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washington — Major Muslim and Arab American organizations and pro-Palestinian activist groups say they were excluded from Vice President Kamala Harris’ office's outreach to community leaders on the administration's efforts to contain the widening conflict in the Middle East. On Wednesday, the White House announced that Phil Gordon, Harris' national security adviser, met virtually with "Muslim, Arab and Palestinian American community leaders from across the United States" to discuss the administration's efforts to end the war in Gaza. In a statement, the White House said Gordon "expressed concern for civilians in Lebanon" and about Israeli "actions that undermine peace, security and stability in the West Bank." The meeting appeared to be an attempt to repair ties with Arab, Palestinian and Muslim communities who are outraged about the administration's continued support for Israel in the war against Hamas, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and left a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. However, none of the major community groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council, were invited. Neither were the Uncommitted National Movement and Abandon Harris, the two pro-Palestinian activist groups that have been pushing for change in the administration's policies on Gaza. Community leaders of prominent groups in the Washington area, including MakeSpace, the Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Center and the Mustafa Center, were also not invited. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, participated in the eight-person engagement with Gordon. He said the meeting was "irritating," as it did not include representatives of the community. "We were told an Arab American meeting. We were told a Muslim meeting. It was none of the above," Zogby told VOA. "There were no Palestinian leaders. There were some Palestinian Americans, but there were no organizations representing Palestinian Americans." The White House, the vice president's office and the Harris campaign did not respond to VOA's queries. Zogby said he felt "blindsided" by the event, characterizing it as a "check the box" engagement with the community. He said the administration missed an opportunity by not inviting the list of people the community had recommended to be included. "There were only two of us out of the eight who headed any organization at all," he said. Edward Gabriel, president of the American Task Force on Lebanon, said that the VP's office has engaged him in "nearly a dozen" meetings, including the one with Gordon this week. "Our meetings continue to be positive," he wrote to VOA. "We have expressed to the vice president and her team the importance of now providing our community with a clear message on the need for ending this war and helping those Lebanese citizens most affected by the conflict." In the past two weeks, Israel's military campaign targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon has killed hundreds, wounded thousands and displaced over a million people. The victims included Kamel Ahmad Jawad, an American from Dearborn, Michigan. Gabriel said Biden's stance on the widening of Israel's campaign to Lebanon to date "has not been well received by the Lebanese American community, as there was no sense of compassion expressed for the loss of life of innocent citizens, especially women and children." Virtually tied Harris' outreach efforts come as a new poll showed that Arab American support for the Democratic presidential nominee is virtually tied with that for the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. The Arab American Institute on Wednesday released a nationwide poll of 500 Arab American registered voters that showed support for Trump stood at 42%. For Harris, it was 41%. Among those who said they were very likely to vote, Trump led Harris 46% to 42%. The poll suggested the administration's handling of the crisis in Gaza has eroded the community's support for Democrats, whom it traditionally backs. Arab Americans were evenly divided between the two parties, with 38% for each. The U.S. is home to roughly 3.5 million Arab Americans, according to the latest census. The U.S. Census Bureau does not count population based on religious beliefs, but various sources show an estimated 4 million to 6 million Muslim Americans. That's a very small percentage of the 337 million total U.S. population. However, since Arab Americans are concentrated in a few states such as California and Michigan, they may play an outsized role in next month’s election. This may be seen especially in Michigan, a battleground state with the largest percentage of Arab Americans. Biden won the state in 2020 with only 154,000 votes more than Trump. In 2016, Trump won the state over Hillary Clinton by just under 11,000 votes. More than 100,000 Michiganders voted "uncommitted" in the Democratic primary to protest the Biden administration's support of Israel's military campaign — votes that could be up for grabs for Trump. Trump courting community Trump has been courting Arab and Muslim voters and has won the support of Amer Ghalib, the Yemeni American mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan. The city is home to 30,000 people, almost half of them Muslim, and is the only city in the country to have an all-Muslim city council. "Endorsing President Trump was a combination of disappointment and hope," Ghalib told VOA. "Disappointed at the current administration's policies domestically and internationally, and in hope that President Trump will come to fix things up, end the chaos in the Middle East and restore peace everywhere, as well as preventing our economy from further deterioration." Ghalib's endorsement came last month following his meeting with Trump, who held a campaign event in the nearby city of Flint. On cultural issues such as LGBTQ rights and the right to abortion, Ghalib and many of his constituents are more aligned with the Republican Party. He has supported conservative measures taken by his city council, including a 2023 ban on Pride flags on city property — a move that angered members and allies of the LGBTQ community. "The cultural issues are important to some," Zogby said. Wanting to "punish Democrats" over Gaza is another motivator for the community, he added. "I don't think that there's anyone actually very seriously considering that Donald Trump is better than Kamala Harris on the Middle East," he said. "It's a question of, they might be both terrible. That's, I think, the more prevalent view." VOA’s U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer and reporter Sayed Aziz Rahman contributed to this report.

london — The British government agreed Thursday to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands, an archipelago of more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius, in a deal to secure the future of a strategically important U.K.-U.S. military base.  British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the agreement would secure the future of the base at Diego Garcia, the largest in the chain of remote islands off the tip of India that has been under British control for over 50 years. The base, which is home to about 2,500 personnel, mainly Americans, has been involved in military operations including the 2003 war in Iraq and the long-running war in Afghanistan.  Britain's Labour government said without the deal, the secure operation of the military base would be under threat, with contested sovereignty and legal challenges, including through various international courts and tribunals.  "It will strengthen our role in safeguarding global security, shut down any possibility of the Indian Ocean being used as a dangerous illegal migration route to the U.K., as well as guaranteeing our long-term relationship with Mauritius, a close Commonwealth partner," Lammy said.  The agreement also paves the way for the potential return of the few people still alive who were forcibly displaced from their homes on the islands decades ago.  As part of the deal, the U.K. will retain sovereignty of Diego Garcia for an initial period of 99 years and will pay Mauritius an undisclosed rent. It will also create a "resettlement" fund for displaced Chagossians aimed at letting them move back to the islands other than Diego Garcia.  The Chagos Islands, which conjure up images of paradise with their lush vegetation and long stretches of white sandy beaches, have been at the heart of what Britain has called the British Indian Ocean Territory since 1965, when they were siphoned away from Mauritius, a former U.K. colony that gained independence three years later. Mauritius, which lies east of Madagascar in southern Africa, is around 2,100 kilometers (1,250 miles) southwest of the Chagos Islands.  Following a lease agreement with Britain, the U.S. built the naval base at Diego Garcia for defense purposes in the 1970s. The U.S. has described the base as "an all but indispensable platform" for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia and East Africa.  Around 1,500 inhabitants from the Chagos Islands were displaced to make way for the U.S. base, in what Human Rights Watch said last year amounted to "crimes against humanity committed by a colonial power against an indigenous people."  Chagossian Voices, a U.K.-based group representing the Chagossian diaspora around the world, voiced disappointment that the negotiations excluded those displaced.  "Chagossians have learned this outcome from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland," it said in a statement on social media. "The views of Chagossians, the indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored and we demand full inclusion in the drafting of the treaty."  The agreement will be included in a treaty and is dependent on legal processes being finalized. Both sides have committed to complete this as quickly as possible.  A spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he spoke to his Mauritius counterpart, Pravind Jugnauth, on Thursday morning, welcoming the agreement after two years of negotiations that began under the previous Conservative government.  "Fifty-six years after our independence, the decolonization is finally complete," Jugnauth said in a televised address to the nation later Thursday.  The Mauritius government said that the treaty would aim to resolve all outstanding issues related to the islands, including "its former inhabitants," as well as addressing "the wrongs of the past."  It laid out the hope that those displaced who are still alive and their descendants, who are mainly living in the U.K., Mauritius and the Seychelles, would have a right to return, as it is now "free" to implement a resettlement program on the islands except Diego Garcia.  It added that the U.K. will financially support the Chagossians, who have fought a long-running legal battle about their displacement, most recently in 2016 when they lost out in a Supreme Court ruling in the U.K. At the time, the previous Conservative government refused their right to return but voiced its "deep regret" for the way the Chagossian community had been mistreated in the 1960s and 1970s.  Over the years, the Chagossians and Mauritius have garnered increasing international support, notably among African nations and within the United Nations. In 2019, in an advisory option that was nonbinding, the International Court of Justice ruled that the U.K. had unlawfully carved up Mauritius when it agreed to end colonial rule in the late 1960s.  In a statement, the White House said President Joe Biden applauded the "historic agreement" on the status of the Chagos Islands.  "The agreement secures the effective operation of the joint facility on Diego Garcia into the next century," the statement said.  In the U.K., Conservative lawmakers standing to be leader of Britain's opposition party expressed dismay at the decision to hand over sovereignty of all but one of the islands. They were criticized for the comments, given that the previous Conservative government started the negotiations.  One of the candidates, Tom Tugendhat, said he has consistently opposed any plan to hand over sovereignty of the islands and warned that the move could see Mauritius potentially leasing one of the islands to China.  "This is a shameful retreat undermining our security and leaving our allies exposed," he said.

One year on, a conflict sparked by Hamas' terror attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people has grown into a raging conflict that has killed more than 40,000 and threatens to engulf the Middle East. The warring parties have rebuffed peace deals and blown through pauses and cease-fires – and the next U.S. president will likely inherit the challenge. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington. Contributors: Hediye Levent, Kim Lewis

This week on The Inside Story, we travel to Springfield, Ohio, to capture reactions to the U.S. vice presidential debate. We also report on the Haitian community's response to the controversial accusations made by the Republican candidates.

WASHINGTON — The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene has brought climate change to the forefront of the presidential campaign after the issue lingered on the margins for months. Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Georgia Wednesday to see hard-hit areas, two days after her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, was in the state and criticized the federal response to the storm, which has killed at least 200 people in the Southeast. Helene is the deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. President Joe Biden toured some of the hardest-hit areas by helicopter on Wednesday and Thursday. Biden, who has frequently been called on to survey damage and console victims after tornadoes, wildfires, tropical storms and other natural disasters, traveled to the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia to get a closer look at the hurricane devastation. "Storms are getting stronger and stronger," Biden said Wednesday after surveying damage near Asheville, North Carolina. At least 70 people died in the state. "Nobody can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore,'' Biden said at a briefing in Raleigh, North Carolina. "They must be brain dead if they do." Harris, meanwhile, hugged and huddled with a family Wednesday in hurricane-ravaged Augusta, Georgia. "There is real pain and trauma that resulted because of this hurricane'' and its aftermath, Harris said outside a storm-damaged house with downed trees in the yard. "We are here for the long-haul,'' she said. Storm damage forces discussion The focus on the storm — and its link to climate change — was notable after climate change was only lightly mentioned in two presidential debates this year. The candidates instead focused on abortion rights, the economy, immigration and other issues. The hurricane featured prominently in Tuesday's vice-presidential debate as Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz were asked about the storm and the larger issue of climate change. Both men called the hurricane a tragedy and agreed on the need for a strong federal response. But it was Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who put the storm in the context of a warming climate. "There's no doubt this thing roared onto the scene faster and stronger than anything we've seen," he said. Bob Henson, a meteorologist and writer with Yale Climate Connections, said it was no surprise that Helene is pushing both the federal disaster response and human-caused climate change into the campaign conversation. "Weather disasters are often overlooked as a factor in big elections,'' he said. "Helene is a sprawling catastrophe, affecting millions of Americans. And it dovetails with several well-established links between hurricanes and climate change, including rapid intensification and intensified downpours." More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast in the last week, an amount that if concentrated in North Carolina would cover the state in 3 1/2 feet of water. "That's an astronomical amount of precipitation," said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Candidates make claims, counter claims During Tuesday's debate, Walz credited Vance for past statements acknowledging that climate change is a problem. But he noted that Trump has called climate change "a hoax" and joked that rising seas "would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in." Trump said in a speech Tuesday that "the planet has actually gotten little bit cooler recently," adding: "Climate change covers everything." In fact, summer 2024 sweltered to Earth's hottest on record, making it likely this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, according to the European climate service Copernicus. Global records were shattered just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Niño, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said. Vance, an Ohio senator, said he and Trump support clean air, clean water and "want the environment to be cleaner and safer." However, during Trump's four years in office, he took a series of actions to roll back more than 100 environmental regulations. Vance sidestepped a question about whether he agrees with Trump's statement that climate change is a hoax. "What the president has said is that if the Democrats — in particular Kamala Harris and her leadership — really believe that climate change is serious, what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America. And that's not what they're doing," he said. "This idea that carbon [dioxide] emissions drives all of the climate change. Well, let's just say that's true just for the sake of argument. So, we're not arguing about weird science. If you believe that, what would you want to do?" Vance asked. The answer, he said, is to "produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we're the cleanest economy in the entire world.'' Vance claimed that policies by Biden and Harris actually help China, because many solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and other materials used in renewable energy and electric vehicles are made in China and imported to the United States. Walz rebutted that claim, noting that the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats' signature climate law approved in 2022, includes the largest-ever investment in domestic clean energy production. The law, for which Harris cast the deciding vote, has created 200,000 jobs across the country, including in Ohio and Minnesota, Walz said. Vance was not in the Senate when the law was approved. "We are producing more natural gas and more oil [in the United States] than we ever have," Walz said. "We're also producing more clean energy." The comment echoed a remark by Harris in last month's presidential debate. The Biden-Harris administration has overseen "the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over rely on foreign oil," Harris said then. While Biden rarely mentions it, domestic fossil fuel production under his administration is at an all-time high. Crude oil production averaged 12.9 million barrels a day last year, eclipsing a previous record set in 2019 under Trump, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Democrats want to continue investments in renewable energy such as wind and solar power — and not just because supporters of the Green New Deal want that, Walz said. "My farmers know climate change is real. They've seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods back-to-back. But what they're doing is adapting,'' he said. "The solution for us is to continue to move forward, [accept] that climate change is real" and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, Walz said, adding that the administration is doing exactly that. "We are seeing us becoming an energy superpower for the future, not just the current'' time, he said.

HORSESHOE BEACH, Florida — It was just a month ago that Brooke Hiers left the state-issued emergency trailer where her family had lived since Hurricane Idalia slammed into her Gulf Coast fishing village of Horseshoe Beach in August 2023.  Hiers and her husband, Clint, were still finishing the electrical work in the home they painstakingly rebuilt themselves, wiping out Clint's savings to do so. They will never finish that wiring job.  Hurricane Helene blew their newly renovated home off its 4-foot-high pilings, sending it floating into the neighbor's yard next door.  "You always think, 'Oh, there's no way it can happen again,'" Hiers said. "I don't know if anybody's ever experienced this in the history of hurricanes."  For the third time in 13 months, this windswept stretch of Florida's Big Bend took a direct hit from a hurricane — a one-two-three punch to an 80-kilometer (50-mile) sliver of the state's more than 13,500 kilometers (8,400 miles) of coastline, first by Idalia, then Hurricane Debby in August 2024 and now Helene.  Hiers, who sits on Horseshoe Beach's town council, said words like "unbelievable" are beginning to lose their meaning.  "I've tried to use them all. Catastrophic. Devastating. Heartbreaking … none of that explains what happened here," Hiers said.  The back-to-back hits to Florida's Big Bend are forcing residents to reckon with the true costs of living in an area under siege by storms that researchers say are becoming stronger because of climate change.  The Hiers, like many others here, can't afford homeowners insurance on their flood-prone houses, even if it were available. Residents who have watched their life savings get washed away multiple times are left with few choices — leave the communities where their families have lived for generations, pay tens of thousands of dollars to rebuild their houses on stilts as building codes require, or move into a recreational vehicle they can drive out of harm's way.  That's if they can afford any of those things. The storm left many residents bunking with family or friends, sleeping in their cars or sheltering in what's left of their collapsing homes.  Janalea England wasn't waiting for outside organizations to get aid to her friends and neighbors, turning her commercial fish market in the river town of Steinhatchee into a pop-up donation distribution center, just like she did after Hurricane Idalia. A row of folding tables was stacked with water, canned food, diapers, soap, clothes and shoes, a steady stream of residents coming and going.  "I've never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now. Not in my community," England said. "They have nowhere to go."  The sparsely populated Big Bend is known for its towering pine forests and pristine salt marshes that disappear into the horizon, a remote stretch of largely undeveloped coastline that's mostly dodged the crush of condos, golf courses and souvenir strip malls that has carved up so much of the Sunshine State.  This is a place where teachers, mill workers and housekeepers could still afford to live within walking distance of the Gulf's white sand beaches. Or at least they used to, until a third successive hurricane blew their homes apart.  Helene was so destructive, many residents don't have a home left to clean up, escaping the storm with little more than the clothes on their backs, even losing their shoes to the surging tides.  With marinas washed away, restaurants collapsed, and vacation homes blown apart, many commercial fishermen, servers and house cleaners lost their homes and their jobs on the same day.  Those who worked at the local sawmill and paper mill, two bedrock employers in the area, were laid off in the past year too. Now a convoy of semi-trucks full of hurricane relief supplies have set up camp at the shuttered mill in the city of Perry.  Hud Lilliott was a mill worker for 28 years, before losing his job and now his canal-front home in Dekle Beach, just down the street from the house where he grew up.  Lilliott and his wife, Laurie, hope to rebuild their house there, but they don't know how they'll pay for it. And they're worried the school in Steinhatchee where Laurie teaches first grade could become another casualty of the storm, as the county watches its tax base float away.  "We've worked our whole lives, and we're so close to where they say the 'golden years,'" Laurie said. "It's like you can see the light and it all goes dark."  Dave Beamer rebuilt his home in Steinhatchee after it was "totaled" by Hurricane Idalia, only to see it washed into the marsh a year later.  "I don't think I can do that again," Beamer said. "Everybody's changing their mind about how we're going to live here."  Beamer plans to stay in this river town but will put his home on wheels. He says he’ll buy a camper and build a pole barn to park it under.  In Horseshoe Beach, Hiers is waiting for a makeshift town hall to be delivered in the coming days, a double-wide trailer where they'll offer what services they can for as long as they can. She and her husband are staying with their daughter, a 45-minute drive away.  "You feel like this could be the end of things as you knew it. Of your town. Of your community," Hiers said. "We just don't even know how to recover at this point." 

vienna — Thousands of people protested in Austria's capital, Vienna, on Thursday against a possible return to power for the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which topped national elections on Sunday. The FPOe won almost 29% of the vote in Sunday's general election, ahead of the conservative People's Party (OeVP) with just over 26%. "The Austrian Freedom Party is a danger because it has already said that it wants to govern in the image of Hungary's Viktor Orban," said student Rihab Toumi, 26, referring to the nationalist leader of Austria's neighboring country. Although the FPOe topped the polls, there is no guarantee that its radical leader, Herbert Kickl, will be given a chance to form a government since no other party is willing to work with him. “This result was a shock, and we cannot let a party that drifts so far to the right garner so much support without saying anything,” said social worker Marianne, 53, who declined to share her surname. Organizers said there were 15,000 to 17,000 protesters in central Vienna who marched toward parliament. Demonstrators held up placards that said, "Let's defend democracy," "No alliances with Putin's friends," and other anti-FPOe slogans. Kickl has criticized European Union sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Demonstrators intend to march every Thursday, having similarly done so after the far-right formed part of short-lived coalition governments in 2000 and 2017.

Washington — The State Department has confirmed to VOA the success of a complicated mission to rescue an Iraqi national and former Islamic State sex slave from Gaza via Israel.  Because of a long-running diplomatic rift between Israel and Iraq, it took months of vigorous efforts by humanitarian activists and direct intervention from U.S. diplomatic missions in the region to coordinate the young woman’s rescue. Cooperation among Israeli, Jordanian, Iraqi and United Nations officials was involved. “On October 1, 2024, the United States helped to safely evacuate from Gaza a young Yazidi woman to be reunited with her family in Iraq,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA on Wednesday, adding that the young woman’s story “is heartbreaking, and we are glad that she will be reunited with her family in Iraq.”  Enslaved by Islamic State Now 21, Fawzia Amin Saydo was kidnapped by Islamic State militants from her hometown of Sinjar in August 2014, just a month before her 11th birthday. She and two of her brothers, aged 7 and 10 at the time, were among thousands of Yazidis enslaved by IS due to their religious beliefs. Although the brothers found a way to escape, Saydo spent years suffering violence, injustice and rape by IS fighters. By early 2015, she was taken to the Syrian city of Raqqa where she was imprisoned and raped before being forcibly “married” to a then 24-year-old Palestinian IS fighter. "He told me that I had to sleep with him. On the third day, he went to a pharmacy and brought a drug that numbs part of the body. He gave me the drug and I cried,” Saydo recounted in an August 2023 interview from Gaza with the Kurdish media outlet Rudaw. About a year after her arrival in Raqqa, Saydo’s life took another turn when she gave birth to a boy, the first of two children she would have with the Palestinian IS fighter. Saydo decided to dedicate her life to her children, despite the husband turning more abusive, especially after he married another woman. By the end of 2018, when the U.S.-led Kurdish forces squeezed IS out of the group’s territories in Syria, Saydo, then 15 years old, lost contact with her Palestinian captor, who had escaped from northeast Syria to the rebel-held Idlib province in northwest Syria. In early 2019 she was driven to Idlib to be returned to her captor, but their reunion was brief, as the Palestinian militant was soon reported dead. No cause of death was reported. Fearing that her community back in Sinjar, Iraq, might not accept her children — Yazidi spiritual leaders that same year had issued a decree stating that children of rape by IS militants would not be welcomed into the faith — Saydo decided to move in with the Palestinian man’s family in Gaza, where she arrived in 2020.  Stuck in Gaza Humanitarian activists who followed Saydo’s case told VOA that her circumstances in Gaza presented a gut-wrenching choice: stay with her children and endure the Palestinian family that became abusive just as their late son had been, or escape — alone and without her children — in the hopes of reuniting with long-lost family in Sinjar. Her resolve to leave was strengthened by Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack on Israel.   “This has been by far the most complicated case I have worked on,” said Steve Maman of the Montreal-based Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq.  It took Maman and a small team of Iraqi activists several months of lobbying Iraqi, U.S., and Israeli officials. While waiting for a final decision from Israel, Maman and his supporters helped her escape the Palestinian family’s home and hide in a house about 2 kilometers away from the Israeli army at Kerm Shalom crossing. The rescue process, which VOA has followed since early September, was slow and rescheduled several times due to the difficulty of navigating the Israel-Iraq diplomatic rift. “I have no idea why every party was so hesitant to act on such a humanitarian case. Now I can finally get my much-needed sleep,” one of Maman’s supporters who asked that his name be withheld, told VOA. Another activist from Sinjar, Sufyan Waheed Hammo, told VOA, “The Iraqi officials were very helpful when it came to preparing paperwork, but they couldn’t do much diplomatically because of the Iraqi law.” Iraq's parliament in May 2022 passed legislation that criminalized any ties with Israel. According to Maman, what finally triggered U.S. officials in the region to make a final push to rescue her was “a deeply troubling incident” that occurred just a day before her rescue. “She was walking alone when a group of men abused her.” Complicated handoff In the early morning of October 1, a “personnel team” whose individual identities are known only to U.S., U.N. and likely Israeli officials, drove Saydo to Israel via Kerm Shalom crossing in a U.N. ambulance. According to Maman’s supporters, Saydo arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem that day before moving on to Jordan via the Allenby Bridge crossing. Salwan Sinjaree, chief of staff to Iraq’s foreign minister, told VOA that his government had no contact with the Israeli government during the rescue process.  “Our embassy in Amman received her, prepared travel documents for her, and hired a plane to fly her back to Baghdad with one of our female embassy staff,” Sinjaree told VOA. “All our contacts during the process have been with the U.S. embassy, the Jordanian foreign ministry, and the U.N. We have not made any communication with Israel.” The official from the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office who was tasked to handle the case turned down VOA’s request for comment. Saydo arrived in Baghdad via a plane around 10:30 a.m. local time Wednesday. She was then escorted by a team of Iraqi intelligence officers to Mosul, where she was reunited with family. Saydo’s brother Barzan told VOA from Germany that the rest of his family, including their mother, sister, and two brothers, are thrilled to see her after a decade apart. Her father, however, would not be there to witness his daughter’s return, Barzan added, because he died of a heart attack just two months prior, “caused by the pain of the separation from her.” “We welcome her back and support her decision to return home. She didn’t have any choice in what happened,” he told VOA. “My heartfelt thanks every single person who helped to rescue her.” Ongoing trauma Beyond Saydo’s trauma of the past decade, however, is a new kind of pain in the wake of reunion: the reality of now living apart from her young son and daughter, who remain with their father’s family in Gaza. Despite the impossible choice with which Saydo was confronted in Gaza, some still insist on judging her decision to flee her captor’s family. “No mother would leave her children. They came from her belly,” an activist associated with Maman who wanted to be cited only by his first initial, D, told VOA. According to Mirza Dinnayi, a Yazidi activist based in Germany, at least 2,745 Yazidis remain missing since the 2014 IS massacre of some 5,000 members of their religious community. That event, which the U.N. has said constitutes an act of genocide, also resulted in the abductions of young Yazidi women like Saydo and the displacement of an estimated 100,000 members of the faith who were forced to take refuge outside of Iraq. “We do not know if those missing people are still alive or not. If they are alive, they are probably held in different places of Syria such as in al-Hol camp or in areas controlled by terrorists in northwest Syria,” Dinnayi told VOA. “There are rare cases of Yazidis found in Turkey and some unverified reports about some people taken to Egypt.” For Maman and his fellow activists, saving Saydo from conflict-ridden Gaza is a way to help the community recover. It is also a message of hope at a time when tensions between Israel and Iran enter a new phase. “I am a practicing Jew, and I was willing to put aside my life to help a Yazidi girl get out,” he told VOA. “I had to fight my contacts in this case because it was not that easy, but the result is at the end a life is saved.” The State Department spokesperson told VOA that they are asking people to respect Saydo’s privacy “for her own safety while she reunites with loved ones and returns home.” Dakhil Shammo of VOA’s Kurdish Service contributed reporting from Washington.

chicago — California is investigating a possible case of bird flu in a dairy worker who had contact with infected cattle, the state's public health department said Thursday.  The virus' jump to cattle in 14 states and infections of 13 dairy and poultry farmworkers this year have concerned scientists and federal officials about the risks to humans from further spread.  The worker had a "presumptive positive" result to a test for bird flu, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will do further testing to confirm the finding, the California Department of Public Health said in a statement.  The person, who was not identified, suffered only conjunctivitis, or pink eye, the department said in a statement. The person is being treated with antiviral medication and staying home, it added.  The person works at a Central Valley dairy facility suffering an outbreak in cattle, according to the statement.  Cows at dairy farms in California, the top U.S. milk-producing state, began testing positive for bird flu in late August.  "The risk to the general public remains low, although people who interact with infected animals are at higher risk of getting bird flu," the department said.  Missouri last month confirmed bird flu in a person with underlying medical conditions who had no immediate known animal exposure. Six health care workers who cared for the Missouri patient developed respiratory symptoms, but the virus was not confirmed in any of them.  Scientists are watching closely for signs that the virus has begun to spread more easily in people.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday said it would begin testing raw cow's milk intended for pasteurization at dairy plants to better understand the prevalence of the bird flu virus in milk.  Participation in the study, set to begin October 28, is voluntary, and pasteurized dairy products remain safe to consume, the agency said.  Prior FDA testing of retail dairy samples came back negative, and more such testing is underway.

Johannesburg — In South Africa’s capital of Johannesburg, some of the most ubiquitous vehicles on the streets are the thousands of minibus taxis crammed tight with daily commuters traveling from the dusty townships into work. At the other end of the spectrum are souped-up sports cars and flashy convertibles zooming around the leafy suburbs that are home to the elite. Increasingly, however, there’s another kind of vehicle cruising Johannesburg’s streets: new gas-powered SUVs with names like Chery, BAIC and Haval — all Chinese cars that industry experts say are giving more established brands a run for their money and gaining popularity with South Africans. Potential car buyer Ross Grey was considering a large pick-up truck made by Chinese manufacturer JAC Motors. “I’m a sales manager at a kitchen company, hence why I’m looking at buying a double cab, because I’ve got a young family and I need to also carry a lot of goods on the back of the vehicle, I’m often on building sites and that sort of thing,” he told VOA recently. His interest in a Chinese-made vehicle stemmed in part from a bad experience. “The Chinese vehicles are not on the stolen list like the big brands are,” said Grey, who was a loyal Toyota Hilux owner until car thieves stole his car. The Hilux is one of the most stolen cars in South Africa – often for its engine, which fits perfectly into commuter minibus taxis. But, along with consumers, car thieves are now also taking notice of Chinese makes and models, data shows. South Africans used to be skeptical about cars with the “made in China” label. While Grey acknowledged Chinese brands have not yet stood the test of time, he said his research shows the quality seems to have improved in recent years. In the fast lane The biggest draw for many Chinese car buyers, including Grey, is the cost. “The reason I’m looking at something like this, the Chinese vehicles, is because first of all the price, it’s a lot cheaper than your big brands that have been in the country for many, many years,” he said. Chinese-imported vehicles cost a lot less than most SUVs from Germany’s Volkswagen, America’s Ford or Japan’s Toyota, said Mikel Mabasa, CEO of South Africa’s car industry organization Naamsa. “These Chinese brands have actually been growing at double digits, particularly in the last three years,” he told VOA. “So if you look at growth between 2019 and 2023, we’ve seen actually a more than 200% increase in terms of Chinese brands that are coming into the South African market, and that is obviously very, very unusual.” Mabasa added: “But I think there are reasons … many of those brands, if you look at the price points, are much cheaper than competing brands.” The number of imported Chinese vehicles in South Africa has steadily increased, with more than 39,000 automobiles brought into the country last year, compared with some 11,000 in 2019, according to Naamsa figures. German imports showed the opposite trend, with just over 21,000 coming into the country in 2023, down from almost 37,000 in 2019. Vehicles imported from Japan show similar figures. The U.S. exported almost 4,200 vehicles in 2019 but close to 300 fewer automobiles last year, statistics show. In terms of sales, certain models of established brands such as Ford and Toyota are still leading the pack, but Chinese upstarts are not far behind. Between July 2023 and July 2024, Chinese brand Chery sold more than 11,000 of their Tiggo 4 Pro models in South Africa. That’s compared with 25,000 Ford Rangers and 34,000 Toyota Hilux pickup trucks during the same period. Going electric South Africa is itself a major producer of cars, with manufacturing plants in the country for brands including Ford, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, Nissan, Volkswagen and Suzuki. “Thirty-nine percent of the components that they use in the manufacturing process are sourced locally in South Africa,” Mabasa told VOA. He said that while some of the cars made in South Africa go to the local market, more than 60% are exported overseas to nearly 150 countries. The first local Chinese car manufacturing plant for BAIC was opened by Chinese President Xi Jinping and South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa in Eastern Cape province to great fanfare in 2018. The Chinese consulate in Cape Town described the project “as a milestone for the two countries' economies.” But the project hit some bumps in the road. “They’re still in the setting up phase, they’ve obviously experienced some hiccups in getting that particular plant off the ground,” said Mabasa. BAIC executives have told local South African media the pandemic and labor disputes were to blame for the delay. But Mabasa is still hopeful. “We obviously wish them well, and I think it’s a model that a number of other plants or companies from China would definitely adopt as a template should they wish to come into South Africa and start manufacturing vehicles,” he said. That’s something Ramaphosa is also encouraging. On a state visit to China last month, he visited the headquarters of massive Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD. “We have introduced policies to promote the development of the electric vehicle industry in South Africa,” the South African president said on the trip. “We are certain that companies such as BYD … will find South Africa a unique and advantageous location that can serve as a hub to reach other markets.” The electric vehicle revolution is in the very nascent stages in South Africa, where gas is still king. However, BYD is looking to Africa as it faces increasing trade restrictions in the U.S. and Europe. BYD already has a showroom in South Africa and recently opened others in Rwanda, Zambia and Kenya.

A year into the war in Gaza, the search for safety and basic necessities has become a daily routine for those whose homes have been destroyed. The United Nations says 1.9 million people, 86% of Gaza's prewar population, have been displaced, and many are living in refugee camps with limited access to food and medical care. For Nedal Hamdouna, Amjed Tantesh, and Enas Tantesh in the southern Gaza Strip, Dorian Jones reports. (Videographer: Enas Tantesh)

Israel’s military announced Thursday that it killed 15 Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon and carried out airstrikes on Beirut. Ricki Rosen in Tel Aviv has updates on the clashes. On Wednesday afternoon, Israel and Iran exchanged threats of retaliation if attacked, as the United Nations Security Council convened amid growing fears of a broader conflict. Ukrainian officials report a Russian-guided bomb hit a five-story apartment building in Kharkiv as part of a wider assault on 15 Ukrainian regions. Anna Chernikova is in Kyiv with more details. In Africa, Nigeria has launched a nationwide blood donation campaign in response to a severe shortage.

Washington — As the fall semester begins, a women’s college in Boston, Massachusetts, has retooled its media-related curriculum to best reflect the ideals of the school’s namesake, the late journalist Gwen Ifill. Simmons University announced it would relaunch the media school as the Gwen Ifill School of Media, Humanities and Social Sciences. A search committee also named media scholar Ammina Kothari as the new dean. The Ifill School’s new structure expands its media curriculum to include humanities and social sciences. The attributes that defined Ifill also shape a new, holistic approach, “An unwavering commitment to accuracy and objectivity, a nuanced understanding of social and historical context and a compassion-based appreciation of policymaking’s real-world implications,” according to a Simmons press release. “Folks here are very proud of Gwen’s legacy and want to honor it in many different ways,” said Bert Ifill, Gwen’s brother and a longtime university administrator. A crucial component of the Ifill School is its emphasis on communications, a field Gwen excelled in, Bert told VOA. After graduating from Simmons in 1977, she had long careers in both print and television journalism, working for The Baltimore Evening Sun, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC and PBS. She covered seven presidential campaigns and died in 2016 at age 61. Ifill was the first African American woman to moderate a vice presidential debate and to coanchor a national newscast, “PBS NewsHour.” “Gwen valued storytelling, and she was an amazing journalist,” Kothari, the school’s new dean, told VOA. “But she also worked really hard to raise awareness about important social issues and to highlight underrepresented voices.” Abigail Meyers, a current junior at the Ifill School, admires the journalist’s “groundbreaking work” in both journalism and racial justice, she told VOA. Raised near Baltimore, Maryland, Meyers feels a special connection to Ifill’s work for the Baltimore Evening Sun newspaper. The school has been instrumental in supporting Meyers’ aspirations to become a professional journalist, she told VOA. “The support that you get from the faculty and alumni is unlike really any other journalism program,” she said. Being a double major in communications and political science, Meyers appreciates the new curriculum’s flexibility, as she is able to take classes across different disciplines. This flexibility will help prime Simmons’ students to achieve success, Kothari said. She believes interdisciplinary training leads to stronger leaders in the world. “As we think about communications or media, including journalism or social sciences, we need a strong foundation in humanities to understand the historical context for what we see happening today,” Kothari said. The school’s increased focus on humanities “couldn’t be more timely,” according to the press release. Nearly three of four Americans believe media literacy is an important skill in today’s news landscape, a 2023 Boston University survey found. However, humanities-focused degree programs like the Ifill School’s receive little recognition. Of all the bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2020, humanities degrees made up less than 10%, a number that has only been decreasing, according to a 2022 MIT study. Meanwhile, science, technology, engineering and math degrees, or STEM, have grown exponentially. But humanities and STEM shouldn’t be seen as opposites, Kothari said. She cited the COVID-19 pandemic response as an example. Many precautionary measures such as social distancing were grounded in “amazing scientific research,” but weren’t effectively communicated to the public, she said. “As we have new knowledge being produced, we also need journalists,” Kothari said. “We need communicators who are able to translate very complex information to the audience so they can see, ‘How does it matter to me? What is the effect for me?’” Ifill’s legacy is not only celebrated within her namesake school, but also through press freedom organizations around the world. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom nonprofit, honors Ifill with the annual Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award, which is presented to individuals who have “shown extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom,” according to CPJ’s website. Christophe Deloire, the late director of international media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, received the 2024 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. “Christophe was one of journalism's greatest-ever champions,” RSF Executive Director Clayton Weimers told VOA in an email. “There was hardly a fight or an advance in press freedom in the past decade that he wasn't a part of, if not leading.” As Ifill’s legacy spreads, there is one person who couldn’t be prouder: her brother, Bert. He told VOA it often seems as though his full-time job is “to talk nicely about Gwen.” “It's always a great pleasure and honor for me to talk about her and to talk about her legacy, not only as obviously a very skilled journalist, but as an extraordinary mentor and confidant,” he said.

While China and the West have been pushing for more electric vehicles on the road, gas-powered cars still dominate in Africa. Chinese automakers are tapping into the South African car market, the largest on the continent, with prices so attractive that dealers say existing brands risk being pushed to the curb. Kate Bartlett has the details from Johannesburg.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopia’s army said it has launched a major operation against Fano rebel groups in the Amhara region, as the conflict continues, despite calls by rights groups and international partners for a peaceful resolution. Army spokesperson Colonel Getnet Adane said Tuesday that the Ethiopian National Defense Force, or the ENDF, in coordination with the region’s security forces, have started a military operation. He claimed continued calls for peace have “fallen on deaf ears.” “The only language they [armed rebel groups] understand is force. From now on we will talk to them in that language,” said Getnet. “For peace to prevail they need to be met with force. They have to be targeted, hit.” He indicated the operation started this past weekend. Federal and regional officials said measures are also being taken against suspected supporters of the rebel group, including members of the business community. The announcement of the operation came on the day human rights group Amnesty International accused Ethiopia’s army of conducting “mass arbitrary detentions” in the Amhara region. Amnesty’s regional director for East and Southern Africa, Tigere Chagutah, alleged that hundreds have been detained, including members of the academic community, in major towns across the Amhara region since Sept. 28. “The Ethiopian army and police’s ongoing campaign of arbitrary mass detentions in Amhara region is yet more evidence of the government’s total disregard for the rule of law,” the director said in a statement. “Eyewitnesses have stated that authorities came with a ‘list’ and failed to obtain arrest and search warrants before detaining hundreds of civilians across the region. Those detained have largely not been brought before a court of law within 48 hours, as required by the country’s national laws and constitution.” Amnesty urged authorities to “immediately end these arbitrary arrests, press charges against those detained for internationally recognized crimes and follow due process, or release them without further delay.” It is time for authorities to stop using arbitrary detention as a tool of repression, the statement said. Fighting in the Amhara region began more than a year ago with a dispute over the disarming of regional paramilitary forces. Fresh fighting was reported as recently as last week. VOA’s Horn of Africa service attempted to reach an Amhara region spokesperson, the federal government of Ethiopian communication affairs minister and ENDF spokesperson and Fano rebels. None of them could be reached for comment on Amnesty International’s statement. Abductions Meanwhile, police in Ethiopia have reported that abductions are on the rise in two conflict regions where armed groups are fighting government forces. A spokesperson for the Amhara regional police, Mesafint Eshete, said the commission recorded 287 abduction cases in the Ethiopian fiscal year 2016, which ended three weeks ago. The Ethiopian calendar runs several years behind the calendar in most other countries. Speaking to the Horn of Africa service, Mesafint hinted the figure could be higher as most victims don’t report incidents to the police. In a report issued last week, the state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, or EHRC, linked the kidnapping cases to the political and security crisis in the country. The report said that kidnappings have become a recurrent fixture, especially in the Oromia and Amhara areas. The EHRC also said that kidnapping cases in those areas involve diverse actors with different goals and modus operandi. While financial gain drives most of them, others seek to further a political agenda, the report added. According to the EHRC report, armed groups operating in the regions, criminal gangs and some members of the security forces are implicated in the kidnapping cases. The World Food Program said last week that the conflict in the Amhara region has become the biggest challenge for humanitarian operations. “Growing insecurity, particularly in the Amhara region, is hindering our deliveries. Our operations face severe security risks,” the WFP Ethiopia representative and country director, Zlatan Milisic, told reporters in Addis Ababa. He said that this year, eight humanitarian workers have lost their lives and more than 20 people have been abducted. Six of the killings took place in the Amhara region, while one happened in Tigray and the other occurred in the Gambela area. Despite the security challenges, Milisic said WFP didn’t stop operating in the region, and has reached 90% of its intended aid beneficiaries in Ethiopia this year. “We want to be there, and we plan to continue supporting the needy,” Milisic said. Speaking on funding gaps, Milisic indicated that over the past three months, 4.6 million people needed aid, but only 1.3 million received humanitarian support. He appealed for $341 million for WFP humanitarian operations through February 2025. This story originated in VOA’s Horn of Africa Service.