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Defense ministers from the United States, Australia, Japan and the Philippines met for a second round of quadrilateral talks in less than a year this week amid further aggression from the Chinese military. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports on the allies’ growing military ties.

WASHINGTON — The nation’s employers pulled back on their hiring in April but still added a decent 175,000 jobs in a sign that persistently high interest rates may be starting to slow the robust U.S. job market.  Friday’s government report showed that last month’s hiring gain was down sharply from the blockbuster increase of 315,000 in March. And it was well below the 233,000 gain that economists had predicted for April.  Yet the moderation in the pace of hiring, along with a slowdown last month in wage growth, will likely be welcomed by the Federal Reserve, which has kept interest rates at a two-decade high to fight persistently elevated inflation. Hourly wages rose a less-than-expected 0.2% from March and 3.9% from a year earlier, the smallest annual gain since June 2021.  The Fed has been delaying any consideration of interest rate cuts until it gains more confidence that inflation is steadily slowing toward its target. Fed rate cuts would, over time, reduce the cost of mortgages, auto loans and other consumer and business borrowing.  Stock futures jumped Friday after the jobs report was released on hopes that rate cuts might now be more likely sometime in the coming months.  Even with the April hiring slowdown, last month’s job growth amounted to a solid increase, although it was the lowest monthly job growth since October. With the nation’s households continuing their steady spending, many employers have had to keep hiring to meet their customer demand.  The unemployment rate ticked up 3.9% — the 27th straight month in which it has remained below 4%, the longest such streak since the 1960s.  Last month's hiring was led by health care companies, which added 56,000 jobs. Warehouse and transportation companies added 22,000 and retailers 20,000.  The state of the economy is weighing on voters’ minds as the November presidential campaign intensifies. Despite the strength of the job market, Americans remain generally exasperated by high prices, and many of them assign blame to President Joe Biden.  America’s job market has repeatedly proved more robust than almost anyone had predicted. When the Fed began aggressively raising rates two years ago to fight a punishing inflation surge, most economists expected the resulting jump in borrowing costs to cause a recession and drive unemployment to painfully high levels.  The Fed raised its benchmark rate 11 times from March 2022 to July 2023, taking it to the highest level since 2001. Inflation did steadily cool as it was supposed to — from a year-over-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.5% in March.  Yet the resilient strength of the job market and the overall economy, fueled by steady consumer spending, has kept inflation persistently above the Fed’s 2% target.  The job market has been showing other signs of eventually slowing. This week, for example, the government reported that job openings fell in March to 8.5 million, the fewest in more than three years. Still, that is nevertheless a large number of vacancies: Before 2021, monthly job openings had never topped 8 million, a threshold they have now exceeded every month since March 2021.  On a month-over-month basis, consumer inflation hasn’t declined since October. The 3.5% year-over-year inflation rate for March was still running well above the Fed’s 2% target. 

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.

A US architect is helping to design and renovate housing for internally displaced Ukrainians. VOAs Tetiana Kukurika has the story from the Khmelnytskyi region in Western Ukraine. Anna Rice narrates. Camera and edit: Vitaliy Hrychanyuk

"Threats to democracy" have overtaken the economy and immigration as the chief concern of U.S. voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to a recent Ipsos poll. VOA's Veronica Balderas Iglesias breaks down the results.

WASHINGTON — Roughly 100,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children are expected to enroll in the Affordable Care Act's health insurance next year under a directive the Biden administration released Friday. The move took longer than promised to finalize and fell short of Democratic President Joe Biden's initial proposal to allow those migrants to sign up for Medicaid, the health insurance program that provides nearly free coverage for the nation's poorest people. But it will allow thousands of people, known as "Dreamers," to access tax breaks when they sign up for coverage after the Affordable Care Act's marketplace enrollment opens Nov. 1, just days ahead of the presidential election. "I'm proud of the contributions of Dreamers to our country and committed to providing Dreamers the support they need to succeed," Biden said in a statement Friday. While it may help Biden boost his appeal at a crucial time among Latinos, a crucial voting bloc that he needs to turn out to win the election, the move is certain to prompt more criticism among conservatives about the president's border and migrant policies. The action opens the marketplace to any participant in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, many of whom are Latino. Xavier Becerra, the nation's top health official, said Thursday that many of those migrants have delayed getting care because they have not had coverage. "They incur higher costs and debts when they do finally receive care," Becerra told reporters on a call. "Making Dreamers eligible to enroll in coverage will improve their health and well-being and strengthen the health and well-being of our nation and our economy." The administration's action changes the definition of "lawfully present" so DACA participants can legally enroll in the marketplace exchange. Then-President Barack Obama launched the DACA initiative to shield from deportation immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents as children and to allow them to work legally in the country. However, the "Dreamers" were still ineligible for government-subsidized health insurance programs because they did not meet the definition of having a "lawful presence" in the U.S. The administration decided not to expand eligibility for Medicaid for those migrants after receiving more than 20,000 comments on the proposal, senior officials said Thursday. Those officials declined to explain why the rule, which was first proposed last April, took so long to finalize. The delay meant the migrants were unable to enroll in the marketplace for coverage this year. At one point, there were as many as 800,000 people enrolled in DACA at one time, though now that figure is roughly 580,000. The administration predicts only 100,000 will actually sign up because some may get coverage through their workplaces or other ways. Some may also be unable to afford coverage through the marketplace. Other classes of immigrants, including asylum seekers and people with temporary protected status, are already eligible to purchase insurance through the marketplaces of the ACA, Obama's 2010 health care law, often called "Obamacare." The president last year also unveiled a regulation that was aimed at fending off legal challenges to DACA; former President Donald Trump tried to end it, and it has bounced back and forth in federal court. Last fall, a federal judge said the current version can continue at least temporarily. "President Biden and I will continue to do everything in our power to protect DACA, but it is only a temporary solution," Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement. "Congress must act to ensure Dreamers have the permanent protections they deserve."

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Angry youths in Chad are pulling down campaign posters of transitional President General Mahamat Idriss Deby in protest of what they call his attempt to seize power. Deby's main challengers in the May 6 election, including former opposition leader and current Prime Minister Succes Masra, say several hundred of their supporters have been arrested. Some among the disgruntled opposition are calling for an election boycott. Several hundred civilians shout as they pull down campaign posters of Chad's transitional president, General Mahamat Idriss Deby. The posters have come down in several towns, including Chad's capital, N'djamena, and Moundou, the central African nation's second-most-populated city. In the audio extracted from videos circulating on social media, especially Facebook and WhatsApp, the civilians say they need a leadership change in Chad and an end to what they call a Deby dynasty. Deby took power as a military ruler in April 2021 after his father, Idriss Deby Itno, who had ruled the country for 30 years, was killed by rebels. Chad's opposition and civil society have always condemned what they call Deby’s seizure of power, asking him to hand power to civilians. The younger Deby told Chad state TV this week that campaigning for Chad's May 6 polls has faced major hitches, including attacks on his campaign officials and the pulling down of his posters. Deby says he has asked government troops, the guarantors of peace and security, to restore order and end growing hate speech and preelection violence. He says when he took power three years ago, he vowed to maintain Chad as a peaceful country before handing it to constitutional order after the May 6 presidential polls. Deby did not accuse his challenges of ordering or allowing their supporters to pull down his campaign posters. But he said civilians who are planning to disturb the elections have been arrested. Deby’s main election rivals, Prime Minister Masra and Pahimi Padacke Albert, who also served as Chad's prime minister under Deby from April 2021 to October 2022, say hundreds of their supporters are in jail illegally. Meanwhile, opposition candidates also accuse Deby of ordering government troops to crack down on his challengers’ campaign caravans. Masra says Deby wants to crack down on his rivals to maintain his grip on power. He spoke to VOA via a messaging app from N'djamena Friday. Masra says he and his supporters will not be intimidated into stopping the fight for the rule of democracy in Chad. He says he is committed to making sure that all Chadians have access to electricity, water and security, which are basic needs Deby and his father have not been able to give civilians for more than three decades. And yet, he says, the Deby family wants to stay in power eternally. Some opposition and civil society groups have intensified their campaign for a total boycott of the election. They assert that Deby controls Chad’s election commission, the National Agency for Elections Management, or ANGE. Djimet Clemen Bagaou, president of the Democratic Party of Chadian People says ANGE will declare Deby the winner, so there is no point to the elections. ANGE rejects that line of thinking, saying the country’s more than 8 million registered voters should count on its independence to ensure a free, transparent and credible vote. It is urging Chadians to come out to the polls. Deby says he will respect the verdict of the ballot and hand over power if defeated.  

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PESHAWAR — A bus veered into a ravine in Pakistan's far north early on Friday, a local government spokesman said, killing 20 passengers, while 21 injured were rescued and taken to hospital.  The bus was headed to the mountainous northern area of Gilgit-Baltistan from the garrison city of Rawalpindi in Pakistan's eastern province of Punjab, when the accident happened in the early hours.  "The bus was passing through Diamer district in Gilgit-Baltistan when it fell into a deep ravine," Faizullah Firaq, a spokesman for local government authorities in the area, told Reuters, adding that 21 people were injured.  The government immediately launched a rescue operation to evacuate all the injured, who were taken to hospital, he added.  Fatal road accidents are common in Pakistan, where traffic rules are rarely followed and roads in many rural areas are in poor condition.  For decades Pakistan has done extensive work in carving roads through its dramatic rugged northern terrain, home to some of the world's highest mountain ranges, approached by narrow roads perched on sheer cliffs.  Militant attacks, including one in March nearby in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that killed six people, pose another risk to travelers in the area, targeting Chinese-backed dams and hydropower infrastructure projects.  

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.

Nairobi, Kenya — The death toll from flood-related incidents in Kenya has crossed 200 since March, the interior ministry said Friday, as a cyclone barreled towards the Tanzanian coast.   Torrential rains have lashed East Africa, triggering flooding and landslides that have destroyed crops, swallowed homes, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.    Some 210 people have died in Kenya "due to severe weather conditions," the interior ministry said in a statement, with 22 killed in the past 24 hours.    More than 165,000 people had been uprooted from their home, it added, with 90 others missing, raising fears that the toll could rise further.    Kenya and neighboring Tanzania, where at least 155 people have been killed in flooding, are bracing for cyclone Hidaya, bringing heavy rain, wind and waves to their coasts.    Tanzanian authorities warned Friday that Hidaya had "strengthened to reach the status of a full-fledged cyclone," at 3:00 am local time (0000GMT) when it was some 400 kilometers from the southeastern city of Mtwara.     "Cyclone Hidaya has continued to strengthen further, with wind speeds increasing to about 130 kilometers per hour," they said in a weather bulletin.   Kenya's interior ministry forecast that the cyclone was likely to "bring strong winds and large ocean waves, with heavy rainfall" expected to hit the coast starting Sunday.  Race against the clock    Rescuers in boats and aircrafts have raced against the clock in pouring rain to help people marooned by the floods in Kenya.    In dramatic footage shared on Monday, the Kenya Red Cross rescued a man who said he was stranded by floodwaters and forced to shelter in a tree for five days in Garissa in the country's east.   The country's military also joined search and rescue efforts after President William Ruto deployed them to evacuate everyone living in flood-prone areas.    Opposition politicians and lobby groups have accused Ruto's government of being unprepared and slow to respond to the crisis despite weather warnings.   In the deadliest single incident in Kenya, dozens of villagers were killed when a makeshift dam burst on Monday near Mai Mahiu in the Rift Valley, about 60 kilometers north of Nairobi.   The interior ministry said 52 bodies had been recovered and 49 people were still missing after that disaster.   The ministry ordered that anyone living close to major rivers or near 178 "filled up or near filled up dams or water reservoirs" must vacate the area within 24 hours.   The heavier than usual rains have also claimed at least 29 lives in Burundi, with 175 people injured, and tens of thousands displaced since September last year, the United Nations said.   The rains have been amplified by the El Nino weather pattern -- a naturally occurring climate phenomenon typically associated with increased heat worldwide, leading to drought in some parts of the world and heavy downpours elsewhere.   Late last year, more than 300 people died in rains and floods in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, just as the region was trying to recover from its worst drought in four decades.   Cyclone season in the southwest of the Indian Ocean normally lasts from November to April and sees around a dozen storms each year.   

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.

This year’s World Press Freedom Day theme is “journalism in the face of the environmental crisis,” and a South African media outlet called Oxpeckers focuses on exactly that. For VOA, Kate Bartlett spoke to some of its journalists about what drives and challenges them as they report on people and practices that hurt the planet. Camera and edit: Zaheer Cassim    

Of the five indicators that media watchdog Reporters Without Borders used to compile its 2024 World Press Freedom Index, the political indicator has been the most problematic, showing that governments failed to protect journalists. VOA Nairobi Bureau Chief Mariama Diallo looks at the rankings in Africa, where political actors were violent toward journalists.

Nairobi, Kenya — Save the Children says more than 140,000 people in the Malian town of Menaka, including 80,000 children, face malnutrition and disease due to a blockade by Islamic State-linked insurgents. The organization warns that the months-long blockade has driven supplies to alarmingly low levels as aid agencies and Malian government programs struggle to deliver basic necessities. In a statement this week, Save the Children said that unless aid gets to the Menaka communities soon, the area could see many deaths in coming months. The London-based organization said some of its workers who went to assess the population’s needs had been trapped for more than three weeks. The blockade in Menaka follows a siege in Timbuktu that began last August and has trapped more than 136,000 people, 74,000 of them children. In Timbuktu, however, some aid supplies are able to reach people in need, according to Save the Children. David Otto, a Nigerian-based security analyst, says the lack of government presence in northern Mali is complicating aid efforts. “Humanitarian activities within that region also have been very, very much limited," said Otto. "Not just due to insecurity, which is one of the main factors, but also due to the fact that the regime or the military government has limited access to that region for humanitarian organizations on the basis of jihadist groups.” Aid agencies say Mali is locked in a complex crisis, facing criminal organizations, an Islamist insurgency, socio-economic challenges, and climate change. More than 7 million people need humanitarian assistance, and the situation is worse in conflict-affected areas of northern and central Mali. According to Cadre Harmonise 2024, a framework used to identify food and nutrition insecurity in the Sahel and West Africa, over 40,000 residents of Menaka already face emergency levels of hunger. Aid agencies warn the situation is expected to deteriorate in June, by which time nearly 50,000 people will be food insecure and needing urgent support. Kevin Oduor teaches International Criminal Law at Technical University in Kenya. He says the starving the population in Menaka is a war crime. “Blocking aid getting to the people is tantamount to exposing them to murder, exposing them to situations that would hinder them from living their full life," said Oduor. "So, these are actually war crimes.” Mali’s military junta recently launched a joint operation with the military governments in Burkina Faso and Niger to fight jihadist and insurgent groups that have destabilized parts of West Africa. The junta says it sees the operations as one way of easing the suffering of its people in the hands of armed groups. However, the government has been unable to break the sieges of either Menaka or Timbuktu. Meanwhile, the government has ordered the U.N. mission in Mali to close its offices and end the support it was providing to the population. Otto says saving lives and feeding its people is not a top priority for the military government in Mali. “The government is now focusing a lot on dealing with security issues rather than actually looking at the humanitarian aspects within that area," said Otto. "This is why you are seeing an increase in the number of people living in very dire circumstances within that region. Right now, the government is focusing on consolidating its power from a military and defense point of view rather than actually providing some kind of economic or sustainable assistance to the people living in this area.” Experts warn Mali’s unwillingness to work with regional and international institutions may worsen the humanitarian situation in the country.

sydney — Hundreds of supporters of Israel and Gaza faced off at a Sydney university Friday, bringing echoes of U.S. college protests and Middle East tumult to a campus and continent on the other side of the world. Rival demonstrators came eye to eye shouting slogans and waving flags. Still, except for a few heated exchanges, the protest and counterprotest passed off peacefully. But it was another sign that the war in Gaza, approaching its seventh month, and the long-rumbling U.S. culture wars are roiling politics oceans away. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been camped for 10 days on a green lawn in front of the University of Sydney's sprawling Gothic sandstone edifice -- a bastion of Australian academia. The dozens of tents festooned with banners and Palestinian flags have become a focal point for hundreds of protesters -- students and otherwise -- who oppose Israel's ground invasion and bombardment of Gaza. Deaglan Godwin, a 24-year-old arts and science student and one of the camp's organizers, said U.S. protests were both an inspiration and a warning. New York's Columbia University, the scene of police crackdowns and mass arrests, inspired "us to set up our own camp," Godwin said. He said Columbia is "also now a warning, a warning that the government is willing to use quite lethal, brutal force in order to put down Palestinian protesters." Similar to their U.S. counterparts, the protesters want to see Sydney University cut ties with Israeli institutions and reject funding from arms companies. Sydney University administrators are keen not to replicate the U.S. experience. Vice Chancellor Mark Scott has written to students and staff expressing a "commitment to freedom of expression" and has not called on the police to dismantle the camp. Australian police were conspicuously absent even during Friday's protests, which brought about 100 pro-Israel counter protesters face to face with 400 demonstrators at the pro-Palestinian camp. Public order and riot squad vehicles were parked well out of view, on the periphery of the campus. Security was left to university guards who exchanged jokes with each other about their ill-fitting high visibility coats while forming a very porous separating barrier between the opposing camps. A few inquisitive Chinese students stopped to take a look on the edges of the demonstration, while the media surveyed the scene and a right-wing vlogger hunted for any hint of confrontation or violence. 'Stop hate, mate’ But like the United States, allegations of extremism have been levelled at Sydney's pro-Palestinian protesters. Jewish groups have voiced concern that slogans about the "Zionist entity" and "from the river to the sea" are evidence of rising antisemitism. Against that backdrop, more than a hundred Jewish and pro-Israeli protesters decided to march near the pro-Palestinian encampment Friday, hoping to send a message that Jewish students are safe on campus and that they, too, have the right to be heard. Wearing T-shirts reading "Stop hate, mate" they sang "Hatikvah" -- Israel's national anthem – a capella and danced to the cheesy Australian pop classic "A Land Down Under." Protester David Treves said he hoped the march would show people there is more than one perspective about what is happening in the Middle East. "I'm not looking to change people's opinion. I'm looking just to get them to think," he said, voicing concern that the camp could incite the type of clashes seen in the United States. "As long as it's legal, as long as within the law I have nothing against it. There is free speech in Australia" he said. "I wouldn't go and aggressively just remove the whole thing. But I don't want it to get out of hand." A small group of counter protesters donned tefillin -- the black leather boxes and straps usually worn during Jewish prayer that have come to signify more orthodox and conservative views. Another group of students wearing keffiyeh scarves linked arms in a circle and danced the dabkeh -- a Levantine dance popular at weddings. When the groups came together a few from each camp confronted each other and traded slogans, but the tension was quickly defused.

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.