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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.

Irbil, Iraq / Istanbul — Iraq, perhaps unsurprisingly, is a hotbed of gallows humor.  But the tired old joke: “Iran and the West will keep fighting here until every Iraqi is dead,” is no funnier now than it was years ago.  Hundreds of missiles and drones soared over the Middle East this weekend from Iran to Israel, turning the region's "shadow war" into a direct conflict. And while further escalation is not imminent, people inside Iraq say they have long been in the line of fire, and if the conflict continues like this, it will likely rain violence down on them.  “Many people feel insecure, not safe and that there is a danger to their lives,” said Mazin Mohammed, a father of two and a public relations officer for a women’s rights organization in Baghdad. “Especially that Iraq is considered as one of Iran’s wings.”  Iraq is one of the world’s few Shiite Muslim majority countries, and home to several powerful Iran-backed Shiite militias. But it is also politically, religiously, and ethnically divided, with about 45% of the country being non-Shiite.  Many Iraqi leaders and some entire regions hold strong alliances with the West, particularly with the United States, which operates multiple large military bases in the country.  Iraq’s competing alliances, coupled with decades of war, insecurity and deep poverty, leave its residents especially vulnerable if Israel and Iran continue to fight — either directly or via proxies within its own borders.  Literally in the line of fire between Iran and Israel, Iraq saw parts of missiles fall on its terrain over the weekend.  “I don't think that the war will be only inside Israel or Iran,” said Mohammed.   Iranian fears  In Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, Ebrahim, 29, is an Iranian English teacher who hasn’t lived in his country for 10 years. Yet still, he prefers not to share his surname for fear of retaliation from the Iranian government.  Ibrahim grew up attending anti-Western rallies and hearing calls for the destruction of Israel. But he believes that for many Iranians, the idea is now dated, despite widespread sympathy for civilians in Gaza.  “The people of Iran, they don't feel that this is their war,” he said by phone on Sunday evening. “And if they want to think about the outcomes and the ramifications or the consequences, then people are going to be hurt.”  Regardless of popular opinion, however, the war has escalated and may continue to do so, added Sanam Vakil, Middle East and North Africa program director at Chatham House, in a statement on Sunday.  “Iran has tried to reinstate deterrence, showcased its defense capabilities,” he said. “But it’s uncertain if it can avoid an Israeli counterattack on Iran directly.”  But fears of escalation may be overblown, as it’s hard to see who would be served by a larger conflict, according to Ebrahim. Iran has suffered a decade of economic turmoil that plunged millions into poverty as the price of basic goods, like food, has soared.  The Iranian government has also grown increasingly unpopular in recent years, according to analysts, and further conflict would risk a deeper economic crisis, and perhaps a tightening of the sanctions that continue to cripple Iranian attempts at economic recovery.  “I don't think that the Islamic Republic is at any point of being able to wage this war,” said Ebrhahim. “Or afford it.”  Eclectic interests  Far from the urban chaos of Baghdad or the manicured streets of Irbil, in the breezy Kurdistan hills near the Iranian border, some Iranian-Kurdish dissidents see a potential advantage to the conflict.  Jina, 32, fled her country in 2022 after sustaining gunshot wounds in protests over the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish-Iranian woman. Her death set off a nationwide opposition movement in Iran, calling for women’s rights and other freedoms.  Nationwide crackdowns eventually crushed the protests, but recent lackluster national elections indicate the crackdown did little to quell discontent. According to Jina, any international actions, including attacks, that weaken the Iranian government are a potential boon for human rights and freedoms. “Iran is not even taking care of its own people, while launching missiles against Israel or other countries,” said Jina, who also doesn’t want to use her full name for fear of retaliation. “Iran uses this creation of problems to shift the focus off their own bad behaviors.”  But like families in Iraq, Jina also fears that civilians will ultimately be the victims of the war.  “I called my family and asked them to stay inside and not to leave home,” she said. “I asked my sister-in-law not to let her kids go to school.”

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.

Taipei, Taiwan — A U.S.-based human rights organization says Chinese authorities have been “collectively punishing” families of human rights defenders in recent years, warning that the persecution appears to be part of a “state policy.”  In a new report, Chinese Human Rights Defenders said authorities have held the children of detained human rights defenders in custody and put them in psychiatric hospitals or orphanages, forced school-age children to drop out of school, imposed exit bans on children of human rights defenders and imprisoned some family members of rights activists.  The collective punishment carried out against families of Chinese human rights defenders “is completely illegal and violates all sorts of international human rights laws and conventions,” Renee Xia, director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said during an online press briefing on April 11.    “The most heartbreaking part is [how the Chinese authorities are] inflicting so much pain on the children of human rights defenders and the experience of watching their parents being mistreated growing up leaves long-term psychological trauma on them,” she added.     VOA has reached out to China’s foreign ministry for comment but has yet to receive a response. During a Universal Periodic Review held by the U.N. Human Rights Council in January, China’s top diplomat in Geneva said Beijing is dedicated to “safeguarding the rights of specific groups” and “children's development.”  Forced to drop out of school   As part of the collective punishments against families of human rights activists, some have experienced repeated forced evictions while schools are repeatedly turning away their children due to pressure from local authorities.   Wang Quanzhang is a prominent human rights lawyer who was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison on charges of subversion during the “709 crackdown” in 2015. Wang has been evicted by landlords or hotels more than a dozen times since last April. He described the forced evictions as part of Chinese authorities’ retaliation against him and his family. The 2015 crackdown is known in China as the 709 crackdown because it began on July 9, 2015. On that date, authorities began targeting independent legal advocates and arrested hundreds of lawyers.   “The authorities think our community has been trying to humiliate them, so they want to use all the means at their disposal to punish human rights lawyers,” Wang told VOA in a phone call.   Apart from the forced evictions, Wang said his 11-year-old son has been turned away by schools several times over the last year. “Since we were forced to move to new places so frequently over the last year, it’s been difficult for my son to remain at the same school for long enough,” he said, adding that some schools would turn away his son due to pressure from authorities.   Wang tried to send his son abroad last year, hoping to protect him from the harassment.   “When we tried to leave China last October, the customs officers stopped my son and the daughter of another human rights lawyer and said they weren’t allowed to leave the country since they could be a threat to national security,” he said.   Since then, Wang and his family have moved to the southern province of Guangzhou and tried to admit his son to a private academy recommended by his friends.   “After just a week, close to 20 people suddenly showed up at the academy to conduct ‘inspection’ and following their repeated harassment, the academy was forced to move to a more discreet location,” Wang said.   Since it’s not clear when his son may return to school, Wang is signing him up for some online classes to make sure he is still learning something. “The authorities know my son is my biggest weakness so they try to make it difficult for him to go to school, hoping it could stop me from criticizing them,” he told VOA.   In addition to Wang’s son, the children of other detained human rights activists have also experienced persecution from Chinese authorities. According to the CHRD report, the 11-year-old son of detained Chinese activist He Fangmei has been put into a foster home since her detention in February 2021 and her two daughters, ages four and one month old at the time, were left at a psychiatric hospital despite repeated pleas from relatives.    Meanwhile, Yu Zhenyang, the 19-year-old son of detained human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan, was briefly detained and tried to commit suicide twice since last November.    Family of rights defenders detained    Apart from targeting children as part of their collective punishments against Chinese activists, CHRD said Chinese authorities have detained or imposed tight control on family members of imprisoned activists.    Wang Li, the wife of imprisoned Chinese artist Wang Zang, was sentenced to two-and-half years in prison in December 2022 after she demanded that authorities release her husband.    In addition to that, VOA previously reported that several family members of detained Chinese activist Peng Lifa, who famously draped protest banners on a bridge in Beijing calling Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “national traitor,” have been put under strict surveillance.   In its report, the group demands that China “immediately cease all harassment and extralegal detention of the family members of human rights defenders.” CHRD has also called on the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, to issue robust statements on rights violations committed by the government and provide regular updates on the progress of dialogue with officials.

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

Sydney — Police in Australia say a man has been arrested after a bishop and three churchgoers were stabbed in Sydney. There are no life-threatening injuries. It occurred during a televised service at the church on Monday evening, police said. The Orthodox Assyrian church streams services online. A video on social media shows a man dressed in black approaching a cleric at the altar identified as the bishop at Christ the Good Shepherd in suburban Wakely and appearing to stab him repeatedly in the head and upper body. Members of the congregation are seen screaming and rushing to the bishop's aid. The church website identified the bishop as Mar Mari Emmanuel. NSW Ambulance service said it had treated a man in his 50s for multiple cuts and taken him to a hospital, and three others were treated for one or more cuts at the scene. "A large police response is underway and the public is urged to avoid the area," police said. Australians are still in shock after a lone assailant stabbed six people to death in a busy Sydney shopping mall on Saturday and injured more than a dozen others. Christ the Good Shepherd had been preparing for Palm Sunday later this month. The bishop was featured in national news last year. A video posted in May 2023 by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about a campaign targeting the LGBTQ+ community showed the bishop in a sermon saying that "when a man calls himself a woman, he is neither a man nor a woman, you are not a human, then you are an it. Now, since you are an it, I will not address you as a human anymore because it is not my choosing, it your choosing."

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.

Yangon, Myanmar — A rocket attack by Myanmar anti-coup fighters killed four people and wounded 12, including cadets from the military's elite officer academy, junta officials said Monday. Myanmar's military authorities, who are struggling to maintain their grip on the country in the face of rising armed opposition, condemned the attack in the central town of Pyin Oo Lwin as targeting civilians. Myanmar is mired in conflict as the military, which seized power in a 2021 coup, battles multiple armed resistance groups across the country, suffering heavy losses in recent months. Fighters from a local "people's defence force" (PDF) — armed groups of pro-democracy civilians that have risen up to battle the army — "randomly shot" 11 rockets on Sunday evening, hitting a hospital, monastery and hotel, the junta said. The dead include two monks, it said. Pyin Oo Lwin, a former British hill station near the central city of Mandalay, is home to the Defence Services Academy — Myanmar's equivalent of West Point or Britain's Sandhurst. Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun confirmed three cadets from the academy were wounded in the attack. A spokesman for Mandalay PDF said its fighters carried out the attack, saying they targeted only the academy. The military suffered a major blow last week when its forces were driven out of a major trade hub near the Thai border after days of clashes with an ethnic minority armed group and other anti-junta fighters. Authorities in Thailand have said they are preparing to accept up to 100,000 people displaced by the clashes. The military seized power from the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and its crackdown on resistance to its rule has killed more than 4,800 civilians, according to local monitoring group AAPP.

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.

MAE SOT, Thailand — A resistance group fighting Myanmar's military rule said on Sunday its fighters had repelled an attempt by junta troops to advance on the key town of Myawaddy along the Thai border that was seized by the rebels last week. Reinforcements of junta forces have been trying to advance on Myawaddy for days, but were pushed back in a battle about 40 kilometers away, a spokesperson for the Karen National Union (KNU), Saw Taw Nee, said in an interview. "It is not easy to come here. They face a lot of difficulty," he told Reuters, saying the KNU's forces had been "blocking and intercepting" the junta troops. The KNU information could not be independently confirmed. A spokesperson for the military junta that seized power from an elected government a 2021 did not answer calls from Reuters. The border town of Myawaddy, adjacent to Thailand, was wrested from military control by a coalition of anti-junta forces led by the KNU on Thursday. Fighting took place on Friday between the villages of Kawkareik and Kaw Nwet along the main Asian Highway 1 leading west from the Thai border, Saw Taw Nee said. The KNU spokesperson said information received from the front line put the junta's toll of deaths and injuries from the fighting at around 100. "We know that they suffered a loss of one armed carrier and a military truck," he said. Myanmar has been in turmoil since 2021, when the powerful military deposed an elected civilian government, triggering widespread protests it sought to crush with force. Simmering anger against the junta turned into a nationwide armed resistance movement that is now increasingly operating in coordination with established ethnic rebel groups to challenge the military across large parts of Myanmar. Saw Taw Nee said the resistance "will take time." "We need to have a kind of coordination with other groups… to defeat the military," he said. The KNU spokesperson said there were also challenges working in a broad anti-junta coalition. "We are still in the process of how to negotiate, how to come together and how to move forward among our Karen groups," he said, referring to members of the ethnic group residing primarily in Kayin State. Saw Taw Nee said the immediate concern for the KNU is the more than one million displaced people within its territories, and called on the international community, including neighboring Thailand, to provide support. "We really need to work together in the future more and more on this issue," he said. He urged Myanmar's junta to see their recent military setbacks as a sign that they should hand back power to the people. "Please don’t waste time any more," he said. "This is the time, and a good opportunity, to listen to people first."

ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece — No one knows what music in ancient Greece sounded like or how dancers once moved. Every two years, a new interpretation of the ancient performance gets a global audience. It takes place in southern Greece at a site many still consider sacred: the birthplace of the Olympic Games. Forty-eight performers, chosen in part for their resemblance to youths in antiquity as seen in statues and other surviving artwork, will take part Tuesday in the flame-lighting ceremony for the Paris Olympics.  Details of the 30-minute performance are fine-tuned — and kept secret — right up until a public rehearsal Monday. The Associated Press got rare access to rehearsals that took place during weekends, mostly at an Olympic indoor cycling track in Athens.  As riders whiz around them on the banked cycling oval, the all-volunteer Olympic performers snatch poses from ancient vases. Sequences are repeated and re-repeated under the direction of the hyper-focused head choreographer Artemis Ignatiou. “In ancient times there was no Olympic flame ceremony,” Ignatiou said during a recent practice session. “My inspiration comes from temple pediments, from images on vases, because there is nothing that has been preserved — no movement, no dance — from antiquity,” she said. “So basically, what we are doing is joining up those images. Everything in between comes from us.” Ceremonies take place at Olympia every two years for the Winter and Summer Games, with the sun’s rays focused on the inside of a parabolic mirror to produce the Olympic flame and start the torch relay to the host city. Women dressed as priestesses are at the heart of the ceremony, first held for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Leading the group is an actress who performs the role of high priestess and makes a dramatic appeal to Apollo, the ancient god of the sun, for assistance moments before the torch is lit. Over the decades, new ingredients have been progressively added: music, choreography, new colors for the costumes, male performers known as “kouroi” and subtle style inclusions to give a nod to the culture of the Olympic host nation. Adding complexity also has introduced controversy, inevitably amplified by social media. Criticism this year has centered on the dresses and tunics to be worn by the performers, styled to resemble ancient Greek columns. Faultfinders have called it a rude departure from the ceremony’s customary elegance. Organizers hope the attire will create a more positive impression when witnessed at the ruins of ancient Olympia. Counting out the sequences, Ignatiou controls the music with taps on her cell phone while keeping track of the male dancers at the velodrome working on a stop motion-like routine and women who glide past them like a slowly uncoiling spring. Ignatiou has been involved with the ceremony for 36 years, as priestess, high priestess, assistant and then head choreographer since 2008. She takes in the criticism with composure. She’s still moved to tears when describing the flame lighting, but defers to her dancers to describe their experience of the five-month participation at practices. Most in their early twenties, the performers are selected from dance and drama academies with an eye on maintaining an athletic look and classic Greek aesthetic, the women with hair pulled back in neat double-braids. Christiana Katsimpraki, a 23-year-old drama school student who is taking part at Olympia for the first time, said she wants to repay the kindness shown to her by older performers. “Before I go to bed, when I close my eyes, I go through the whole choreography — a run through — to make sure I have all the steps memorized and that they’re in the right order,” she said. “It’s so that the next time I can come to the rehearsal, it all goes correctly and no one gets tired.” The ceremony is performed to sparse music, and final routine modifications are made at Olympia, in part to cope with the pockmarked and uneven ground at the site. Dancers describe the fun they have in messaging groups, the good-natured pranks played on newcomers and fun they have on the four-hour bus ride to the ancient site in southern Greece — but also the significance of the moment and the pull of the past. “I’m in awe that we’re going there and that I’m going to be part of this whole team,” 23-year-old performer Kallia Vouidaski said. “I’m going to have this entire experience that I watched when I was little on TV. I would say, ’Oh! How cool would it be if I could do this at some point.' And I did it.” The flame-lighting ceremony will start at 0830 GMT Tuesday. A separate flame-handover ceremony to the Paris 2024 organizing committee will be held in Athens on April 26. 

The United States and Israel say they achieved a “spectacular defeat” over an Iranian aerial attack that sent 300 munitions – more than 100 of them ballistic missiles – to Israel on Saturday. But as Sunday dawned in both places, a bigger question rose on the horizon: What happens next in this six-month conflict that threatens to envelop the Middle East? VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.

Ten years ago, hundreds of schoolgirls were abducted in northern Nigeria by the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. Many escaped or gained freedom through negotiations, but the fate of 82 girls hangs on the hope of reviving a once-vibrant advocacy group. The “Bring Back Our Girls,” or BBOG, group dominated global headlines after the 2014 abduction. In the decade since the raid, mass abductions have become frequent, and activists have grown weary. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.