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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.

Sydney — China's Li Qiang will arrive in Australia Saturday, the first visit by a Chinese premier since 2017, in a sign of improving ties, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday. During the four-day visit Li will visit the city of Adelaide city, the capital Canberra, and Australia's mining state Western Australia.  Both leaders will meet with Australian and Chinese business leaders at a roundtable in Western Australia, Albanese said at a media briefing in Canberra. China is Australia's largest trading partner, with Australian resources and energy exports dominating trade flow. Australia is the biggest supplier of iron ore to China and China has been an investor in Australian mining projects, though some recent Chinese investment in critical minerals has been blocked by Australia on national interest grounds. Albanese said foreign investment has a role to play in Australia and is considered on a case-by-case basis. "Chinese engagement, including with the resources sector, has been important for growth," he said. China imposed trade restrictions on a raft of Australian agricultural and mineral products during a diplomatic dispute in 2020, which has now largely eased. Albanese said he would like to see the remaining Chinese trade impediments on lobsters and seafood removed. In his meeting with Li next week in Canberra, Albanese will raise the case of Australian writer Yang Hengjun who was given a suspended death sentence on espionage charges in February, as well as an incident last month where a Chinese military jet dropped flares near an Australian defense helicopter, which Albanese said "was dangerous and should never had happened." "Welcoming the Chinese premier to our shores is an opportunity for Australia to advance our interests by demonstrating our national values, our people's qualities and our economy's strengths," he said.  "Australia continues to pursue a stable and direct relationship with China, with dialog at its core."

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.

Los Angeles — The Rev. James Lawson Jr., an apostle of nonviolent protest who schooled activists to withstand brutal reactions from white authorities as the Civil Rights Movement gained traction, has died, his family said Monday. He was 95. His family said Lawson died on Sunday after a short illness in Los Angeles, where he spent decades working as a pastor, labor movement organizer and university professor. Lawson was a close adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who called him “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” Lawson met King in 1957, after spending three years in India soaking up knowledge about Mohandas K. Gandhi’s independence movement. King would travel to India himself two years later, but at the time, he had only read about Gandhi in books. The two Black pastors -- both 28 years old -- quickly bonded over their enthusiasm for the Indian leader’s ideas, and King urged Lawson to put them into action in the American South. Lawson soon led workshops in church basements in Nashville, Tennessee, that prepared John Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, the Freedom Riders and many others to peacefully withstand vicious responses to their challenges of racist laws and policies. Lawson’s lessons led Nashville to become the first major city in the South to desegregate its downtown, on May 10, 1960, after hundreds of well-organized students staged lunch-counter sit-ins and boycotts of discriminatory businesses. Lawson’s particular contribution was to introduce Gandhian principles to people more familiar with biblical teachings, showing how direct action could expose the immorality and fragility of racist white power structures. Gandhi said “that we persons have the power to resist the racism in our own lives and souls,” Lawson told the AP. “We have the power to make choices and to say no to that wrong. That’s also Jesus.” Years later, in 1968, it was Lawson who organized the sanitation workers strike that fatefully drew King to Memphis. Lawson said he was at first paralyzed and forever saddened by King’s assassination. “I thought I would not live beyond 40, myself,” Lawson said. “The imminence of death was a part of the discipline we lived with, but no one as much as King.” Still, Lawson made it his life’s mission to preach the power of nonviolent direct action. “I’m still anxious and frustrated,” Lawson said as he marked the 50th anniversary of King’s death with a march in Memphis. “The task is unfinished.” Civil rights activist Diane Nash was a 21-year-old college student when she began attending Lawson's Nashville workshops, which she called life-changing. “His passing constitutes a very great loss,” Nash said. “He bears, I think, more responsibility than any other single person for the civil rights movement of Blacks being nonviolent in this country.” James Morris Lawson Jr., was born on Sept. 22, 1928, the son and grandson of ministers, and grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where he became ordained himself as a high school senior. He told The Tennessean that his commitment to nonviolence began in elementary school, when he told his mother that he had slapped a boy who had used a racial slur against him. “What good did that do, Jimmy?” his mother asked. That simple question forever changed his life, Lawson said. He became a pacifist, refusing to serve when drafted for the Korean War, and spent a year in prison as a conscientious objector. The Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist group, sponsored his trip to India after he finished a sociology degree. Gandhi had been assassinated by then, but Lawson met people who had worked with him and explained Gandhi’s concept of “satyagraha,” a relentless pursuit of Truth, which encouraged Indians to peacefully reject British rule. Lawson then saw how the Christian concept of turning the other cheek could be applied in collective actions to challenge morally indefensible laws. Lawson was a divinity student at Oberlin College in Ohio when King spoke on campus about the Montgomery bus boycott. King told him, “You can’t wait, you need to come on South now,‘” Lawson recalled in an Associated Press interview. Lawson soon enrolled in theology classes at Vanderbilt University, while leading younger activists through mock protests in which they practiced taking insults without reacting. The technique swiftly proved its power at lunch counters and movie theaters in Nashville, where on May 10, 1960, businesses agreed to take down the “No Colored” signs that enforced white supremacy. “It was the first major successful campaign to pull the signs down,” and it created a template for the sit-ins that began spreading across the South, Lawson said. Lawson was called on to organize what became the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which sought to organize the spontaneous efforts of tens of thousands of students who began challenging Jim Crow laws across the South. Angry segregationists got Lawson expelled from Vanderbilt, but he said he never harbored hard feelings about the university, where he returned as a distinguished visiting professor in 2006, and eventually donated a significant portion of his papers. Lawson earned that theology degree at Boston University and became a Methodist pastor in Memphis, where his wife Dorothy Wood Lawson worked as an NAACP organizer. They moved several years later to Los Angeles, where Lawson led the Holman United Methodist Church and taught at California State University, Northridge and the University of California, Los Angeles. They raised three sons, John, Morris and Seth.  Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Lawson taught Southern California activists and organizers “and helped shape the civil rights and labor movement locally just as he did nationally.” “Today Los Angeles joins the state, country and world in mourning the loss of a civil rights leader whose critical leadership, teachings, and mentorship confronted and crippled centuries of systemic oppression, racism and injustice," Bass said in a statement. Lawson remained active into his 90s, urging younger generations to leverage their power. Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, called Lawson “the ultimate preacher, prophet, and activist.” “In his senior years, I was privileged to spend time with him at his church in Los Angeles,” Sharpton said. “He would sit in his office and tell me inside stories of the battles of the 1950’s and 1960’s that he Dr. King and others engaged in. Lawson helped to change this nation — thank God the nation never changed him.” Eulogizing the late Rep. John Lewis last year, he recalled how the young man he trained in Nashville grew lonely marches into multitudes, paving the way for major civil rights legislation. “If we would honor and celebrate John Lewis’ life, let us then re-commit our souls, our hearts, our minds, our bodies and our strength to the continuing journey to dismantle the wrong in our midst,” Lawson said.

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.

BOGOTA — Chiquita Brands International must pay $38.3 million in damages to the families of eight Colombian men killed by a paramilitary group in that country, a Florida jury said on Monday.  Chiquita in 2007 was ordered by a U.S. court to pay a $25 million fine to settle criminal charges that it did business with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary group. Chiquita pled guilty in that case to paying protection money from 2001 to 2004, which it said it did to protect employees. The jury in the civil case before the U.S. District Court Southern District of Florida said in the verdict on Monday that Chiquita knowingly provided substantial assistance to the AUC in the form of cash payments or other means of support, to a degree sufficient to create a foreseeable risk of harm. The men were killed by the AUC, the jury said, and Chiquita did not prove its support for the AUC was the result of impending harm to the company or its employees. "The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita's doorstep," said Agnieszka Fryszman, a lawyer at law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, who represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement. Chiquita did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hamas has welcomed a UN Security Council resolution proposed by the U.S. backing a plan for a cease-fire in Gaza, saying it is ready to cooperate with mediators over implementing the principles of the plan. We talk to University of California Los Angeles professor Saree Makdisi. In the balloon warfare between North Korea and South Korean activists, one Seoul-based group has honed its tech expertise to develop smart balloons capable of dispersing leaflets and electronic speakers hundreds of kilometers across the border. An aircraft carrying the Malawi’s vice president and nine others has gone missing. And people from all walks of life played colorful pianos at New York's Fosun Plaza in downtown Manhattan on Monday at a launch event for the Sing for Hope Pianos.

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.

Blantyre — Medical workers in Malawi's public health facilities started a nationwide sit-in strike Monday to push the government to meet their longtime grievances, which include special allowances and improved conditions of service. The strike forced patients in many hospitals to return home without receiving medical care. Strike organizers said some medical workers could treat patients with critical conditions. In some public health facilities medical workers were seen singing and dancing outside the hospitals. While some patients like Nelia Banda of the M’bwatalika area returned home without receiving attention. She said “Medical workers told me that they will not attend to me because they are not working today. They said I should come again on Monday next week. I am pregnant and yesterday I fell because of high blood pressure but I haven’t been assisted here.” The strike is a result of the failure of negotiations between the medical workers and government authorities on worker demands dating back to February of this year. The government had told the medical workers that it would increase their allowances and improve their working conditions instead of meeting the 15% salary increase that medical workers were demanding.     The increase was meant for risk allowance, top-up allowance and professional allowance. Put simply, this is income that medical workers receive for working overtime or for performing duties outside their normal schedule. Daniel Nasimba is the general secretary for the Physician Assistants Union of Malawi (PAUM), one of the organizers of the strike. He said some staff members at the hospital were allowed to attend to patients with emergencies. He said, “At least we have people. Every department has someone who can attend to any emergency that can come in. What is happening now is called a sit-in. It’s not a complete shutdown of the health service. We are all at work, nobody is at home.” Nasimba said the workers will not return to duty fully — until the government honors its promise. However, the Malawi government has obtained an injunction stopping the strike. Organizers of the strike, the National Organization of Nurses and Midwives and the Physician Assistants Union of Malawi, said in a statement released Monday evening that they were consulting their legal team about the matter. 

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.

phoenix — Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and Donald Trump attorney, was processed Monday in the criminal case over the effort to overturn Trump's Arizona election loss to Joe Biden, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said.  The sheriff's office provided a mug shot but no other details. The office of the clerk of the Superior Court for Maricopa County said Giuliani posted bond of $10,000 in cash.  "Mayor Rudy Giuliani — the most effective federal prosecutor in U.S. history — will be fully vindicated," said his spokesperson, Ted Goodman. "This is yet another example of partisan actors weaponizing the criminal justice system to interfere with the 2024 presidential election through outlandish charges against President Trump and anyone willing to take on the permanent Washington political class."  Giuliani pleaded not guilty in May to nine felony charges stemming from his alleged role in the fake electors effort. He is among 18 people indicted in the Arizona case, including Trump attorneys John Eastman, Christina Bobb and Jenna Ellis.  Former Trump presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump 2020 Election Day operations director Michael Roman pleaded not guilty Friday in Phoenix to nine felony charges for their alleged roles in the scheme.  The indictment alleges Meadows worked with other Trump campaign members to submit names of fake electors from Arizona and other states to Congress in a bid to keep Trump in office despite his November 2020 defeat.  Other states where criminal charges have been filed related to the fake electors scheme are Michigan, Nevada and Georgia.

mexico city — Mexican President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday that she would put up for discussion proposed constitutional reforms, including a judicial overhaul that has spooked markets, before the next congressional session kicks off.  The judicial reform would replace an appointed Supreme Court with popularly elected judges, as well as for some lower courts, which critics allege would fundamentally alter the balance of power in Mexico.  Sheinbaum, speaking in a press conference following a meeting with outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said the reform would be "among the first" that could be passed, along with some boosted social benefits.  She added she did not believe the proposed reforms would impact the peso, which tumbled following her election win earlier this month.  As Sheinbaum was speaking, however, the peso weakened by nearly 2% against the U.S. dollar in international trading.  Some of the measures are part of a slew of constitutional reforms Lopez Obrador proposed in February that would also eliminate key regulatory agencies.  At the time they did not cause market jitters, but investors sounded the alarm as the ruling coalition closed in on a congressional supermajority needed to pass constitutional reforms in the June 2 election.  The coalition led by MORENA secured a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house but fell just short in the Senate, although analysts believe those extra votes can likely be secured through negotiation.  While the newly elected Congress will take office at the beginning of September, Sheinbaum will not be inaugurated until a month later, which could give Lopez Obrador and lawmakers a window to try to enact the reforms.  "In the case of the judicial reform, [discussion] should be through the bar association, professors of law, the ministers and magistrates themselves," Sheinbaum said.  She added she would name her cabinet next week, and that she would receive a team sent by U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday.  Lopez Obrador had said earlier in the day that he would not pressure Sheinbaum to rush the package of constitutional reforms through Congress.  Mexico's peso is now down 8% since the elections Sheinbaum and her party won in a landslide - its biggest plunge since the COVID-19 pandemic - while the country's main stock index has fallen nearly 4%.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged Hamas to accept a cease-fire in Cairo, part of growing international pressure to end the eight-month-old conflict with Israel. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports.

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.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, haiti — Haiti's new prime minister on Monday condemned the gang killings of three police officers on patrol in a part of the capital controlled by gang leader Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherizier.  A group of armed men working under Cherizier ambushed a patrol vehicle from the police's anti-gang unit in the Delmas 18 neighborhood Sunday and set it on fire, police in the Caribbean country said.  Two officers were killed at the site and two were evacuated by reinforcements; one of them later died at a hospital.  Prime Minister Garry Conille promised state aid for the victims' families. Conille was sworn in this month and has yet to install his cabinet after taking power nearly three months after his predecessor, Ariel Henry, resigned.  "This barbaric act is a direct attack on security and on [the] stability of the nation," Conille said in a video address. "I send heartfelt condolences to the family of these officers who are gone, along with their colleagues and friends."  He spoke after being briefly hospitalized Saturday for what his office called "a slight illness."  Police union SYNAPOHA, however, said words were not enough and demanded the victims' bodies be returned.  Unverified videos on social media, apparently filmed by gang members, appear to show footage of the charred truck and captured firearms.  Gang leader Cherizier later shared a video on social media in which he said police officers had gone rogue and come "to kill people in lower Delmas." He also challenged police to recover the seized firearms if they could.  Kenyan President William Ruto said Sunday that a long-awaited deployment of Kenyan police officers set to lead a U.N.-sanctioned international force to support Haitian police should arrive in one or two weeks, African news outlets reported.  It remains unclear when the rest of the force — with troops from Benin, Chad, Bangladesh and the Caribbean — will land. SYNAPOHA warned at the start of this year of a rapidly shrinking and under-resourced police body.  The international force was initially requested by Haiti's former government in 2022 but has faced extended delays. Gangs have since increased their control over the capital, pushing hundreds of thousands from their homes and millions into hunger.