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new york — Anti-war demonstrations ceased this week at a small number of U.S. universities after school leaders struck deals with pro-Palestinian protesters, fending off possible disruptions of final exams and graduation ceremonies. The agreements at schools including Brown, Northwestern and Rutgers universities stand out amid the chaotic scenes and 2,400-plus arrests on 46 campuses nationwide since April 17. Tent encampments and building takeovers have disrupted classes at some schools, including Columbia University and the University of California-Los Angeles. Deals included commitments by universities to review their investments in Israel or hear calls to stop doing business with the longtime U.S. ally. Many protester demands have zeroed in on links to the Israeli military as the war grinds on in Gaza. The agreements to even discuss divestment mark a major shift on an issue that has been controversial for years, with opponents of a long-running campaign to boycott Israel saying it veers into antisemitism. But while the colleges have made concessions around amnesty for protesters and funding for Middle Eastern studies, they have made no promises about changing their investments. "I think for some universities, it might be just a delaying tactic" to calm the protests, said Ralph Young, a history professor who studies American dissent at Temple University in Philadelphia. "The end of the semester is happening now. And maybe by the time the next semester begins, there is a cease-fire in Gaza." Some university boards may never vote on divesting from Israel, which can be a complicated process, Young said. And some state schools have said they lack the authority to do so. But Young said dialogue is a better tactic than arrests. Talking "at least gives the protesters the feeling that they're getting somewhere," he said. "Whether they are getting somewhere or not is another question." Israel has called the protests antisemitic; its critics say the country uses such allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters were caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, protest organizers — some of whom are Jewish — have called it a peaceful movement to defend Palestinian rights and protest the war. Administrators at the University of California at Riverside announced an agreement Friday with protesters to close their campus encampment. The deal included the formation of a task force to explore removing Riverside's endowment from the broader UC system's management and investing those funds "in a manner that will be financially and ethically sound for the university with consideration to the companies involved in arms manufacturing and delivery." The announcement marked an apparent split with the policy of the 10-campus UC system, which last week said it opposes "calls for boycott against and divestment from Israel." Demonstrators at Rutgers — where finals were paused because of the protests on its New Brunswick, New Jersey, campus — similarly packed up their tents Thursday afternoon. The state university agreed to establish an Arab Cultural Center and to not retaliate against any students involved in the camp. Protesters at Brown in Rhode Island agreed to dismantle their encampment on Tuesday. School officials said students could present arguments for divesting Brown's endowment from companies contributing to and profiting from the war in Gaza. In addition, Brown President Christina Paxson will ask an advisory committee to make a recommendation on divestment by September 30, which will be put before the school's governing corporation for a vote in October. Northwestern's Deering Meadow in suburban Chicago also fell silent after an agreement Monday. The deal curbed protest activity in return for reestablishing an advisory committee on university investments and other commitments. The arrangement drew dissent from both sides. Some pro-Palestinian protesters condemned it as a failure to stick to their original demands, while some supporters of Israel said it represented cowardly capitulation. Seven of 18 members subsequently resigned from a university committee that advises the administration on addressing antisemitism, Islamophobia and expressions of hatred on campus, saying they couldn't continue to serve "with antisemitism so present at Northwestern in public view for the past week." Michael Simon, the executive director of an organization for Jewish students, Northwestern Hillel, said he resigned after concluding that the committee could not achieve its goals. Faculty at Pomona College in California voted in favor of divesting from companies they said are funding Israel's war in Gaza, a group of faculty and students said Friday. The vote Thursday is not binding on the liberal arts school of nearly 1,800 students east of Los Angeles. But supporters said they hoped it would encourage the board to stop investing in these companies and start disclosing where it makes its investments. Meanwhile, arrests of demonstrators continued elsewhere. About a dozen protesters who refused police orders to leave an encampment at New York University were arrested early Friday, and about 30 more left voluntarily, NYU spokesperson John Beckman said. The school asked city police to intervene, he added. NYPD officers also cleared an encampment at The New School in Greenwich Village at the request of school administrators. No arrests were announced. Another 132 protesters were arrested when police broke up an encampment at the State University of New York at New Paltz starting late Thursday, authorities said. And nine were arrested at the University of Tennessee, including seven students who Chancellor Donde Plowman said would also be sanctioned under the school's code of conduct. The movement began April 17 at Columbia, where student protesters built an encampment to call for an end to the Israel-Hamas war. Over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there. Israel launched its offensive after October 7, when Hamas militants entered Israel and killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages.

SAO PAULO — Heavy rains in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul killed 39 people, with 68 more missing, the state civil defense agency said Friday, as record floods devastated cities and forced thousands to leave their homes. It was the fourth such environmental disaster in a year, following floods in July, September and November 2023 that killed 75 people in total. The flooding statewide has surpassed that seen during a historic 1941 deluge, according to the Brazilian Geological Service. In some cities, water levels were at their highest since records began nearly 150 years ago, the agency said. On Thursday, a dam at a hydroelectric plant between the cities of Bento Goncalves and Cotipora partially collapsed and entire cities in the Taquari River valley, like Lajeado and Estrela, were completely overtaken by water. In the town of Feliz, 80 kilometers from the state capital, Porto Alegre, a massively swollen river swept away a bridge that connected it with the neighboring city of Linha Nova. Operators reported electricity, communications and water cuts across the state. More than 24,000 people had to leave their homes, according to the civil defense agency. Without internet, telephone service or electricity, residents struggled to provide updates or information to their relatives living in other states. Helicopters flew continually over the cities while stranded families with children awaited rescue on the rooftops. Isolete Neumann, 58, lives in the city of Lajeado in the Taquari River valley and told The Associated Press she has never before seen what she is seeing now. "People were making barricades in front of hospitals with sand and gravel. It felt like a horror movie," she said by phone. Some people in her region were so desperate, she added, that they threw themselves into the water currents. Neumann's neighborhood wasn't inundated but has no running water and she hasn't showered since Tuesday. She said she's collecting rainwater in a basin so she can cook. A clothing store she owns in the city's central area is flooded, she added. The downpour started Monday and is expected to last at least through Saturday, Marcelo Seluchi, chief meteorologist at the National Center for Monitoring and Alerts of Natural Disasters, told Brazil's public television network Friday. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva acknowledged the flood victims at a press conference on Friday alongside Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Brasilia. "The first words from Minister Fumio Kishida in the meeting we held were of solidarity with the people of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, who are victims by one of the largest floods we have ever known. Never before in the history of Brazil had there been such a quantity of rain in one single location," Lula said. Weather across South America is affected by the climate phenomenon El Niño, a periodic, naturally occurring event that warms surface waters in the Equatorial Pacific region. In Brazil, El Niño has historically caused droughts in the north and intense rainfall in the south. This year, the impacts of El Niño have been particularly dramatic, with a historic drought in the Amazon. Scientists say extreme weather is happening more frequently because of human-caused climate change. 

Marking World Press Freedom Day, a media watchdog report on global press freedom paints a discouraging picture of lack of political will to defend a free press. The number of writers jailed reached a five-year high as governments looked to silence critics. Massive protests on college campuses across the U.S. are giving journalism students on-the-job-training.

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Washington — On Saturday, March 2, at 2:20 a.m., Serhii Gadarzhi woke up to a drone approaching his apartment building in Odesa, Ukraine. He heard an explosion just outside his windows and rushed to his 2-year-old daughter's bedroom. She was there. He grabbed the child, wrapped her in a blanket and went to check on his wife and their 4-month-old son. "The door was open. There was nothing behind it — just emptiness. My Anichka is gone. My boy Timosha is gone," Gadarzhi relates on the Odesa Baptist YouTube channel. Their bodies were found in the rubble after almost 24 hours of searching. All seven floors had collapsed on top of his wife and the baby sleeping on her chest, Gadarzhi said. That Russian attack with Iranian-made drones killed 12 people, including five children and seven adults. "I want to say to Mr. James Michael Johnson: Dear brother, we have a war going on. A terrible war. And so many believers, brothers and sisters, are being killed. Little children are being killed. Help is very important to us. Especially military help because if there were a missile to shoot down that drone, the drone wouldn't have flown in our house," he says on the video. Johnson, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, had for months delayed bringing to the floor of the House a bill providing $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, including ammunition for its air defense systems. The bill was finally approved on April 20 despite resistance from some members of Johnson's own Republican Party. Just three days before the vote, Gadarzhi, a Ukrainian Baptist and son-in-law of a local Baptist pastor, told his story to Johnson in person. Gadarzhi told VOA that the speaker already knew about his family's tragedy. "One can see in his eyes that he was compassionate, that he wanted to support us and his response was very sincere," he said. That meeting followed eight months of behind-the-scenes efforts by Ukrainian Protestants and their allies in the United States to tell Republican members of Congress about the suffering of the faithful at the hands of the Russian forces in the occupied portions of Ukraine. Steven Moore, an Oklahoma native, was behind some of these efforts. He worked as a chief of staff in the House of Representatives to a leading Republican member for seven years, after which he lived in Ukraine for a year. When Russia invaded Ukraine, he was visiting his mother in Tulsa but was back in Ukraine on day five of the full-scale invasion. Moore founded the Ukraine Freedom Project NGO (UFP), which began delivering food and supplies to the front for the residents and Ukraine's armed forces. Through his work, he learned about abuses inflicted on Ukrainian civilians by the Russian occupying forces, but one story struck him. Victor, an Evangelical pastor from Lugansk, was evacuating a group of civilians, including a pregnant woman and a baby, when Russians stopped his car and took him to a basement. "They tortured him for 25 days, including one day when they were torturing him with an electrical Taser. And a Russian Orthodox priest was standing over him, trying to cast demons out of him because he was an Evangelical Christian. It blew my mind," Moore told VOA. He shared this story with a friend, Karl Ahlgren, a fellow Oklahoman and former chief of staff of a Republican congressman. "When the full-scale invasion started, Republicans in particular were pretty supportive of Ukraine, and then their support waned. We had to regroup and figure out what we could do to get the right message out to Republicans," said Ahlgren, who joined UFP as a vice president for public policy. Beginning in September 2023, Moore, Ahlgren and their Chief Operating Officer Anna Shvetsova met with about 100 members of Congress and their staff, telling them about the persecution of Ukrainian Protestants by Russians. UFP conducted a survey that showed 70% of Evangelical Christians who vote Republican are more likely to support Ukraine if they learn about Russia torturing and murdering people of their faith, Moore said. They were surprised to discover that most members of Congress knew nothing about it. "Of the people we met with, there were probably three or four who knew some of the things we were talking about," Ahlgren said. Moore said the group "had video of people talking about being tortured, and we would show these videos to members of Congress, to their staff, and they would tear up." Other organizations, including the advocacy group Razom for Ukraine, joined the effort. "I'm an American Baptist. I was shocked, in particular, that so many Baptist churches in occupied Ukraine have been harassed," said Melinda Haring, a senior adviser for Razom for Ukraine. "More than 26 pastors have been killed since the full-scale war, and 400 Baptist congregations have lost their premises or some of their property." She said that at the meetings with the members of Congress and their staffers, she and her colleagues provided statistics of damage caused by Russia to the Ukrainian Christians, told personal stories and prayed together. Some efforts specifically targeted Johnson, a Southern Baptist from Louisiana. "We sponsored a billboard with Mike Johnson's favorite Bible verse," Haring said. "It's a passage from the Book of Esther. Esther is before her uncle Mordecai, and she's afraid to see the king; if she goes and sees the king without his permission, she can be killed, and Mordecai says, 'You were chosen for a time like this.' "We learned that Mike Johnson believed he was chosen to be the speaker of the House for an important time. So, our billboard had a picture of a destroyed Baptist church in Berdiansk with that Bible quote." Razom placed six of the billboards in Louisiana, including one in front of Johnson's Cypress Baptist Church in Shreveport. Razom, UFP and other organizations cosponsored multiple trips by Ukrainian religious leaders to the United States and helped them to organize meetings with members of Congress. In November, 18 religious leaders and members of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations visited the United States. In early February, dozens of representatives of Ukrainian churches attended Ukrainian Week in Washington, organized around the National Prayer Breakfast. Then, four of them met with Johnson. "The meeting with the speaker was very warm, and the conversation was constructive," said Anatoliy Kozachok, the senior bishop of the Ukrainian Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith. He said they handed Johnson two letters urging him to support Ukraine, one from all Ukrainian Christians and one from the Protestants. The speaker told them he and his colleagues were working hard to resolve the issue. "We felt united as people with the same values. There was a desire to help and to find a solution to the issue of aid for Ukraine," Kozachok told VOA. Another meeting participant, Valeriy Antonyuk, head of the All-Ukrainian Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists, said the group discussed shared values with Johnson. "We Baptists have always defended everyone's right to practice their faith freely," he told VOA. The Ukrainian church leaders were far from the only ones bringing intense pressure on Johnson to defy much of his own party and allow the aid bill to come to a vote, and only Johnson knows how decisive their efforts were in his final decision. But with Ukrainian forces losing ground and desperately short of ammunition, the bill sailed through Congress on a vote of 311 to 112 and was signed into law by President Joe Biden on April 24, clearing the way for the military assistance to begin flowing again.

Kano, Nigeria — Gunmen from criminal gangs killed 25 people when they raided four villages in northwestern Nigeria in reprisals over military offensives on their hideouts, a local security official said Friday. The attacks on Thursday took place in Katsina State, one of the regions in northwest Nigeria hit by armed gangs known locally as bandits who carry out mass kidnappings for ransom and looting raids on villages. Bandit militias stormed the villages of Unguwar Sarki, Gangara, Tafi and Kore in Sabuwa district late on Thursday, opening fire on residents, said Nasiru Babangida, Katsina state internal security commissioner. "Twenty-five people were killed in the attacks on the four communities, 19 of them in Unguwar Sarki village alone," Babangida told local radio. Several residents were injured while others were kidnapped by the criminals, he said. "Most of those killed were vigilantes who came out to confront the bandits." Many communities in northwest Nigeria have formed self-defense vigilante forces to fight off bandits in remote areas with little state presence, and the two sides are locked in a spiral of tit-for-tat killings and reprisals. The bandits raided the villages in response to ongoing military offensives against their camps in the area and in neighboring Kaduna state where they have suffered a large number of casualties, Babangida said. "The attacks were in retaliation for the aerial bombings of their camps in Katsina and Kaduna states that have killed more than 200 of them," he said. The gangs who maintain camps in vast forests straddling Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger states have made headlines for mass kidnappings of students from schools in recent years. Bandits have no ideological leaning and are motivated by financial gains but there has been concern from analysts and officials over their increasing alliance with jihadists waging a 15-year armed rebellion in the northeast of Nigeria.  

tbilisi, georgia — Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on Friday rejected criticism from the United States and European Union of a draft "foreign agents" bill, saying opponents of it were unwilling to engage in a meaningful discussion.  The draft legislation, which is winding its way through the Georgian Parliament, would require organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as agents of foreign influence, a requirement opponents attack as authoritarian and Kremlin-inspired.  Several thousand protesters took to the streets again Friday to voice their opposition, moving toward the headquarters of the ruling Georgian Dream party and then attending a Holy Friday service ahead of Orthodox Easter Sunday.   The European Union and the United States have urged Tbilisi to drop the legislation or risk harming its chances of European Union membership and a broader Euro-Atlantic future.  The standoff is seen as part of a wider struggle that could determine whether Georgia, a country of 3.7 million people that has experienced war and revolution since the fall of the Soviet Union, moves closer to Europe or back under Moscow's influence.  Kobakhidze said the legislation was necessary for transparency and accountability in the South Caucasus nation.  "I explained to [senior U.S. diplomat Derek] Chollet that false statements made by the officials of the U.S. State Department about the transparency bill and street rallies remind us of similar false statements made by the former U.S. ambassador in 2020-2023," Kobakhidze said on X.  He said the previous U.S. statements had encouraged violence from what he called foreign-funded actors and had supported "revolutionary processes" that he said had been unsuccessful.   "I clarified to Mr. Chollet that it requires a special effort to restart the relations [between Georgia and the United States] against this background, which is impossible without a fair and honest approach."  The White House has expressed concern that the legislation could stifle dissent and free speech.  Kobakhidze also expressed disappointment about a conversation with European Council President Charles Michel, saying the EU had "been reluctant to engage in substantive discussions."  "Furthermore, I highlighted that we have not yet heard any counterarguments against this proposed legislation," he said.  Michel said on X that "Georgian citizens' call for an open democratic and pluralistic society must be heeded. ... Georgia's future belongs with the EU. Don't miss this historic chance."  Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder of the Georgian Dream party and a former prime minister, has said he will fight for what he called "the full restoration of the sovereignty of Georgia." 

WASHINGTON — Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas and his wife were indicted on conspiracy and bribery charges and taken into custody Friday in connection with a U.S. Department of Justice probe into the couple's ties to the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. From 2014 to 2021, Cuellar, 68, and his wife allegedly accepted nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico, according to the indictment. In exchange, Cuellar is accused of agreeing to advance the interests of the country and the bank in the U.S., also according to the indictment. Among other things, Cuellar agreed to influence legislation favorable to Azerbaijan and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the floor of the U.S. House, the indictment states. The Department of Justice said the couple surrendered to authorities on Friday and were taken into custody. They made an initial appearance before a federal judge in Houston and were each released on $100,000 bond, the DOJ said. The longtime congressman released a statement Friday saying he and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, 67, "are innocent of these allegations." Neither Cuellar nor his attorney immediately responded to calls seeking comment on the matter. In addition to bribery and conspiracy, the couple face charges including wire fraud conspiracy, acting as agents of foreign principals and money laundering. If convicted, they face up to decades in prison and forfeiture of any property linked to proceeds from the alleged scheme. The payments to the couple initially went through a Texas-based shell company owned by Imelda Cuellar and two of the couple's children, according to the indictment. That company received payments from the Azerbaijan energy company of $25,000 per month under a contract, purportedly in exchange for unspecified strategic consulting and advising services. "In reality, the contract was a sham used to disguise and legitimate the corrupt agreement between Henry Cuellar and the government of Azerbaijan," the indictment states. The indictment also alleges an Azerbaijani diplomat referred to Henry Cuellar in text messages as "boss" and also that a member of Cuellar's staff sent multiple emails to officials at the Department of State pressuring them to renew a U.S. passport for an Azerbaijani diplomat's daughter. Cuellar was at one time the co-chair of the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus. The FBI searched the congressman's house in the border city of Laredo in 2022, and Cuellar's attorney at that time said Cuellar was not the target of that investigation. That search was part of a broader investigation related to Azerbaijan that saw FBI agents serve a raft of subpoenas and conduct interviews in Washington and Texas, a person with direct knowledge of the probe previously told The Associated Press. 

The latest global press freedom rankings from media watchdog Reporters Without Borders present a discouraging picture, including a lack of political will to defend a free press. Afghanistan, Argentina and the U.S. are among countries whose rank fell. For VOA, Cristina Caicedo Smit has the story.

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.

new york — The World Food Program warned Friday that time is running out to prevent starvation in Sudan's Darfur region, as intensifying clashes in North Darfur's capital are preventing aid deliveries to the wider Darfur region. "The situation is dire," WFP Sudan spokesperson Leni Kinzli told reporters in a briefing from Nairobi, Kenya. "People are resorting to consuming grass and peanut shells, and if assistance doesn't reach them soon, we risk witnessing widespread starvation and death in Darfur and across other conflict areas in Sudan." The WFP estimates that more than 1.7 million people across Darfur are experiencing the highest levels of hunger and food insecurity. The United Nations has been among the voices warning that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have encircled and are poised to attack North Darfur's capital, El Fasher. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have positions inside the city but are besieged by the RSF. So are about 1.5 million residents, including about 800,000 internally displaced persons. Airstrikes and shelling are exacerbating El Fasher's hunger emergency. The United Nations estimates 330,000 people are facing crisis levels of food insecurity in the city due to a shortage of food items and soaring prices. Inside North Darfur's Zamzam camp, one of the largest displacement camps in Sudan, Doctors Without Borders said this week that the situation is catastrophic, especially for children. Of more than 46,000 children screened, the charity found 30% suffering from acute malnutrition and 8% suffering from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition. The two border crossings that humanitarians used to reach Darfur from neighboring Chad have been closed. Aid convoys using the Tine crossing have been suspended because of the fighting in El Fasher, while Sudan's government has stopped aid trucks going through the Adre crossing because it fears the RSF will use the crossing to smuggle weapons into Darfur. Kinzli said that before the recent fighting, WFP had planned several convoys from Chad with assistance for 700,000 people across Darfur. The delivery would have lasted many of them for two to three months, through the approaching rainy season, she said. "Beyond that, we were hoping to scale up and ramp up even more, but now with these access constraints, with the security concerns as well as these bureaucratic restrictions, it makes it difficult for us at the moment," she said. Fears of atrocities El Fasher is the only city in Darfur that the RSF has not captured. An impending battle could unleash atrocities similar to those of the genocide carried out by Arab Janjaweed fighters against African Zaghawa, Masalit, Fur and other non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur in the early 2000s. Janjaweed fighters make up today's RSF. Analysts at the Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab are tracking the situation using satellites and other resources. They said in a report Thursday that 23 communities north and west of El Fasher have been intentionally burned to the ground in the past five weeks. The fate of the residents is not known. The researchers say the location of the communities is consistent with satellite imagery they have analyzed showing that the RSF has advanced in those directions. "We additionally have evidence they are also in the eastern side of El Fasher, and we are currently monitoring RSF forces moving from the south, from Nyala," Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the lab, told VOA. Nyala is the capital of South Darfur state. "At present we are seeing snapshots of their force strength," he said. "In certain cases, we have seen battalion- to regiment-size force massings. In some cases, including over a hundred vehicles." The fact that the RSF has not yet attacked El Fasher demonstrates that international pressure can be an effective tool, Raymond said. "RSF could have moved earlier; they have not yet," he said. "We have to use this moment to pull RSF forces back and to create a humanitarian envelope in which aid can be delivered — first in El Fasher and then into the interior of Darfur." He said time is running out, as the rainy season is about to start.

washington — "Is it good for the Jews?" That has been a question long asked by Jewish Americans, especially immigrants and those of the second generation, scarred by memories of the Holocaust, when assessing the policies of the U.S. government and the pledges of political candidates. Most of them, most of the time since Franklin Roosevelt first ran for president in 1932, have voted for the Democrat at the top of the ticket. Fast forward 92 years. More Jews have been voting Republican in recent elections, while many younger and left-leaning Jewish voters no longer see unequivocal support for Israel as a litmus test. Instead, rising antisemitism is reforging a sense of Jewish self-identity — especially among those who consider themselves fully assimilated and accepted in the American mainstream culture. Antisemitism “comes from all sides," said Rachel Sass, antisemitic incident specialist at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism. "There are right-wing extremists, left-wing extremists, anti-Israel protesters. There isn't necessarily a clear political or ideological bent, just antisemitism.” There has been a 900% increase in the number of antisemitic incidents in the past decade, with a spike since the Israel-Hamas conflict blew up last year, according to the ADL.  Jewish Americans are further alarmed by chants on college campuses — in reaction to Israel's retaliatory strikes on Gaza following the October 7 Hamas terror attack — of "from the river to sea" and "go back to Poland,” along with some physical assaults on Jewish students. "I've seen people respond with a level of fear, being afraid to reveal their Jewish identity. I've seen other people who have even leaned more into pride in their Jewish identity, wanting to be even more open because they feel that it's very important," said Sass. Bestselling novelist Allison Winn Scotch said on the social media platform Threads, "Every day, as a Jewish American, I get increasingly nervous that we can't come back from the brink of this. I don't know where my family could go though, and I don't know how we would stay safe when we got there anyway." She continued, "Your Jewish friends are living with a blooming seed of dread in the pits of our stomachs."   America provided a refuge for Eastern European Jews escaping 19th-century pogroms, who followed the emigration from the more established and prosperous German Jewish community. Many Jews in the United States, however, did not feel totally accepted into broader American culture until the civil rights movement. Changes not only benefited Blacks but also removed remaining barriers to Jews — such as housing covenants and restricted country club memberships, as well as hiring discrimination at prestigious law firms and entry quotas at the Ivy League universities that such attorneys were drawn from. The contemporary surge in antisemitism is not institutional. "It's children being targeted at school with antisemitic bullying, synagogues being targeted with threats of bombs or shootings, people even being assaulted on the street because they are visibly Jewish or Orthodox," according to Sass at the ADL. American Jews, as is the case with other ethnic or minority groups, do not wholly cast votes based on a single issue. "We swing with the rest of the country around economic issues, war and peace and all kinds of issues," Mark Mellman, president of the Democratic Majority for Israel, told VOA. The Republican Jewish Coalition's political and communications director, Sam Markstein, said, "I think this will be the first time for a lot of Jewish voters who've never even considered voting Republican in their lives seriously making that consideration this year because of the dereliction of leadership by the Biden administration on these issues." Donald Trump, hoping for a second term as president but defeated by Joe Biden four years ago, received somewhere between one-fourth and one-third of the Jewish vote in 2020, according to several polls and Jewish organizations. "Anybody who knows anything about Donald Trump knows that his alliances are based on people's commitment to him personally, not to a set of values, not to a set of strategic interests," said Mellman. Republicans have done a better job than Democrats in condemning politicians in their respective parties who make antisemitic remarks, Markstein contended, pointing out the RJC supports primary challengers to Republicans in Congress who make such discriminatory comments. "Unfortunately, there are too many on the Democratic side that don't seem to want to follow that path and want to either run and hide or issue mealy-mouthed responses that piss everybody off," Markstein told VOA. Although Jews constitute only 2.4% of the U.S. adult population, they are more likely to vote than the general registered voting population and to make political donations. "The Jewish vote in those [swing] states is going to be the decisive [factor]," Markstein predicted. The Republicans tend to draw most of their Jewish strength from the religious Orthodox, the fastest-growing but still smallest Jewish community among the three largest denominations. Most Orthodox Jews strongly support Israel. "Day after day, the administration's response gets less and less supportive of Israel," Markstein contended. A majority of Conservative and Reform Jews tend to vote for Democrats and are more open-minded about a two-state solution in the Middle East that would create a sovereign Palestine.  "To retain Jewish support, Biden's campaign needs to keep doing exactly what they're doing — standing strong with Israel, against antisemitism and behind the American Jewish community," Mellman said. "That's exactly what I think American Jews are looking for at this very difficult time. It's exactly what the president is doing." VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says Hamas does not appear poised to attack U.S. forces who are building a pier off the Gaza coast to deliver aid to the war-torn strip by sea. A mortar attack targeted the pier site earlier but caused no injuries. VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb reports.

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islamabad — Pakistan on Friday witnessed the launch of its first lunar satellite aboard China’s historic mission to retrieve samples from the little explored far side of the moon in a technologically collaborative mission that signals deepening ties between the countries. China’s largest rocket, a Long March-5, blasted off from the Wencheng Space Launch Center on Hainan Island at 09:27 UTC, ferrying China’s 8-metric-ton Chang’e-6 probe. If successful, the uncrewed mission will make China the first country to retrieve samples from the moon’s largely unexplored South Pole, also known as the “far side” of the moon that is not visible from Earth. Chang’e-6 will spend 48 hours digging up 2 kilograms of surface samples before returning to a landing spot in Inner Mongolia. In 2018, China achieved its first unmanned moon landing on the far side with the Chang'e-4 probe, which did not retrieve samples. India became the first country to land near the moon’s South Pole in August with its Chandrayaan-3. Chang’e-6 is carrying cargo from Pakistan, Italy, France and the European Space Agency. According to the Institute of Space Technology (IST) in Islamabad, Pakistan’s lunar cube satellite named ICUBE-Qamar (or ICUBE-Q for short) will be placed into lunar orbit within five days, circling the moon for three to six months, photographing the surface for research purposes. IST engineers say ICUBE-Q is also designed to "obtain lunar magnetic field data; establish a lunar magnetic field model and lay the foundation for subsequent international cooperation on the moon.” IST developed the iCUBE-Qamar satellite in collaboration with the country’s space agency SUPARCO and China’s Shanghai University. Qamar, which means moon in Urdu, is the nuclear-armed South Asian nation’s first mission in space. The iCUBE-Q orbiter has two optical cameras that will gather images of the lunar surface. 'Milestone' The mission’s launch from China was carried live on Pakistan state television. Calling it a "milestone,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said it would help the country build capacity in satellite communications and open new avenues for scientific research, economic development and national security, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Information. The Pakistan-China friendship, Sharif said, has “gone beyond borders to reach space,” according to the official statement. Beijing is one of Islamabad’s closest allies. Pakistan is home to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a multibillion-dollar development project that is part of Beijing’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative. Pakistan’s navy in late April launched its first Hangor-class submarine, built jointly with China, with a ceremony in China’s Wuhan province. According to the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace, Beijing is Islamabad’s leading supplier of conventional and strategic weapons platforms. China is also the dominant supplier of Pakistan’s higher-end offensive strike capabilities, the report found. Some information for this report came from Reuters. 

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geneva — Warning of a bloodbath should Israeli forces attack Rafah, U.N. agencies are making contingency plans to provide health care and other essential aid to the besieged population in the southern Gaza city. “Despite measures, the ailing health system will not be able to withstand the potential scale of devastation that the incursion will cause,” said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for occupied Palestinian territories. “With more than 1.2 million people crammed in Rafah, an operation will result in worsening the humanitarian catastrophe,” he said. Speaking from Jerusalem Friday, Peeperkorn told journalists in Geneva that an assault on Rafah will trigger a new wave of displacement, which “will lead to more overcrowding, reduced access to essential food, water and sanitation services, and increased infectious disease outbreaks.” WHO reports most health care facilities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed amid repeated attacks and airstrikes by Israeli forces. It says the health system is barely surviving, with 12 out of 36 hospitals and 22 out of 88 primary health care facilities only partially functional. The U.N. health agency says three small hospitals in Rafah that currently are partially operational “will become unsafe to be reached by patients, staff, ambulance and humanitarians when hostilities intensify.” Peeperkorn said, “Every time we have seen when there is a military incursion in places in the north, in Gaza city, or Khan Younis, these hospitals very quickly become not reachable. So, they go from being partly functional very quickly to nonfunctional.” As part of contingency efforts in southern Gaza, WHO and partners are setting up a new field hospital in Al Mawasi in Rafah and a large warehouse in the central Gaza city of Deir Al Balah, from where medical supplies can be quickly sent to facilities in the Middle Area and North Gaza. Plans are underway to set up other warehouses where medical supplies can be prepositioned. Nasser Medical Complex, the most important hospital in south Gaza, was severely damaged and put out of commission amid heavy fighting and bombing in Khan Younis. Peeperkorn said the complex is being refurbished and that hospital staff have completed the first phase of restoration, “including cleaning and ensuring essential equipment is functioning.” He noted that the emergency ward, the maternity ward, nine operating theaters, intensive care unit and several other departments now are partially operational. “I want to really say that this contingency plan is a Band-Aid. It will absolutely not prevent the expected substantial additional mortality and morbidity caused by a military operation,” he said. “We do not want to make those plans. I want to make it very clear: We do not want to make these plans. We all, of course, hope and expect that this military incursion will not happen and that we will move to a sustained cease-fire.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that Israeli forces would invade Rafah regardless of the outcome of ongoing hostage release negotiations with Hamas. Netanyahu vowed to eliminate Hamas following the militant group’s attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in the killing of some 1,200 people and 250 being taken hostage. In a statement Wednesday, Martin Griffiths, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs warned that “a ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words.” “For the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled to Gaza’s southernmost point to escape disease, famine, mass graves and direct fighting, a ground invasion would spell even more trauma and death,” he said. Aid agencies agree there have been recent improvements in bringing more aid into Gaza but say that it still is not enough and “the risk of famine is not over.” “Rafah is at the heart of the humanitarian operations in Gaza,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “It is where dozens of aid organizations store their lifesaving supplies that they deliver to civilians across the Gaza Strip. Rafah is central to the U.N. and partners’ ongoing efforts to provide food, water, health, sanitation, hygiene, and other critical support to people,” he said. For example, he notes that the U.N. Population Fund operates clinics for sexual and reproductive health at field hospitals in Rafah; UNICEF and partners treat acutely malnourished children at more than 50 sites in Rafah; the World Food Program distributes nutrition supplements to children under 5, pregnant and breastfeeding women in Rafah. “Most importantly, there are hundreds of thousands of civilians who have fled to Rafah to escape bombardment, an imminent famine and disease,” he said. Laerke told journalists that he had no idea whether it was possible to move 1.2 million people out of Rafah to a so-called safe place in advance of a military incursion by Israel. However, he scotched any suggestion of U.N. involvement in such a scheme. “The United Nations is not part of any planning and will not participate in any ordered non-voluntary evacuation of people,” adding that “I have not in my experience, limited as it is, ever seen this amount of people voluntarily move overnight.”