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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.

HONOLULU — A single mother of two, Amy Chadwick spent years scrimping and saving to buy a house in the town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui. But after a devastating fire leveled Lahaina in August and reduced Chadwick's home to white dust, the cheapest rental she could find for her family and dogs cost $10,000 a month. Chadwick, a fine-dining server, moved to Florida where she could stretch her homeowners insurance dollars. She's worried Maui's exorbitant rental prices, driven in part by vacation rentals that hog a limited housing supply, will hollow out her tight-knit town. Most people in Lahaina work for hotels, restaurants and tour companies and can't afford $5,000 to $10,000 a month in rent, she said. "You're pushing out an entire community of service industry people. So no one's going to be able to support the tourism that you're putting ahead of your community," Chadwick said by phone from her new home in Satellite Beach on Florida's Space Coast. "Nothing good is going to come of it unless they take a serious stance, putting their foot down and really regulating these short-term rentals." The August 8 wildfire killed 101 people and destroyed housing for 6,200 families, amplifying Maui's already acute housing shortage and laying bare the enormous presence of vacation rentals in Lahaina. It reminded lawmakers that short-term rentals are an issue across Hawaii, prompting them to consider bills that would give counties the authority to phase them out. Gov. Josh Green got so frustrated he blurted an expletive during a recent news conference. "This fire uncovered a clear truth, which is we have too many short-term rentals owned by too many individuals on the mainland and it is b———t," Green said. "And our people deserve housing, here." Vacation rentals are a popular alternative to hotels for those seeking kitchens, lower costs and opportunities to sample everyday island life. Supporters say they boost tourism, the state's biggest employer. Critics revile them for inflating housing costs, upending neighborhoods and contributing to the forces pushing locals and Native Hawaiians to leave Hawaii for less expensive states. This migration has become a major concern in Lahaina. The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a nonprofit, estimates at least 1,500 households — or a quarter of those who lost their homes — have left since the August wildfire. The blaze burned single family homes and apartments in and around downtown, which is the core of Lahaina's residential housing. An analysis by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization found a relatively low 7.5% of units there were vacation rentals as of February 2023. Lahaina neighborhoods spared by the fire have a much higher ratio of vacation rentals: About half the housing in Napili, about 11 kilometers north of the burn zone, is short-term rentals. Napili is where Chadwick thought she found a place to buy when she first went house hunting in 2016. But a Canadian woman secured it with a cash offer and turned it into a vacation rental. Also outside the burn zone are dozens of short-term rental condominium buildings erected decades ago on land zoned for apartments. In 1992, Maui County explicitly allowed owners in these buildings to rent units for less than 180 days at a time even without short-term rental permits. Since November, activists have occupied the beach in front of Lahaina's biggest hotels to push the mayor or governor to use their emergency powers to revoke this exemption. Money is a powerful incentive for owners to rent to travelers: a 2016 report prepared for the state found a Honolulu vacation rental generates 3.5 times the revenue of a long-term rental. State Rep. Luke Evslin, the Housing Committee chair, said Maui and Kauai counties have suffered net losses of residential housing in recent years thanks to a paucity of new construction and the conversion of so many homes to short-term rentals. "Every alarm bell we have should be ringing when we're literally going backwards in our goal to provide more housing in Hawaii," he said. In his own Kauai district, Evslin sees people leaving, becoming homeless or working three jobs to stay afloat. The Democrat was one of 47 House members who co-sponsored one version of legislation that would allow short-term rentals to be phased out. One objective is to give counties more power after a U.S. judge in 2022 ruled Honolulu violated state law when it attempted to prohibit rentals for less than 90 days. Evslin said that decision left Hawaii's counties with limited tools, such as property taxes, to control vacation rentals. Lawmakers also considered trying to boost Hawaii's housing supply by forcing counties to allow more houses to be built on individual lots. But they watered down the measure after local officials said they were already exploring the idea. Short-term rental owners said a phase-out would violate their property rights and take their property without compensation, potentially pushing them into foreclosure. Some predicted legal challenges. Alicia Humiston, president of the Rentals by Owner Awareness Association, said some areas in West Maui were designed for travelers and therefore lack schools and other infrastructure families need. "This area in West Maui that is sort of like this resort apartment zone — that's all north of Lahaina — it was never built to be local living," Humiston said. One housing advocate argues that just because a community allowed vacation rentals decades ago doesn't mean it still needs to now. "We are not living in the 1990s or in the 1970s," said Sterling Higa, executive director of Housing Hawaii's Future. Counties "should have the authority to look at existing laws and reform them as necessary to provide for the public good." Courtney Lazo, a real estate agent who is part of Lahaina Strong, the group occupying Kaanapali Beach, said tourists can stay in her hometown now but many locals can't. "How do you expect a community to recover and heal and move forward when the people who make Lahaina, Lahaina, aren't even there anymore?" she said at a recent news conference as her voice quivered. "They're moving away."

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As the sun sets, a burly man bellows into a megaphone while a curious crowd gathers around him. Next to him is a small cardboard box with several banknotes worth 10 Haitian gourdes — about 7 U.S. cents. "Everyone give whatever they have!" the man shouts as he grabs the arms and hands of people entering a neighborhood in the capital of Port-au-Prince that has been targeted by violent gangs. The community recently voted to buy a metal barricade and install it themselves to try to protect residents from the unrelenting violence that killed or injured more than 2,500 people in Haiti from January to March. "Every day I wake up and find a dead body," said Noune-Carme Manoune, an immigration officer. Life in Port-au-Prince has become a game of survival, pushing Haitians to new limits as they scramble to stay safe and alive while gangs overwhelm the police and the government remains largely absent. Some are installing metal barricades. Others press hard on the gas while driving near gang-controlled areas. The few who can afford it stockpile water, food, money and medication, supplies of which have dwindled since the main international airport closed in early March. The country's biggest seaport is largely paralyzed by marauding gangs. "People living in the capital are locked in, they have nowhere to go," Philippe Branchat, International Organization for Migration chief in Haiti, said in a recent statement. "The capital is surrounded by armed groups and danger. It is a city under siege." Phones ping often with alerts reporting gunfire, kidnappings and fatal shootings, and some supermarkets have so many armed guards that they resemble small police stations. Gang attacks used to occur only in certain areas, but now they can happen anywhere, any time. Staying home does not guarantee safety: One man playing with his daughter at home was shot in the back by a stray bullet. Others have been killed. Schools and gas stations are shuttered, with fuel on the black market selling for $9 a gallon, roughly three times the official price. Banks have prohibited customers from withdrawing more than $100 a day, and checks that used to take three days to clear now take a month or more. Police officers have to wait weeks to be paid. "Everyone is under stress," said Isidore Gédéon, a 38-year-old musician. "After the prison break, people don't trust anyone. The state doesn't have control." Gangs that control an estimated 80% of Port-au-Prince launched coordinated attacks on February 29, targeting critical state infrastructure. They set fire to police stations, shot up the airport and stormed into Haiti's two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates. At the time, Prime Minister Ariel Henry was visiting Kenya to push for the U.N.-backed deployment of a police force. Henry remains locked out of Haiti, and a transitional presidential council tasked with selecting the country's next prime minister and Cabinet could be sworn in as early as this week. Henry has pledged to resign once a new leader is installed. Few believe this will end the crisis. It's not only the gangs unleashing violence; Haitians have embraced a vigilante movement known as "bwa kale," that has killed several hundred suspected gang members or their associates. "There are certain communities I can't go to because everyone is scared of everyone," Gédéon said. "You could be innocent, and you end up dead." More than 95,000 people have fled Port-au-Prince in one month alone as gangs raid communities, torching homes and killing people in territories controlled by their rivals. Those who flee via bus to Haiti's southern and northern regions risk being gang-raped or killed as they pass through gang-controlled areas where gunmen have opened fire. Violence in the capital has left some 160,000 people homeless, according to the IOM. "This is hell," said Nelson Langlois, a producer and cameraman. Langlois, his wife and three children spent two nights lying flat on the roof of their home as gangs raided the neighborhood. "Time after time, we peered over to see when we could flee," he recalled. Forced to split up because of the lack of shelter, Langlois is living in a Vodou temple and his wife and children are elsewhere in Port-au-Prince. Like most people in the city, Langlois usually stays indoors. The days of pickup soccer games on dusty roads and the nights of drinking Prestige beer in bars with hip-hop, reggae or African music playing are long gone. "It's an open-air prison," Langlois said. The violence has also forced businesses, government agencies and schools to close, leaving scores of Haitians unemployed. Manoune, the government immigration officer, said she has been earning money selling treated water since she has no work because deportations are stalled. Meanwhile, Gédéon said he no longer plays the drums for a living, noting that bars and other venues are shuttered. He sells small plastic bags of water on the street and has become a handyman, installing fans and fixing appliances. Even students are joining the workforce as the crisis deepens poverty across Haiti. Sully, a 10th-grader whose school closed nearly two months ago, stood on a street corner in the community of Pétion-Ville selling gasoline that he buys on the black market. "You have to be careful," said Sully, who asked that his last name be withheld for safety. "During the morning it's safer." He sells about 19 liters a week, generating roughly $40 for his family, but he cannot afford to join his classmates who are learning remotely. "Online class is for people more fortunate than me, who have more money," Sully said. The European Union last week announced the launch of a humanitarian air bridge from the Central American country of Panama to Haiti. Five flights have landed in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien, site of Haiti's sole functioning airport, bringing 62 tons of medicine, water, emergency shelter equipment and other essential supplies. But there is no guarantee that critical items will reach those who most need them. Many Haitians remain trapped in their homes, unable to buy or look for food amid whizzing bullets. Aid groups say nearly 2 million Haitians are on the verge of famine, more than 600,000 of them children. Nonetheless, people are finding ways to survive. Back in the neighborhood where residents are installing a metal barricade, sparks fly as one man cuts metal while others shovel and mix cement. They are well underway, and hope to finish the project soon. Others remain skeptical, citing reports of gangs jumping into loaders and other heavy equipment to tear down police stations and, more recently, metal barricades.

vancouver, british columbia — A new, digestible mini-robotic camera, about the size of a multivitamin pill, was demonstrated at the annual TED Conference in Vancouver. The remote-controlled device can eliminate invasive medical procedures. With current technology, exploration of the digestive tract involves going through the highly invasive procedure of an endoscopy, in which a camera at the end of a cord is inserted down the throat and into a medicated patient’s stomach. But the robotic pill, developed by Endiatx in Hayward, California, is designed to be the first motorized replacement of the procedure. A patient fasts for a day, then swallows the PillBot with lots of water. The PillBot, acting like a miniature submarine, is piloted in the body by a wireless remote control. After the exam, it then flushes out of the human body naturally. For Dr. Vivek Kumbhari, co-founder of the company and professor of medicine and chairman of gastroenterology and hepatology at the Mayo Clinic, it is the latest step toward his goal of democratizing previously complex medicine. If procedure-based diagnostics can be moved from a hospital to a home, "then I think we have achieved that goal," he said. The new setting would require fewer medical staff personnel and no anesthesia, producing "a safer, more comfortable approach.” Kumbhari said this technology also makes medicine more efficient, allowing people to get care earlier in the course of an illness. For co-founder Alex Luebke, the micro-robotic pill can be transformative for rural areas around the world where there is limited access to medical facilities. "Especially in developing countries, there is no access" to complex medical procedures, he said. "So being able to have the technology, gather all that information and provide you the solution, even in remote areas - that's the way to do it.” Luebke said if internet access is not immediately available, information from the PillBot can be transmitted later. The duo are also utilizing artificial intelligence to provide the initial diagnosis, with a medical doctor later developing a treatment plan. Joel Bervell is known to his million social media followers as the “Medical Mythbuster” and is a fourth-year medical student at Washington State University. He said the strength of this type of technology is how it can be easily used in remote and rural communities. Many patients “travel hundreds of miles, literally, for their appointment. Use of a pill that would not require a visit to a physician "would be life-changing for them.”  The micro-robotic pill is undergoing trials and will soon be in front of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval, which developers expect to have in 2025. It's expected that the pill would then be widely available in 2026. Kumbhari hopes the technology can be expanded to the bowels, vascular system, heart, liver, brain and other parts of the body. Eventually, he hopes, this will allow hospitals to be left for more urgent medical care and surgeries.

CHICAGO — The closure of Wadsworth Elementary School in 2013 was a blow to residents of the majority-Black neighborhood it served, symbolizing a city indifferent to their interests.  So when the city reopened Wadsworth last year to shelter hundreds of migrants without seeking community input, it added insult to injury. Across Chicago, Black residents are frustrated that long-standing needs are not being met while the city's newly arrived are cared for with a sense of urgency, and with their tax dollars.  "Our voices are not valued nor heard," said Genesis Young, a lifelong Chicagoan who lives near Wadsworth.  Chicago is one of several big American cities grappling with a surge of migrants. The Republican governor of Texas has been sending them by the busload to highlight his grievances with the Biden administration's immigration policy.  To manage the influx, Chicago has already spent more than $300 million of city, state and federal funds to provide housing, health care, education and more to over 38,000 mostly South American migrants who have arrived in the city since 2022, desperate for help. The speed with which these funds were marshaled has stirred widespread resentment among Black Chicagoans. But community leaders are trying to ease racial tensions and channel the public's frustrations into agitating for the greater good.  Political reactions The outcry over migrants in Chicago and other large Democrat-led cities is having wider implications in an election year: The Biden administration is now advocating a more restrictive approach to immigration in its negotiations with Republicans in Congress.  Since the Wadsworth building reopened as a shelter, Young has felt "extreme anxiety" because of the noise, loitering and around-the-clock police presence that came with it. More than anything, she and other neighbors say it is a reminder of problems that have been left unsolved for years, including high rates of crime, unemployment and homelessness.  "I definitely don't want to seem insensitive to them and them wanting a better life. However, if you can all of a sudden come up with all these millions of dollars to address their housing, why didn't you address the homeless issue here?" said Charlotte Jackson, the owner of a bakery and restaurant in the South Loop neighborhood.  "For so long we accepted that this is how things had to be in our communities," said Chris Jackson, who co-founded the bakery with his wife. "This migrant crisis has made many people go: 'Wait a minute, no it doesn't.' "  Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to comment for this story.  The city received more than $200 million from the state and federal governments to help care for migrants after Johnson appealed to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and President Joe Biden. The president will be in Chicago in August to make his reelection pitch at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.  Some see opportunity Some Black Chicagoans are protesting the placement of shelters in their neighborhoods, but others aim to turn the adversity into an opportunity.  "Chicago is a microcosm to the rest of the nation," said the Reverend Janette C. Wilson, national executive director of the civil rights group PUSH for Excellence. Black communities have faced discrimination and underinvestment for decades and are justifiably frustrated, Wilson said. The attention the migrants are receiving is deserved, she added, but it's also a chance for cities to reflect on their responsibility to all underserved communities.  "There is a moral imperative to take care of everybody," Wilson said.  After nearly two years of acrimony, the city has begun to curb some accommodations for migrants – which has caused its own backlash. The city last month started evicting migrants who overstayed a 60-day limit at shelters, prompting condemnation from immigrant rights groups and from residents worried about public safety.  Marlita Ingram, a school guidance counselor who lives in the South Shore neighborhood, said she was concerned about the resources being shared "equitably" between migrants and longtime residents. But she said she also believed that "it doesn't have to be a competition" and sympathized with the nearly 6,000 migrant children now enrolled in Chicago's public schools.  As the potential for racial strife rises, some activists are pointing to history as a cautionary tale.  Hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners moved to Chicago in the early 20th century in search of greater freedoms and economic opportunities. White Chicagoans at the time accused them of receiving disproportionate resources from the city, and in 1919 tensions boiled over.  In a surge of racist attacks in cities across the U.S. that came to be known as "Red Summer," white residents burned large swaths of Chicago's Black neighborhoods and killed 38 Black people, including by lynching.  "Those white folks were, like, 'Hell, no, they're coming here, they're taking our jobs,' '' said Richard Wallace, founder of Equity and Transformation, a majority-Black community group that co-hosted a forum in March to improve dialogue between Black and Latino residents.  Echoes of past He hears echoes of that past bigotry — intentional or not — when Black Chicagoans complain about the help being given to migrants. "How did we become like the white folks who were resisting our people coming to the city of the Chicago?" he said.  Labor and immigrant rights organizers have worked for years to tamp down divisions among working class communities. But the migrant crisis has created tensions between the city's large Mexican American community and recently arrived migrants, many of whom hail from Venezuela.  "If left unchecked, we all panic, we're all scared, we're going to retreat to our corners," said Leone Jose Bicchieri, executive director of Working Family Solidarity, a majority-Hispanic labor rights group. "The truth is that this city wouldn't work without Black and Latino people."  Black Americans' views on immigration and diversity are expansive. The Civil Rights Movement was instrumental in pushing the U.S. to adopt a more inclusive immigration policy.  About half of Black Americans say the United States' diverse population makes the country strong, including 30% who say it makes the U.S. "much stronger," according to a March poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.  Many leaders in Black neighborhoods in and around Chicago are trying to  acknowledge the tensions without exacerbating them.  "Our church is divided on the migrant crisis," said the Reverend Chauncey Brown, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Maywood, Illinois, a majority-Black suburb of Chicago where some migrants are living in shelters.  There has been a noticeable uptick of non-English speakers in the pews, many of whom have said they are migrants in need of food and other services, Brown said. Some church members cautioned him against speaking out in support of migrants or allotting more church resources to them. But he said the Bible's teachings are clear on this issue.  "When a stranger enters your land, you are to care for them as if they are one of your own," he said.

WASHINGTON — A ancient giant snake in India might have been longer than a school bus and weighed a ton, researchers reported Thursday. Fossils found near a coal mine revealed a snake that stretched an estimated 11 meters to 15 meters. It's comparable to the largest known snake at about 13 meters that once lived in what is now Colombia. The largest living snake today is Asia's reticulated python at 10 meters. The newly discovered behemoth lived 47 million years ago in western India's swampy evergreen forests. It could have weighed up to 1,000 kilograms, researchers said in the journal Scientific Reports. They gave it the name Vasuki indicus after "the mythical snake king Vasuki, who wraps around the neck of the Hindu deity Shiva," said Debajit Datta, a study co-author at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. This monster snake wasn't especially swift to strike. "Considering its large size, Vasuki was a slow-moving ambush predator that would subdue its prey through constriction," Datta said in an email. Fragments of the snake's backbone were discovered in 2005 by co-author Sunil Bajpai, based at the same institute, near Kutch, Gujarat, in western India. The researchers compared more than 20 fossil vertebrae to skeletons of living snakes to estimate size. While it's not clear exactly what Vasuki ate, other fossils found nearby reveal that the snake lived in swampy areas alongside catfish, turtles, crocodiles and primitive whales, which may have been its prey, Datta said. The other extinct giant snake, Titanoboa, was discovered in Colombia and is estimated to have lived around 60 million years ago. What these two monster snakes have in common is that they lived during periods of exceptionally warm global climates, said Jason Head, a Cambridge University paleontologist who was not involved in the study. "These snakes are giant cold-blooded animals," he said. "A snake requires higher temperatures" to grow into large sizes. So does that mean that global warming will bring back monster-sized snakes? In theory, it's possible. But the climate is now warming too quickly for snakes to evolve again to be giants, he said.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

ROSARIO, Argentina — The order to kill came from inside a federal prison near Argentina's capital. Unwitting authorities patched a call from drug traffickers tied to one of the country's most notorious gangs to collaborators on the outside. The criminals proceeded to hire a 15-year-old hit man, sealing the fate of a young father they didn't even know. At a service station on March 9 in Rosario, the picturesque hometown of soccer star Lionel Messi, 25-year-old employee Bruno Bussanich was whistling to himself and checking the day's earnings just before he was shot three times from less than a foot away, surveillance footage shows. The assailant fled without taking a peso. It was the fourth gang-related fatal shooting in Rosario in almost as many days. Authorities called it an unprecedented rampage in Argentina, which had never witnessed the extremes of drug cartel violence afflicting some other Latin American countries. A handwritten letter was found near Bussanich's body, addressed to officials who want to curb the power drug kingpins wield from behind bars. "We don't want to negotiate anything. We want our rights," it says. "We will kill more innocent people." Shaken residents interviewed by The Associated Press across Rosario described a sense of dread taking hold. "Every time I go to work, I say goodbye to my father as if it were the last time," said 21-year-old Celeste Núñez, who also works at a gas station. The string of killings offer an early test to the security agenda of populist President Javier Milei, who has tethered his political success to saving Argentina's tanking economy and eradicating narco-trafficking violence. Since taking office December 10, the right-wing leader has promised to prosecute gang members as terrorists and change the law to allow the army into crime-ridden streets for the first time since Argentina's brutal military dictatorship ended in 1983. His law-and-order message has empowered the hardline governor of Santa Fe province, which includes Rosario, to clamp down on incarcerated criminal gangs that authorities say orchestrated 80% of shootings last year. Under the orders of Governor Maximiliano Pullaro, police have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits. "We are facing a group of narco-terrorists desperate to maintain power and impunity," Milei said after Bussanich was killed, announcing the deployment of federal forces in Rosario. "We will lock them up, isolate them, take back the streets." Milei won 56% of the vote in Rosario, where residents praise his focus on a problem largely neglected by his predecessors. But some worry the government's combative approach traps them in the line of fire. Gangs started their deadly retaliations just hours after Pullaro's security minister shared photos showing Argentine prisoners crammed together on the floor, heads pressed against each other's bare backs — a scene reminiscent of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's harsh anti-gang crackdown. "It's a war between the state and the drug traffickers," said Ezequiel, a 30-year-old employee at the gas station where Bussanich was killed. Ezequiel, who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals, said his mother has since begged him to quit. "We're the ones paying the price." Even Milei's supporters have mixed feelings about the crackdown, including Germán Bussanich, the father of the slain gas station worker. "They're putting on a show and we're facing the consequences," Bussanich told reporters. A leafy city 300 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires, Rosario is where revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born, Messi first kicked a soccer ball and the Argentine flag was first raised in 1812. But it most recently won notoriety because its homicide numbers are five times the national average. Tucked into a bend in the Paraná River, Rosario's port morphed into Argentina's drug trafficking hub as regional crackdowns pushed the narcotics trade south and criminals started squirreling away cocaine in shipping containers spirited down the river to markets abroad. Although Rosario never suffered the car bombs and police assassinations gripping Mexico, Colombia and most recently Ecuador, the splintering of street gangs has fueled bloodshed. "It's not close to the violence in Mexico because we still have the deterrence capacity of the government in Argentina," said Marcelo Bergman, a social scientist at the National University of Tres de Febrero in Argentina. "But we need to keep an eye on Rosario because the major threats come not so much from big cartels but when these groups proliferate and diversify." Drug traffickers keep a tight grip over Rosario's poor neighborhoods full of young men vulnerable to recruitment. One of them was Víctor Emanuel, a 17-year-old killed two years ago by rival gangsters in an area where street murals pay tribute to slain criminal leaders. No one was arrested. "My neighbors know who's responsible," his mother, Gerónima Benítez, told the AP, her eyes shiny with tears. "I looked for help everywhere, I knocked on the doors of the judiciary, the government. No one answered." A fearful existence is all Benítez has ever known. But now, for the first time in Argentina, warring drug traffickers are banding together and terrorizing parts of the city previously considered safe. Imprisoned gang leaders in Latin America have long run criminal enterprises remotely with the help of corrupt guards. But according to an indictment unveiled last week, incarcerated gang bosses in Argentina have been passing instructions on how to kill random civilians via family visits and video calls. Court documents say the bosses paid underage hit men up to $450 to target four of the recent victims in Argentina's third-largest city. The killing of Bussanich, two taxi drivers and a bus driver in less than a week in March, federal prosecutors say, "shattered the peace of an entire society." Street emptied. Schools closed. Bus drivers picketed. People were too terrified to leave their homes. "This violence is on another level," 20-year-old Rodrigo Dominguez said from an intersection where a dangling banner demanded justice for another bus driver slain there weeks earlier. "You can't go outside." Panic was still palpable in Rosario last week, as police swarmed the streets and normally bustling bars closed early for lack of customers. A diner managed by Messi's family, a draw for fans, reported quiet nights and less profit. Women in one neighborhood said they carry 22‐caliber pistols. Analía Manso, 37, said she was too scared to send her children to school. Pope Francis last month said he was praying for his countrymen in Rosario. Assaults and public threats continue. This month, a sign appeared on a highway overpass warning Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich that gangs would extend their offensive to Buenos Aires if the government doesn't back down. Authorities have sought to reassure the public by sending hundreds of federal agents into Rosario. The AP spent a night with police last week as officers patrolled neighborhoods logging suspicious activity and setting up checkpoints. Georgina Wilke, a 45-year-old Rosario officer in the explosives squad, said she welcomes federal intervention, including the military, to get crime under control. "We've been hit very hard," Wilke said. Omar Pereira, the provincial secretary of public security, promised the efforts represent a shift from failed tactics of the past. "There were always pacts, implicit or explicit, between the state and criminals," Pereira said, describing how authorities long looked the other way. "What's the idea of this government? There is no pact." But experts are skeptical a tough-on-crime approach will stop drug traffickers from buying control over Argentina's police and prisons. "Unless the government fixes its problems with corruption, the crackdown on prisons is unlikely to have any long-term effect," said Christopher Newton, an investigator at Colombia-based research organization InSight Crime. For years, Rosario's 1.3 million residents have watched warily as presidents and their promises come and go while the violence endures. "It's like a cancer that grows and grows," said Benítez from her home, its windows protected by wrought-iron bars. "We, on the outside, live in prison," she said. "Those inside have everything."

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.

HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM/WASHINGTON — While this month’s death sentence in a multibillion-dollar Vietnamese fraud case may show the power of Hanoi’s antigraft campaign, interviews in recent days showed continuing concerns over political impunity in Vietnam and vulnerability and corruption in the country’s poorly paid public sector. Meanwhile, two of those interviewed expressed doubts the sentence would actually be carried out. On April 11, Truong My Lan, the 68-year-old chairwoman of real-estate firm Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group was given the death sentence for embezzling $12.5 billion, leading to damages that have now reached $27 billion, as well as well as 20 years each for bribery and violating banking regulations. She was also ordered by the court to return $27 billion to Saigon Commercial Bank, or SCB, for taking out bad loans over 11 years. In 2012, Lan merged three banks into SCB. Although Vietnamese law prohibits anyone from owning more than 5% of the shares of any bank, prosecutors said that through proxies and thousands of shell companies Lan indirectly owned 91.5% of SCB. Nguyen Hong Hai, senior lecturer at VinUniversity in Hanoi, said Lan's sentence shows the government's effort to impart a public message. "We have to put it in the context of the ongoing blazing furnace anticorruption campaign launched by the Party in 2016," Hai told VOA on April 16. "They want to send a clear message to the public that they really want to clean up society and they are determined to combat corruption." A 38-year-old bank clerk in Ho Chi Minh City struck a similar chord in an April 17 written message, telling VOA that the verdict helps to restore faith in financial institutions. "Lan and her people have used the banking system to take the money for their own purposes," he wrote in Vietnamese. "A quick verdict helped to gain back people's trust." Corruption said likely widespread However, Zachary Abuza, Southeast Asia expert and professor at the National War College in Washington, said corruption is likely widespread in Vietnam's banking sector and despite the sentences meted out, high-level officials escaped implication. The country’s Communist Party "definitely circled the wagons and made sure that some lower-level party officials and regulators were held responsible, but it didn't go any higher," he told VOA on April 12. "It definitely should have gone higher," he added. During the trial, 85 individuals were punished in addition to Lan, with sentences ranging from probation to life imprisonment. Do Thi Nhan, the head banking inspector of the State Bank of Vietnam, was given a life sentence for accepting a $5.2 million bribe to cover up SCB's wrongdoing. Hai in Hanoi said authorities are likely implicated in Lan's corrupt business practices and more officials may be revealed. "In any corruption case, they are somehow involved with authorities and government officials particularly when it comes to a very huge corruption case like this one that involves real estate and the banking sector," Hai said. "Maybe more investigations will be conducted. … The authorities have not yet said that it's the end of the case," he said. Systemic bribery Part of the cycle of corruption that led to Lan's scam is the low pay of public sector workers, making them vulnerable to bribery, said Nguyen Khac Giang, visiting fellow at Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. Giang told VOA on April 17 that the monthly salary for the government's top role of general secretary is approximately $1,000, mid-level officials make about $400, and those entering the public sector out of college do not make enough to live without accepting bribes or taking on side jobs. "People who just start working for the state, they get about $150 a month," Giang said. "If you get this kind of salary you cannot survive in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City." The government is trying to address the issue by increasing public sector salaries by 30% starting July this year. Although the move shows a "strong political will," Giang said he worries it will not be enough to stop entrenched corruption with salaries starting at such a low level. "We have 2.5 million bureaucrats," he said. "There's a lot of people on the state payroll and basically when you have too many people and a very small cake it is impossible to give everyone the share that they wish to have." Sentence may not be carried out Meanwhile, it may be that Lan’s death sentence will not actually be carried out, even though its imposition signals a serious government attitude toward corruption. Ha Huy Son, the director of the Ha Son Law Company in Hanoi told VOA April 11 that he expected appellate courts would commute Lan’s death sentence. Lan’s death sentence "conveys the message that authorities are not lenient on economic crimes incurring consequential losses," he said, adding that Vietnamese courts "have made it a norm" that if embezzlement case defendants compensate more than three-fourths of the losses incurred, their sentences will be commuted. In addition, he said. It can take up to 20 years for a death sentence to be carried out, and Lan is almost 70. Le Quoc Quan, a dissident and lawyer living in exile in the U.S. state of Virginia predicted to VOA April 11 that Lan would not be put to death, saying that while the death sentence is needed "to placate public sentiment, which is boiling over corruption," it can "also serve as a bargaining chip to force Lan to compensate." "Truong My Lan being alive and well is good for recovering losses. Dead Truong My Lan serves nothing," Quan said. Le Nguyen of VOA’s Vietnamese Service reported from Washington.

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TEPOTZOTLAN, Mexico — Dozens of women and men searched a garbage dump outside Mexico's capital Friday looking for signs of missing loved ones, working without the protection of authorities as part of a nationwide effort to raise the profile of those who risk their lives to find others. Under a blazing sun and amid foul odors, they picked through the dump and other sites in the town of Tepotzotlan in Mexico state, which hugs Mexico City on three sides. Hundreds of collectives across Mexico are participating in search operations this weekend to draw attention to the work they are left to do without official help in a country with nearly 100,000 people registered as missing. The work is dangerous. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented nine cases since 2019 of women who were slain over their work hunting for missing relatives. Other organizations in Mexico have recorded even more cases. The groups participating this weekend decided to forgo government protection as a way to protest authorities' frequent indifference to disappearances. "We feel abandoned by the state to respond to this situation, which is a real national emergency," some 250 collectives making up the National Unification of Searching Families said in a statement. Juan Carlos Trujillo Herrera has been searching for four brothers who disappeared in Guerrero and Veracruz states more than a decade ago. He said uniting search collectives across Mexico raises consciousness. "With the state, without the state and beyond the state, no one has to stop" searching, he said. In the work at the dump Friday, searchers used a backhoe as well shovels and picks to dig through debris. Metal rods were pushed into ground and then sniffed for the scent of death. While disappearances have plagued Mexico for decades, the phenomenon exploded in 2006 when authorities declared war on the drug cartels. For years, the government looked the other way as violence increased and families of the missing were forced to remain silent or carefully search for their relatives. The administration of current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has invested in creating a national database of the missing and the National Search Commission for Missing Persons. But he drew the ire of many families and advocates last year by ordering a recount of the missing. It was seen as an effort to lower Mexico's embarrassingly high total and it did, moving from some 113,000 last year to a revised total of just short of 100,000.

HONG KONG — Apple said it had removed Meta's WhatsApp messaging app and its Threads social media app from the App Store in China to comply with orders from Chinese authorities. The apps were removed from the store Friday after Chinese officials cited unspecified national security concerns. Their removal comes amid elevated tensions between the U.S. and China over trade, technology and national security. The U.S. has threatened to ban TikTok over national security concerns. But while TikTok, owned by Chinese technology firm ByteDance, is used by millions in the U.S., apps like WhatsApp and Threads are not commonly used in China. Instead, the messaging app WeChat, owned by Chinese company Tencent, reigns supreme. Other Meta apps, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger remained available for download, although use of such foreign apps is blocked in China due to its "Great Firewall" network of filters that restrict use of foreign websites such as Google and Facebook. "The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns," Apple said in a statement. "We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree," Apple said. A spokesperson for Meta referred to "Apple for comment." Apple, previously the world's top smartphone maker, recently lost the top spot to Korean rival Samsung Electronics. The U.S. firm has run into headwinds in China, one of its top three markets, with sales slumping after Chinese government agencies and employees of state-owned companies were ordered not to bring Apple devices to work. Apple has been diversifying its manufacturing bases outside China. Its CEO Tim Cook has been visiting Southeast Asia this week, traveling to Hanoi and Jakarta before wrapping up his travels in Singapore. On Friday he met with Singapore's deputy prime minister, Lawrence Wong, where they "discussed the partnership between Singapore and Apple, and Apple's continued commitment to doing business in Singapore." Apple pledged to invest over $250 million to expand its campus in the city-state. Earlier this week, Cook met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Hanoi, pledging to increase spending on Vietnamese suppliers. He also met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Cook later told reporters that they talked about Widodo's desire to promote manufacturing in Indonesia, and said that this was something that Apple would "look at."

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.