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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.

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.

European Union countries formally adopted a plan on Tuesday to use windfall profits from Russian central bank assets frozen in the EU for Ukraine's defense. The Israeli government seized the Associated Press equipment from a location in southern Israel after accusing it of violating a new media law by providing images to the satellite channel Al Jazeera. We talk to Clayton Weimers from Reporters Without Borders about this and how Israel is blocking coverage of Gaza. And with the flamingo population in Chile's Los Flamencos National Reserve dwindling, scientists have begun trapping the birds and attaching satellite transmitters to find out where they're going.

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.

The White House will roll out the red carpet for the first African leader to be hosted for a state visit since 2008. Kenyan President William Ruto will be honored with a state dinner, the White House says. Also on the table are Nairobi’s aims to leverage Washington’s largesse and influence after Kenya offered to send a peacekeeping force to Haiti. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House. Larry Lazo contributed to the report.

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.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told lawmakers Tuesday the International Criminal Court’s decision to seek an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endangers hopes for a cease-fire in Gaza. Katherine Gypson reports. Saqib Ui Islam contributed.

Washington, Toronto — Iran’s Islamist rulers have begun cracking down on expressions of happiness by their opponents over President Ebrahim Raisi’s death Sunday in a helicopter crash.  Raisi and other senior officials died when their helicopter crashed in bad weather in East Azerbaijan province while flying back to Iran from a visit to the border with Azerbaijan. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared five days of national mourning in response.  Raisi was reviled by opponents of Iran's authoritarian Islamist government for his role as a prosecutor who ordered mass killings of political prisoners in 1988 and for using his presidential powers to violently suppress a women’s rights protest movement that erupted nationwide in late 2022 and continued into 2023. Dadban, an Iran-based group of lawyers defending political prisoners and rights activists, said in a Tuesday post on the X platform that it received messages from several citizens who reported being ordered by security agencies to remove online content expressing joy at Raisi’s demise. The head of Iran’s cyber police had warned a day earlier that authorities were “carefully monitoring cyberspace" and advised citizens to refrain from publishing “provocative” content. The Islamic Republic’s Iranian critics inside and outside Iran have flooded social media with mockery of Raisi since his death, with some posting the Persian hashtag “helicotlet,” a combination of the words helicopter and cutlet. Many of those critics celebrated the 2020 killing of top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. missile strike in Baghdad by referring to him as a “cutlet.”  Persian social media users also posted videos appearing to show people in different parts of Iran sharing sweets and chocolates on Monday to celebrate Raisi’s death. In one video sent to VOA Persian TV host Masih Alinejad and published by her on social media, a woman whose face is not shown carries a tray of sweet pastries in a public park in an unidentified part of Iran and offers them to another woman whom she approaches nearby.  In the ensuing brief conversation, one woman jokes about wanting to know the occasion for the pastries, while the other says they both know the occasion, in an apparent cryptic reference to Raisi’s death. In another video posted on Telegram by a progressive student organization in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, a woman whose face also is not shown walks along a street at night, bringing a tray of sweet pastries to several bystanders who accept her celebratory offer.  VOA cannot independently verify the circumstances of the celebratory videos, as it is barred from reporting inside Iran. The mother of a teenage boy fatally wounded by Tehran security forces in September 2022 as he joined nationwide protests expressed her defiance of the late Raisi more openly.  In a video message posted to Instagram on Monday, Abolfazl Amir Ataei’s mother, Maryam, said Raisi’s death is a “result of the groans of myself and other mothers whose children you killed.”  Dadban said Iranian security officers also took punitive action against political prisoners who rejoiced over Raisi’s death in ward 15 of the city of Karaj’s central penitentiary, transferring them to an unknown location. Iran-based journalist Manizheh Moazen said authorities also targeted her in the crackdown. Writing Tuesday on X, she said the government prosecutor’s office for culture and media has opened a new case against her because of how she reacted to Raisi’s death.  Iranian American human rights lawyer and Atlantic Council analyst Gissou Nia told VOA’s Afghan Service that the celebratory acts seen in Iran since Raisi’s death stem from his “extraordinary” unpopularity. “He was a perpetrator of crimes against humanity and atrocity crimes in every decade of the Islamic Republic. His policies led to extreme violence on women and a nationwide outcry,” Nia said.  Iranian opponents of the Islamic Republic in the diaspora engaged in more public celebratory activities in major Western cities. On Monday, Iranians waving pre-Islamic Republic Iranian flags danced to music outside Iranian diplomatic missions in London, Copenhagen, The Hague and Hamburg.  There were similar scenes in midtown Toronto on Monday, and in Stockholm and Frankfurt on Tuesday.  Mehrzad Zarei, a Toronto-based father who lost his son in Iran’s 2020 shootdown of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 over Tehran, told a VOA Persian reporter that Raisi’s death in the helicopter crash was “sweet” but not what he had most wanted to see.  “Deep in my heart, I was wishing to see Iranian officials who have committed crimes — like Raisi who was known as the 'executioner of Evin [prison]' and killed many of our loved ones — being prosecuted and tried in a fair court,” Zarei said.  This report was produced in collaboration with VOA Persian Service journalists Niusha Boghrati, Behrooz Samadbeygi and Behrang Rahbari, who reported from Toronto. Zheela Noori of VOA’s Afghan Service also contributed. 

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.

The White House — The White House gave three reasons for inviting Kenyan President William Ruto on Thursday to break the 16-year drought during which no African leader has been honored with a pomp-filled state visit. Those include the two governments' shared democratic convictions and their like-minded approach in leveraging the private sector to meet government aims.  But the primary reason, the administration's new top Africa policymaker told VOA, is Kenya's recent decision to assert itself globally by offering 1,000 peacekeepers for Haiti. The first tranche of boots on the ground are expected to hit Haitian soil this week. "We chose Kenya for a few reasons," Frances Brown, senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council, told VOA during her first media interview since taking the post. "No. 1 is the Kenya-U.S. partnership has really grown from a regionally focused one to a globally focused one. We've been really pleased by the way that Kenyans have stepped up to play leadership [roles] beyond their region." Analysts say a state visit is a big deal.  "It is the highest diplomatic honor that our president can bestow," said Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow in the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  "It's typically an indicator of a very close and important bilateral relationship. And so, elevating Kenya to the level of, let's say, a Japan, which was the most recent country to have a state visit, I think it is symbolic. And it's important for all the reasons that I just described as far as Kenya being on a level that we would give it the same privileges as one of our oldest and longest security partners,” Hudson said. Brown said the administration aims to use the visit to reach agreements in areas like technology, climate management, debt relief and health.  And on the Haiti mission, Washington has signaled its approval: with $300 million in support. "We've been working really closely with them," Brown said. "As you may know, there's been planning underway for a number of months. It has included policing experts from around the world working to develop a concept of operations. Kenya is not going it alone." Other priorities  Meanwhile, the Kenyan leader says his focus is on debt restructuring, and activists in the East African nation are sounding the alarm over human rights concerns.  Ruto, in Atlanta for his first stop of his four-day U.S. visit, said he'd use his time in Washington to "make a case for many countries in Africa, including Kenya, seeking to adjust international financial architecture." "Many countries are in economic and debt distress occasioned by climate change and compounded by an unjust international financial architecture and also an imperfect multilateralism," he said.  "We now run the escalating risk of democracy and free markets being associated with poverty, and lending credit to the widespread lamentation that democracy is or has been on the retreat in many parts of the world, including Africa,” Ruto added. But human rights advocates in Nairobi told VOA they hope American leadership will also raise what they see as serious concerns, like reports of abuses by Kenyan police, who are taking the lead in the Haiti mission.  "We see this as a really excellent opportunity to focus on governance, human rights and rule of law, for many reasons," Irungu Houghton, executive director for Amnesty International Kenya, told VOA. "Both the United States and Kenya are nations that projected themselves as essentially, nations that believe in these values, and the state dinner is an opportunity really to focus on that." Others highlight a tightening of public expression, especially over the hot-button issue of the Gaza war. Many African nations have criticized Israel's behavior in the conflict, but Kenya's government has kept largely quiet.  "Especially within the Muslim community in Kenya, we've had persons trying to protest them and to picket on this issue, but they had a very, very hard time having access to the streets, because every time they go out, the police arrest them," said Demas Kiprono, who leads the Kenyan section of the International Commission of Jurists. Others say they hope American leadership will voice concerns over a pending Kenyan law that they say targets sexual minorities.   "It's criminalizing things even like pronouns. It's criminalizing things like using [gender] neutral toilets. It's a horrible, horrible law that is being financed by Family Watch International — that's the same organization that financed the Uganda bill and all the (LGBTQ)-related bills basically in Africa and even in the U.S.," said activist and organizer Yvonne Muthoni.  Family Watch International is a conservative Christian American lobbying group. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, says it “works within the United Nations and with countries around the world to further anti-LGBT and anti-choice stances.”  "We are looking at violence that is coming from this. Whether it's online or physical violence, we are seeing a rise in the number of cases that are being reported, in the number of complaints, in the rallies that are being called for. So, it is quite a scary time for Kenya right now," Muthoni said. The view from here and there At the White House this week, a large Kenyan flag was displayed alongside an American flag, each covering the height of an entire story of the hulking gray Eisenhower Executive Building. Workers erected massive white sails around the White House's North Portico, where the Bidens plan to formally welcome the Rutos.  Meanwhile, the day after Ruto departed Nairobi — likely traversing the new Chinese-built superhighway that cuts the city in half and ends at the airport — one had to scroll far down on news to find mention of his American jaunt. Instead, the nation's prominent newspapers focused on issues that Kenyans wrestle with daily. The Standard's front page wrote of 850,000 new jobs last year — close to the 900,000 the World Bank says is needed to sustain economic growth in the lower middle-income country.  That coverage mirrors Kenyans' priorities, Houghton said.  "Most Kenyans are economically distressed," he said. "They are very concerned about the cost of living. Thousands of them went onto the streets last year and almost rendered the country ungovernable in certain counties because they felt that the crippling number of taxes that had been introduced were essentially not making it possible for them to survive. We've seen a deterioration in terms of the services, education, health and otherwise. ... So, there is a very clear disproportionate, I guess, energy around this visit."  Farhad Pouladi contributed to this report from the White House. 

state department — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas militants in return for the release of hostages remains possible, but the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Israeli leaders hindered ongoing efforts.   "There's been an extensive effort made in recent months to get that agreement. I think we came very, very close on a couple of occasions. Qatar, Egypt, others participating in the efforts to do this — we remain at it every single day. I think that there's still a possibility," Blinken told lawmakers during a hearing at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.     But Blinken said the "extremely wrongheaded decision" by the ICC prosecutor to seek arrest warrants for Israel's prime minister, defense minister and three Hamas leaders in Gaza for war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the Israel-Hamas war complicated the prospects of reaching such a deal.     On Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden denounced the ICC prosecutor's decision to equate Hamas terror attacks and civilian abductions in southern Israel with Israel's military practices in Gaza, calling the ICC prosecutor's application for arrest warrants "outrageous."   Blinken said he will be happy to work with the Congress "on an appropriate response."     Some lawmakers are considering legislation to sanction ICC officials for prosecuting U.S. citizens or allies, including Israel.   The top U.S. diplomat began two days of congressional testimonies, which were immediately interrupted by protesters holding signs that read "war criminal." They were escorted out of the hearing room by Capitol Police.   Military operation in Rafah    In the nearly three-hour hearing, Blinken also said the Biden administration remains "very concerned" about a major military operation by Israel in Rafah.   The U.S. has opposed a full-scale military assault by Israel in Rafah, situated in the southern part of Gaza. Such an operation would endanger the lives of 1.3 million civilians who evacuated from the northern and central areas of the territory to seek safety from Israel's military response to Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel.   Israel's military campaign has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 80,000, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The offensive was launched following a Hamas terror attack into Israel that killed 1,200 people.   US-Saudi defense pact      U.S. officials said the United States and Saudi Arabia are nearing a final agreement on a bilateral defense pact.    Once complete, it will be part of a broader deal presented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who must decide whether to make concessions to his opposition regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state to secure normalization with Saudi Arabia.   On Tuesday, Blinken admitted that Israel might be reluctant to accept a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia if it requires them to agree to a Palestinian state.     In his testimony before the U.S. Congress, Blinken told Democratic Senator Chris Murphy "the overall package could not go forward, absent other things that have to happen for normalization to proceed." "And in particular," he said, "the Saudis have been very clear that would require calm in Gaza. And it would require a credible pathway to a Palestinian state. And it may well be, as you said, that in this moment, Israel is not able or willing to proceed down that pathway."     Blinken added that Israel must "decide whether it wants to proceed and take advantage of the opportunity" to achieve something that it has sought since its founding: normal relations with the countries in the region.   Netanyahu has rejected the two-state solution and the return of the Palestinian Authority controlling Gaza, demands that are widely supported by the international community.   The Saudis have demanded, as a prerequisite to normalizing ties with Israel, to see an Israeli commitment to the two-state solution. 

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.