "It is impossible for me to remember even the faces of many of them, let alone the names," he wrote.  The 87-year-old was defrocked by the Vatican and criminally charged in East Timor, where he was convicted in 2021 and is now serving 12 years in prison.  But despite his confession and court testimony from victims that detailed the abuse, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, an independence hero himself, has visited Daschbach in prison — hand-feeding him cake and serving him wine on his birthday — and has said winning the ex-priest's early release is a priority for him.  In Belo's case, six years after winning the Nobel Prize, which he shared with current East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta, he suddenly retired as the head of the church in East Timor in 2002, citing health reasons and stress.  Not long after his retirement, Belo, today 76, was sent by the Vatican and his Salesian missionary order to another former Portuguese colony, Mozambique, to work as a missionary priest.  There, he has said, he spent his time "teaching catechism to children, giving retreats to young people." Today he lives in Portugal.  Suspicion arose that Belo, like others before him, had been allowed to quietly retire rather than face any reckoning, given the reputational harm to the church that would have caused.  In a 2023 interview with The Associated Press, Pope Francis suggested that indeed was the case, reasoning that was how such matters were handled in the past.  "This is a very old thing where this awareness of today did not exist," Francis said. "And when it came out about the bishop of East Timor, I said, 'Yes, let it go in the open.' ... I'm not going to cover it up. But these were decisions made 25 years ago when there wasn't this awareness."  Lingsma said she first heard allegations against Belo in 2002, the same year East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, won its formal independence after the Indonesian occupation ended in 1999. She said she wasn't able to investigate the case and build enough evidence to publish her story on him until two decades later.  Her story garnered international attention, as well as the Vatican's acknowledgement of the case, but in East Timor was primarily met with skepticism and negative reactions toward her reporting. Her 2019 story exposing the Daschbach case eventually prompted authorities to charge him, but also did not lead to the outpouring of anger that she had anticipated.  "The reaction was silence," she recalled.  During the fight for independence, priests, nuns and missionaries put themselves at great risk to help people, like "parents wanting to save their children," helping form today's deep connection between the church and people of East Timor, said Timorese historian Luciano Valentim da Conceixao.  The church's role is even enshrined in the preamble to the young country's constitution, which says that the Catholic Church "has always been able to take on the suffering of all the people with dignity, placing itself on their side in the defense of their most fundamental rights."  Because so many remember the church's significant role during those dark days, it has fostered an environment where it is difficult for victims of abuse to speak out for fear of being labeled anti-church, and where men like Belo and Daschbach continue to receive support from all walks of society.  "Pedophilia and sexual violence are common enemies in East Timor, and we should not mix them up with the struggle for independence," said Valentim da Costa Pinto, executive director of the Timor-Leste NGO Forum, an umbrella organization for 270 NGOs.  The chancellor of the Dili Diocese today, Father Ludgerio Martins da Silva, said the cases of Belo and Daschbach were the Vatican's jurisdiction, and that most people consider the sex abuse scandals a thing of the past.  "We don't hear a lot of people ask about Bishop Belo because he left the country ... 20 years ago," da Silva said.  Still, Lingsma said she knew of ongoing allegations against "four or five" other priests, including two who were now dead, "and if I know them, I'm the last person to know."  "That also shows that this whole reporting system doesn't work at all," she said.  Da Conceixao, the historian, said he did not know enough about the cases against Daschbach or Belo to comment on them, but that he was well acquainted with their role in the independence struggle and called them "fearless freedom fighters and clergymen."  "Clergymen are not free from mistakes," da Conceixao conceded. "But we, the Timorese, have to look with a clear mind at the mistakes they made and the good they did for the country, for the freedom of a million people, and of course the value is not the same."  Because of that prevailing attitude, Barrett Doyle said "the victims of those two men have to be the most isolated and least supported clergy sex abuse victims in the world right now. "  For that reason, Francis' visit to East Timor could be a landmark moment in his papacy, she said, if he were to denounce Daschbach and Belo by name and praise the courage of the victims, sending a message that would resonate globally.  "Given the exalted status of the Catholic Church in East Timor, just imagine the impact of papal fury directed at Belo, Daschbach and the yet unknown number of other predatory clergy in that country," she said.  "Francis could even address the country's hidden victims, promising his support and urging them to contact him directly about their abuse — he literally could save lives."

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.

Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that young members of his family speak fluent Mandarin, though he told school children they should not forget the importance of English too despite the growing popularity of Chinese.  Putin has two daughters with his ex-wife Lyudmila and they speak Russian, English, German and French. Putin, who divorced his wife in 2014, rarely speaks about his family but has at least three grandchildren, according to Russian media.  "Some of my family members, the little ones, speak Chinese too - they speak it fluently," Putin told pupils of Secondary School No. 20 in Kyzyl, Tuva, about 4,500 km (2,800 miles) east of Moscow.  Amid a growing partnership between China and Russia, Mandarin has been growing in popularity across Russia as a foreign language of choice, a trend Putin said was due to developing contacts across economics, politics and society.  Putin, who speaks fluent German but has also taken lessons to improve his English, said that pupils should not forget the importance of English.  "English is a great language, it has given humanity a great deal in terms of combining knowledge and uniting people in the field of culture, and so on," Putin said.  Russian, English, Tatar, German and Chechen are the most widely spoken languages in Russia, according to the 2022 census. While Mandarin is spoken far less, it has been growing swiftly in popularity in recent years as a foreign language.  Putin and China's President Xi Jinping in May pledged a "new era" of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the United States, which they cast as an aggressive Cold War hegemon sowing chaos across the world.  China and Russia declared a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War II.  English is the world's most spoken language with about 1.5 billion speakers, followed by Mandarin Chinese with about 1.1 billion speakers, and then Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, French, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian and Urdu, according to Ethnologue, a language research center.

Geneva — U.N. experts voiced alarm Monday at a surge in executions in Iran last month that pushed the total in the country so far this year to over 400. At least 81 people were put to death in Iran in August alone, significantly more than the 45 reported in July, a group of 11 independent United Nations rights experts said in a statement.  The reported number of executions since the start of 2024 rose above 400, including those of 15 women, they said.  "We are deeply concerned by this sharp rise in executions," said the experts, who are appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council but do not speak on behalf of the United Nations.  Iran executes more people per year than any other nation except China, according to rights groups including Amnesty International.  The U.N. experts, including the special rapporteurs on the rights situation in Iran and on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, said 41 of the executions last month had been of people convicted of drug offenses.  "Executions for drug offences violate international standards," they said.  The experts lamented a substantial rise in executions for drug offences in Iran since 2021, with more than 400 drug-related executions carried out last year alone.  They also said they had received reports indicating that death penalty trials in Iran often fail to meet due-process guarantees.  They pointed to the case of Reza Rasaei, a Kurdish protester, who was executed on August 6 for the murder of an Islamic Revolution Guards Corps member at an event where he had brandished a sign reading: "Women, Life, Freedom."  His conviction was based on a confession reportedly obtained through torture, and despite co-defendants retracting their testimonies implicating him in the murder and forensic evidence challenging his involvement, the experts said.  "Reports of serious violations of fair trial and due process rights mean that the death penalty as it is currently practiced in the Islamic Republic of Iran amounts to unlawful execution," they said.  The experts said they were "extremely concerned that innocent individuals may have been executed" and called for a halt to executions.