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NAIROBI, Kenya — Heavy rains pounding different parts of Kenya have led to the deaths of at least 13 people and displaced some 15,000 people, the United Nations said, as forecasters warn that more rains can be expected until June.  The U.N Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, citing the Kenya Red Cross Society, said Thursday that nearly 20,000 people were affected, including an estimated 15,000 people displaced by heavy rains and flash floods across the country since the start of the wet season in mid-March.  The East African country has seen thousands of people killed by flooding in previous rainy seasons, mostly in the lake regions and downstream of major rivers.  The Kenya Red Cross Society said that five major roads were cut off by floods, including Garissa Road in northern Kenya, where a bus carrying 51 passengers was swept away on Tuesday. All passengers were rescued.  Kenya's disaster management agency issued a flood warning to residents of Lamu, Tana River and Garissa counties, which are downstream of Tana River, after flooding breached dams upstream. Residents have been urged to move to higher ground.  So far, nine out of 47 counties in the country have reported flooding incidents  Mudslides have been reported in the central regions. On Tuesday four people were killed in Narok county, in the western part of the country.  The Kenya Red Cross Society's secretary general, Ahmed Idris, told Citizen TV that "lifesaving assistance," including shelter and clean drinking water, was being offered to those displaced and living in camps to avert outbreaks of waterborne diseases.  The rainy season is expected to reach its peak toward the end of April and subside in June, according to the meteorology department. 

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DAKAR, Senegal — State television in Niger broadcast footage on Thursday of Russian military trainers arriving in the country aboard a plane equipped with military supplies to boost its air defenses amid deteriorating relations between Niger and the United States.  Two Russian trainers were filmed in front of the plane wearing military uniforms, caps and face coverings. The plane arrived Wednesday night, the report said.  "We are here to train the Nigerian army to use the military equipment that is here," one of the Russian trainers said in French in the broadcast. "We are here to develop military cooperation between Russia and Niger."  Until recently, Washington considered Niger a key partner and ally in a region swept by attempted coups in recent years.  A U.S. airbase was established as the heart of Niger's counterinsurgency operations in the sub-Saharan region known as the Sahel. Since 2012, the region has been gripped by a worsening insurgency fought by groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.  The U.S. invested heavily in training Niger's forces to beat back the insurgency that has ravaged the country and its neighbors, but last summer, some of those elite U.S.-trained forces took part in a coup that ousted the elected president.  U.S. relations with Niger took a further downturn last month when the junta announced on state television the flights from its airbase were illegal and that it no longer recognized the American military presence in the country. The junta criticized the U.S. for trying to force it to choose between partners, warning them against cooperating with Russia and Iran.  Niamey has yet to order American troops out, U.S. officials have said.  The broadcast said the arrival of Russian trainers followed a call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country's military leaders in March. Niger's military leaders are seeking to diversify their partnerships and achieve greater sovereignty, the broadcast said. 

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WARSAW, Poland — Polish lawmakers voted Friday to continue work on proposals to lift a near-total ban on abortion, a highly divisive issue in the traditionally Roman Catholic country, which has one of the most restrictive laws in Europe.  Members of the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, voted to work on four separate bills. Two of them propose legalizing abortion through the 12th week of pregnancy, in line with European norms.  One plan proposes decriminalizing assistance for a woman who terminates a pregnancy. And a fourth would keep a ban in most cases but allows abortions in cases of fetal defects — a right that was eliminated by a 2020 court ruling.  The party of centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk is seeking to change the law to allow women to terminate pregnancies up to the 12th week of pregnancy.  Abortion rights advocates said the decision to continue working on the bills, and not reject them outright, was a step in the right direction. But they also say that no real change in the law is likely to come soon.  And any liberalization bill would likely be vetoed by President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who last month vetoed a bill making the morning-after pill, which is not an abortion pill but emergency contraception, available over-the-counter to women and girls 15 and older. Duda’s second and final term runs until the summer of 2025.  Abortion opponents are also mobilized in a country that has long considered Catholic faith to be a bedrock of national identity, but which is also in the process of fast secularization.  The Catholic church called on the faithful to make Sunday a day of prayer “in defense of conceived life," in a statement carried by the state news agency PAP.  Currently abortions are only allowed in the cases of rape or incest or if the woman's life or health is at risk. Reproductive rights advocates say that even in such cases, doctors and hospitals turn away women, fearing legal consequences for themselves or citing their moral objections. According to Health Ministry statistics, only 161 abortions were performed in Polish hospitals in 2022.  The reality is that many Polish women already have abortions, often with pills mailed from abroad. Groups that help provide the pills estimate that some 120,000 abortions are carried out each year by women living in Poland.  It is not a crime for a woman to perform her own abortion. But assisting a woman in such a case is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.  One of the four bills that passed for further work is a proposal by the Left that would decriminalize assisting a woman who has an abortion.  The European Parliament adopted a resolution Thursday demanding the inclusion of the right to abortion in the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights.  Lawmakers called on Poland and Malta, the two countries with the toughest limitations on abortion, to lift restrictions on the issue.

MOSCOW — Russell Bentley, an American who fought against Ukrainian forces, is missing in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, police there said Friday, adding that a search was underway. Bentley went missing on April 8, according to police. The online news outlet Mash said he had disappeared after a district in the city of Donetsk was shelled by Ukrainian forces. Mash cited his wife as saying he had gone to see if anyone needed help but had not returned. She was quoted as saying she had found his car with his baseball cap in it along with his smashed mobile phone and a pair of glasses. Bentley, 64, is a self-declared supporter of Russian-backed forces in Ukraine. He joined pro-Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and used the military call-sign "Texas," the Russian state news agency RIA reported. It said Bentley had later swapped his gun for journalism and had worked with the Sputnik news agency, another state-owned entity, and obtained Russian citizenship. Russian state media have described Bentley as a war correspondent. In 2022, Rolling Stone magazine ran an interview with Bentley titled "The Bizarre Story of How a Hardcore Texas Leftist Became a Front-line Putin propagandist."

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Javier Milei was sworn in as Argentina’s president in December 2023 on a pro-Western, anti-corruption platform. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was there for the inauguration, and this week Milei said he is considering sending aid to help Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Iryna Shynkarenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Maxym Shulga.

Sometimes it’s the little ideas that can make the biggest difference. And that definitely goes for delivery pizza. From Buenos Aires, Gonzalo Bañez Villar has the story of a little idea that had a big impact, in this report narrated by Veronica Villafañe.

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Body of Bate Urgessa of the Oromo Liberation Front found on a road outside Meki on Wednesday

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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will kick off a three-day visit to China Saturday, aiming to double down on Germany’s deep economic ties with China amid rising trade tension between Beijing and the European Union.  Making his first trip to China since his government released its first China strategy in July, stressing the need to lower economic dependence on China, Scholz will be accompanied by executives from major German companies, such as Siemens, Volkswagen, and Bayer, and three Cabinet ministers.   Some analysts say bilateral economic relations will be the main focus of Scholz’s trip.  “He will try to focus on the positive things in the German-China relationship and try to foster more partnership and cooperation in critical areas relevant to key German industries,” Max Zenglein, chief economist at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, told VOA in a video interview Wednesday. The visit comes as some key German industries see falling revenues in China. According to automobile company data reported by Reuters Wednesday, several German premium carmakers have seen China sales fall significantly in the year’s first quarter, with Mercedes-Benz and Porsche showing double-digit percentage falls in their sales in China.   In addition, a recent report by the New York-based research firm Rhodium Group found that Germany’s automotive industry faces fierce Chinese competition, with German companies’ market share in China falling 4% since 2018.  “The losses have come mainly from volume producer Volkswagen, which sold fewer cars in China in 2023 than it did in 2013,” the report said, adding that the market share of Volkswagen’s Chinese venture fell to the lowest point in a decade even though the overall passenger vehicle market in China grew by 5.6%.  Instead of reevaluating their approach to the Chinese market, Rhodium Group found that some of these companies have reinvested the profits they made in China in the country “in a push to remain competitive.”   Zenglein said Scholz will likely focus on helping some German companies that rely heavily on China to maintain their economic interests in the country during his visit.  Scholz may feel the need to “signal to the corporate sector that he is willing to give the appropriate political flanking for their economic interests,” he told VOA.  Other experts say some German companies are struggling to adapt to changes taking place in the Chinese market because they have become too reliant on the benefits the market offers. “At a time when the German economy is facing pressure from multiple fronts, including the country’s need to support Ukraine and the sluggish economic performance, the German government will try to maintain a close economic and trade relationship with China in the short term so German products can keep selling to the Chinese market,” said Zhang Junhua, a senior associate at the European Institute for Asian Studies in Brussels.  However, he said he thinks these efforts will contradict the German government’s call for companies to reduce economic dependence on China.  “Since Germany’s economic performance remains sluggish, the government has to give in to pressure from the business sector and make compromises on executing the China Strategy, which urges German companies to de-risk from China,” Zhang told VOA by phone.  German companies 'swim against the international trend' Meanwhile, the EU has launched a series of antisubsidies investigations against green energy products imported from China, including electric vehicles and wind turbines.  EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said the bloc needed a more systematic approach to handle the investigations. “We need to do it before it is too late, [and] we can’t afford to see what happened on solar panels happening again on electric vehicles, wind or essential chips,” she said Tuesday, referring to China’s dominance in the European solar panel market.  In response, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said Thursday that it resolutely opposed the EU investigations, calling them “a protectionist act that harms the level playing field in the name of fair competition.”  “China will closely monitor the European side's subsequent movements and reserves the right to take all necessary measures,” the ministry said in a statement.   While Scholz’s chief economic adviser, Joerg Kukies, said Berlin supports the EU’s antisubsidy probe into Chinese electric vehicles at a think tank event in Berlin last September, Scholz told German business weekly Wirtschaftswoche in an interview the same month that he is “not convinced” about the need for the EU to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs. "Our economic model should not be based or rely on protectionism - but on the attractiveness of our products,” Scholz said in the interview. In Zenglein’s view, some German companies’ growing investment in China is “swimming against the international trend. “The trend is driven by capital-intensive sectors like automotive and chemical,” Zenglein said. According to the Rhodium Group report, major German carmakers such as Volkswagen and German chemical group BASF continue to increase their investments in China. Russia, green energy industries While bilateral economic relations will dominate the agenda of the trip, Zenglein and Zhang both said they think Scholz will still try to express German concern about China’s close partnership with Russia and their uneasiness about Chinese overcapacity in the green energy industries.  “Germany’s concern about China’s partnership with Russia will be a main element of the discussion because Scholz has a strong opinion about this,” Zhang told VOA. “But since Germany doesn’t have effective measures to pressure Beijing, Scholz’s warning won’t have much influence on how China evaluates its partnership with Russia.”  In Zenglein’s view, Scholz will try to “brush over” concerns about geopolitical risks quickly. “He will try not to get too hung up on the negative aspects of bilateral relations that might be counterproductive to positive developments in the bilateral economic relations,” he said.

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Port-au-Prince, Haiti — Jameson Jacques has been living in a makeshift shelter in Haiti's capital with his three children since gang members torched his house, killing his parents. Like him, many people in Port-au-Prince have been enduring a hellish daily routine a month after the announcement of a transitional governing council -- yet to be finalized -- meant to put the country back on the road toward some semblance of order, and eventually toward holding elections. The city is a dangerous and chaotic place these days. Walking down the street it is frighteningly easy to get caught up in random violence -- muggings, kidnappings, carjackings, rape or gunfire as gangs attack police, each other or innocent bystanders. "Port-au-Prince has become unlivable," said Jacques. "If I had money I already would have left for some provincial town with my three kids." Haiti has suffered from grinding poverty, political instability and natural disasters for decades, and now it is grappling with a wave of violence from powerful gangs that control most of the city and much of the country. Starting in late February these gangs teamed up to attack strategic sites in Port-au-Prince, such as police stations, government ministry buildings, the airport and the seaport in a violent drive to oust Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Henry is unpopular and unelected -- he was appointed by president Jovenel Moise shortly before his assassination in 2021. Henry announced on March 11 that he would step down to make way for a presidential transition council -- tasked with appointing a new prime minister and government and leading Haiti toward elections. The slain president was never replaced and Haiti has not voted since 2016. But the council has yet to be formed, with repeated delays stemming from disagreements among parties that are due to be represented on it and with the outgoing Henry government. Fleeing violence Meanwhile people have to deal with life in a city that is 80% controlled by gangsters who are better armed than the police. "I am living a nightmare. For weeks I have not been able to go to the city center," said Junior Fontus, a drinks vendor who had to move his business to the Education Ministry building, which has become a shelter for Haitians displaced by all the violence. "Without my business how am I going to feed my five children and pay for their schooling?" he asked. In March alone gang violence prompted some 53,000 people to flee from the city. "I used to say I would not leave the country. I advised young people not to leave, saying it was better to pool our savings and start a business," said Charles Jean Wilderson, a 38-year-old businessman. "But now," he added, "a young person that leaves is doing the right thing." Shortages In Port-au-Prince, gangs rule and police struggle to defend themselves against an enemy that is more numerous and better armed. The United Nations has called the situation catastrophic, with 1,554 dead and 826 wounded in the first three months of the year. Haiti was devastated by an earthquake in 2010 that killed more than 220,000 people, and it depends largely on imports and humanitarian aid to survive. But the gangs shut down the airport and the seaport in recent weeks, leading to shortages of food, medicine and other basics. The health system is on the verge of collapse, and the few hospitals still operating are overwhelmed. In the space of about five weeks starting in late February, La Paix University Hospital in Port-au-Prince admitted 194 people with gunshot wounds, said Paul Junior Fontilus, a doctor who works there. It is also short on blood for transfusions. "It is very difficult to get fuel and oxygen to take care of our patients," said Fontilus. "Thanks to aid from some of our partners, we manage to get by. But I don't know how long this can go on."

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