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It’s been six months since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023. In the six months that followed the attack there has been a relentless attack by Israel on the Gaza strip with the stated intention of “wiping out Hamas.” While cease-fire talks are set to resume and although both Israel and Hamas say they will attend, the two have demands which may be difficult to meet. We talk with University of Southern California professor Emerita Laurie Brand about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says they are still planning on a military action in the Gaza city of Rafah. Mexico pulls its diplomats from Ecuador after it arrests a man inside the Mexican Embassy in Quito. And chasing total eclipses. We’ll tell you about a 63-year-old woman who has seen 20 of them!

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.

QUETTA, Pakistan — A motorcycle bomb killed two people and wounded five in Pakistan's southwest, a police official said Sunday. It's the latest unrest to hit Baluchistan province, where militants have tried to target a naval facility and a government building in recent weeks. Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday's blast in Khuzdar, which is on the main highway connecting the provincial capital Quetta with the port city of Karachi in neighboring Sindh province. Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Arif Zarkon said a woman and two police officers were among the wounded. For years, Baluchistan has been the scene of a low-level insurgency by groups demanding independence from the central government in Islamabad. Although the government says it has quelled the insurgency, violence in the province has persisted. Last Saturday, an improvised explosive device killed one person and wounded 14, including three soldiers.

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 — Vast areas of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world’s biggest coral system, have been affected by mass coral bleaching caused by a marine heatwave. Surveys have shown major bleaching is occurring along the 2,300-kilometer ecosystem. Bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef was detected weeks ago, but recent aerial surveillance carried out by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science revealed that 75 percent of 1,001 reefs inspected contain bleached corals. This means the organisms residing on them are struggling to survive.  A quarter of individual reefs surveyed recorded low to no levels of bleaching, while half had high or very high levels.  The authority that manages the reef confirmed “widespread bleaching across all three regions of the marine park” — its north, south and central sectors.   It said, “Sea surface temperatures remain 0.5-1.5 degrees above average for this time of year.” Scientists say that corals bleach, or turn white, when they are stressed by changes in water temperature, light, or nutrients. In response, the coral expels the symbiotic algae living in their tissues, exposing their white skeleton.   Not all bleaching incidents are due to warm water, but experts say the mass bleaching reported on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is caused by a marine heatwave. “The coral will expel their micro algae and so when you see a bleached coral it is not dead, but it is starving," said Lissa Schindler, Great Barrier Reef campaign manager at the Australian Marine Conservation Society. She told VOA that bleaching makes corals fragile and weak. "If they do recover, they will be more prone to disease and have a lower reproductive output. What happens, though, if temperatures are too hot for too long then the coral cannot survive and then that is when it dies, she said. Schindler says that reefs around the world are becoming more vulnerable to bleaching due to the impact of climate change. “We do not know how long our oceans can continue to absorb the amount of heat that they are, and I think these mass bleaching events that are occurring around the world are showing that this heat absorption is having a real impact on coral reefs and will continue to do so," she said. "So, with climate change there will be more severe and more frequent mass bleaching events to come to the point where coral reefs will not be able to recover in between these events.” The Great Barrier Reef runs 2,300 kilometers down Australia’s northeastern coast and covers an area about the size of Japan. Conservationists say it faces a range of threats, including warmer ocean temperatures, overfishing, pollution and coral-eating crown of thorns starfish. The Australian government has a target to cut national emissions by 43 percent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.    

CAIRO — Houthi forces in Yemen said on Sunday they had launched rockets and drones at British, U.S. and Israeli ships, the latest in a campaign of attacks on shipping in support of Palestinians in the Gaza war.  The Iran-aligned group said it had targeted a British ship and a number of U.S. frigates in the Red Sea, while in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean it had attacked two Israeli vessels heading to Israeli ports.  The operations took place during the last 72 hours, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a televised statement, without providing further details of the attacks.  Britain and the United States have also been launching retaliatory strikes against the Houthis.  U.S. forces destroyed a mobile surface-to-air missile system in a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen Saturday, the U.S. Central Command said. U.S. forces also shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle over the Red Sea, its statement said, adding that a coalition vessel also detected, engaged and destroyed one inbound anti-ship missile. No injuries or damage were reported.  Earlier, British security firm Ambrey said it had received information indicating that a vessel was attacked on Sunday in the Gulf of Aden about 102 nautical miles southwest of Mukalla in Yemen.  "Vessels in the vicinity were advised to exercise caution and report any suspicious activity," the firm said. It did not say who was responsible for the attack or give further details.  Separately, a missile landed near a vessel in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday but there was no damage to the ship or injuries to crew in the incident, 59 nautical miles southwest of the Yemeni port of Aden, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said.  "The Master of the vessel reports a missile impacted the water in close proximity to the vessel's port quarter," UKMTO said in an advisory note. "No damage to the vessel reported and crew reported safe," it added.  It did not say who fired the missile or give further details. It was not immediately clear if the attacks reported by the British agencies were the same as the latest incidents claimed by the Houthis.  Houthi attacks have disrupted global shipping through the Suez Canal, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa. The United States and Britain have launched strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. 

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.

WASHINGTON — An engine cover on a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-800 fell off Sunday during takeoff in Denver and struck the wing flap, prompting the U.S. FAA to open an investigation. No one was injured and Southwest Flight 3695 returned safely to Denver International Airport around 8:15 a.m. local time Sunday and was towed to the gate after losing the engine cowling. The Boeing aircraft bound for Houston Hobby airport with 135 passengers and six crew members aboard rose to an elevation of about 3,140 meters (10,300 feet) before returning 25 minutes after takeoff. Passengers arrived in Houston on another Southwest plane about four hours behind schedule. Southwest said maintenance teams are reviewing the aircraft. The plane entered service in June 2015, according to FAA records. Boeing referred questions to Southwest. The airline declined to say when the plane's engine last had maintenance. ABC News aired a video posted on social media platform X of the ripped engine cover flapping in the wind with a torn Southwest logo. Boeing has come under intense criticism since a door plug panel tore off a new Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 jet at about 4.88 kilometers (16,000 feet) on Jan. 5. In the aftermath of that incident, the FAA grounded the MAX 9 for several weeks, barred Boeing from increasing the MAX production rate and ordered it to develop a comprehensive plan to address "systemic quality-control issues" within 90 days. Boeing production has fallen below the maximum 38 MAX planes per month the FAA is allowing. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the MAX 9 incident. The 737-800 is in the prior generation of the best-selling 737 known as the 737 NG, which in turn was replaced by the 737 MAX. The FAA is investigating several other recent Southwest Boeing engine issues. A Southwest 737 flight aborted takeoff Thursday and taxied back to the gate at Lubbock airport in Texas after the crew reported engine issues. The FAA is also investigating a March 25 Southwest 737 flight that returned to the Austin airport in Texas after the crew reported a possible engine issue. A March 22 Southwest 737-800 flight returned to Fort Lauderdale airport after the crew reported an engine issue. It is also being reviewed by the FAA.

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.

Bunia, DRC — The death toll from an attack in a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri province rose to 25 on Sunday, a local chief and civil society leader said, after a government spokesperson and a U.N. document confirmed the attack Saturday. The Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO) group, one of many militias operating in the conflict-ridden east, carried out the killings in the village of Galayi, 70 km (45 miles) northwest of the city of Bunia, they said. Fifteen bodies were discovered Sunday, in addition to the 10 bodies recovered Saturday, Banzala Danny, a local chief, and Vital Tungulo, a civil society leader, told Reuters. An internal U.N. document seen by Reuters, and Jules Ngongo, spokesperson for the governor of Ituri province, both confirmed the attack and the initial death toll of 10 civilians. "We assure that all the killers will be punished by justice," Ngongo said. The human rights situation in Ituri has deteriorated since the beginning of the year as CODECO carries out more attacks, the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) said in a report published in March. CODECO and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), another militia group, are responsible for most civilian killings in eastern DRC, according to a report by the U.N. peacekeeping mission released in March.

Red Sea State, Sudan — Sudanese paramilitary forces have killed at least 28 people in an attack on a village south of the capital Khartoum, a local doctors' committee said Sunday. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) carried out a "massacre" in "the village of Um Adam" 150 kilometers (93 miles) south of the city Saturday, the Sudan Doctors Committee said in a statement. Sudan's war between the military, under army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, began last April 15. Many thousands of people have been killed, including up to 15,000 in a single town in the war-ravaged Darfur region, according to United Nations experts. The war has also displaced more than 8.5 million people, practically destroyed Sudan's already fragile infrastructure and pushed the country to the brink of famine. Saturday's attack "resulted in the killing (of) at least 28 innocent villagers and more than 240 people wounded," the committee said. It added that "there are a number of dead and wounded in the village that we were not able to count" due to the fighting and difficulty in reaching health facilities. A local activists' committee had given a toll of 25 earlier in the day. A medical source at the Manaqil hospital, 80 kilometers (about 50 miles) away, confirmed to AFP that they had "received 200 wounded, some of whom arrived too late." "We're facing a shortage of blood, and we don't have enough medical personnel," he added. More than 70 percent of Sudan's health facilities are out of service, according to the U.N., while those remaining receive many times their capacity and have meager resources. Both sides in the conflict have been accused of war crimes, including targeting civilians, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas and looting and obstructing aid. Since taking over Al-Jazira state just south of Khartoum in December, the RSF has laid siege to and attacked entire villages such as Um Adam. By March, at least 108 villages and settlements across the country had been set on fire and "partially or completely destroyed," the U.K.-based Center for Information Resilience has found.

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.

Maputo, Mozambique — More than 90 people died when an overcrowded makeshift ferry sank off the north coast of Mozambique, local authorities said Sunday. The converted fishing boat, carrying about 130 people, ran into trouble as it tried to reach an island off Nampula province, officials said. "Because the boat was overcrowded and unsuited to carry passengers it ended up sinking ... There are 91 people who lost their lives," said Nampula's secretary of state Jaime Neto. Many children were among the victims, he added.   Rescuers had found five survivors and were searching for more, but sea conditions were making the operation difficult. Most passengers were trying to escape the mainland because of a panic caused by disinformation about cholera, Neto said.    The southern African country, one of the world's poorest, has recorded almost 15,000 cases of the waterborne disease and 32 deaths since October, according to government data. Nampula is the worst affected region, accounting for a third of all cases. An investigative team was working to find out the cause of the boat disaster, the official said.

Beirut, Lebanon — At least 20 people were killed in clashes Sunday in Syria's Daraa governate a day after an explosion killed a group of children, a rights monitor said. Daraa was the cradle of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad but it returned to government control in 2018 under a cease-fire deal backed by Russia. The southern province has since been plagued by unrest. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said Ahmed al-Labbad, who "leads an armed group," was accused by a rival group of planting an explosive device that killed eight children Saturday in the city of Al-Sanamayn. Labbad, who previously worked for a state security agency, denied involvement, according to the Britain-based monitor. On Sunday, a rival armed group led by an individual who previously belonged to Islamic State (IS) and is now "affiliated with military intelligence," entered Al-Sanamayn and clashes erupted, the monitor said. The attackers burned the homes of the Labbad family and killed people living there, it added. Among the 20 dead were three members of Labbad's family and 14 of his fighters, the observatory said. Syrian state media did not immediately report the clashes. The official SANA news agency quoted police as saying seven children died in Saturday's explosion in the town, which it blamed on "terrorists." Attacks, armed clashes and assassinations, some claimed by IS, regularly occur in Daraa. In January, the observatory said a local leader and seven members of an IS-affiliated militia were killed in clashes with local groups. More than 500,000 people have died in Syria's civil war since it erupted in 2011. Millions have been displaced.

Tehran, Iran — Four environmentalists who spent more than five years in prison after being convicted of spying will be freed following a pardon from Iran's supreme leader, state media reported Sunday. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has pardoned more than 2,000 inmates to mark celebrations for the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Their release date was not immediately clear, but their lawyer Hojat Kermani said it will be "in the coming days." "My clients were informed by the judiciary's deputy of human rights that they are included in the amnesty," Kermani told the official IRNA news agency. He named his clients as Sepideh Kashani, Niloufar Bayani, Houman Jowkar, and Taher Ghadirain. They were arrested in 2018 on suspicion of espionage for foreign governments, among other charges, and were given jail sentences of up to 10 years. The environmentalists worked for Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, a conservationist organization which protects endangered species. In early 2018, Iranian-Canadian environmentalist and university professor Kavous Seyed Emami, 63, died in prison. He reportedly committed suicide a fortnight after his arrest, an allegation rejected by his relatives. In 2023, wildlife conservationist Morad Tahbaz was among five American prisoners released from Iran as part of a prisoner swap deal with the United States.

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.

London — Find a globe in your local library or classroom and try this: Close the eyes, spin it and drop a finger randomly on its curved, glossy surface. You’re likely to pinpoint a spot in the water, which covers 71% of the planet. Maybe you’ll alight on a place you’ve never heard of — or a spot that no longer exists after a war or because of climate change. Perhaps you’ll feel inspired to find out who lives there and what it's like. Trace the path of totality ahead of Monday's solar eclipse. Look carefully, and you'll find the cartouche — the globemaker's signature — and the antipode (point diametrically opposed) of where you're standing right now. In the age of Google Earth, watches that triangulate and cars with built-in GPS, there's something about a globe — a spherical representation of the world in miniature — that somehow endures. London globemaker Peter Bellerby thinks the human yearning to “find our place in the cosmos” has helped globes survive their original purpose — navigation — and the internet. He says it's part of the reason he went into debt making a globe for his father's 80th birthday in 2008. The experience helped inspire his company, and 16 years later — is keeping his team of about two dozen artists, cartographers and woodworkers employed. “You don’t go onto Google Earth to get inspired,” Bellerby says in his airy studio, surrounded by dozens of globes in various languages and states of completion. “A globe is very much something that connects you to the planet that we live on.” Building a globe amid breakneck change? Beyond the existential and historical appeal, earthly matters such as cost and geopolitics hover over globemaking. Bellerby says his company has experience with customs officials in regions with disputed borders such as India, China, North Africa and the Middle East. And there is a real question about whether globes — especially handmade orbs — remain relevant as more than works of art and history for those who can afford them. They are, after all, snapshots of the past — of the way their patrons and makers saw the world at a certain point in time. So, they're inherently inaccurate representations of a planet in constant flux. “Do globes play a relevant role in our time? If so, then in my opinion, this is due to their appearance as a three-dimensional body, the hard-to-control desire to turn them, and the attractiveness of their map image,” says Jan Mokre, vice president of the International Coronelli Society for the Study of Globes in Vienna. Joshua Nall, Director of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge, says a globe remains a display of “the learning, the erudition, the political interests of its owner.” How, and how much? Bellerby's globes aren't cheap. They run from about 1,290 British pounds (about $1,900) for the smallest to six figures for the 50-inch Churchill model. He makes about 600 orbs a year of varying size, framing and ornamentation. The imagery painted on the globes runs the gamut, from constellations to mountains and sea creatures. And here, The Associated Press can confirm, be dragons. Who buys a globe these days?   Bellerby doesn't name clients, but he says they come from more socioeconomic levels than you'd think — from families to businesses and heads of state. Private art collectors come calling. So do moviemakers. Bellerby says in his book that the company made four globes for the 2011 movie, “Hugo.” One globe can be seen in the 2023 movie “Tetris," including one, a freestanding straight-leg Galileo model, which features prominently in a scene. 'A political minefield'   There is no international standard for a correctly drawn earth. Countries, like people, view the world differently, and some are highly sensitive about how their territory is depicted. To offend them with “incorrectly” drawn borders on a globe is to risk impoundment of the orbs at customs. “Globemaking,” Bellerby writes, “is a political minefield.” China doesn't recognize Taiwan as a country. Morocco doesn't recognize Western Sahara. India's northern border is disputed. Many Arab countries, such as Lebanon, don't acknowledge Israel. Bellerby says the company marks disputed borders as disputed: “We cannot change or rewrite history." Speaking of history, here's the ‘earth apple’ Scientists since antiquity, famously Plato and Aristotle, posited that the earth is not flat but closer to a sphere. (More precisely, it's a spheroid — bulging at the equator, squashed at the poles). No one knows when the first terrestrial globe was created. But the oldest known surviving one dates to 1492. No one in Europe knew of the existence of North or South America at the time. It's called the “Erdapfel,” which translates to “earth apple” or “potato." The orb was made by German navigator and geographer Martin Behaim, who was working for the king of Portugal, according to the Whipple Museum in Cambridge. It contained more than just the cartographical information then known, but also details such as commodities overseas, marketplaces and local trading protocols. It's also a record of a troubled time. “The Behaim Globe is today a central document of the European world conquest and the Atlantic slave trade,” according to the German National Museum's web page on the globe, exhibited there. In the 15th century, the museum notes, "Africa was not only to be circumnavigated in search of India, but also to be developed economically. “The globe makes it clear how much the creation of our modern world was based on the violent appropriation of raw materials, the slave trade and plantation farming," the museum notes, or “the first stage of European subjugation and division of the world.” Twin globes for Churchill and Roosevelt during WWII If you've got a globe of any sort, you're in good company. During World War II, two in particular were commissioned for leaders on opposite sides of the Atlantic as symbols of power and partnership. For Christmas in 1942, the United States delivered gigantic twin globes to American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. They were 50 inches in diameter and hundreds of pounds each, believed to be the largest and most accurate globes of the time. It took more than 50 government geographers, cartographers, and draftsmen to compile the information to make the globe, constructed by the Weber Costello Company of Chicago Heights, Illinois. The Roosevelt globe now sits at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y., and Churchill’s globe is at Chartwell House, the Churchill family home in Kent, England, according to the U.S. Library of Congress. In theory, the leaders could use the globes simultaneously to formulate war strategy. “In reality, however," Bellerby writes, “the gift of the globes was a simple PR exercise, an important weapon in modern warfare.”

London — The U.S., Britain and Australia are set to begin talks on bringing new members into their AUKUS security pact as Washington pushes for Japan to be involved as a deterrent against China, the Financial Times reported. The countries' defense ministers will announce discussions Monday on "Pillar Two" of the pact, which commits the members to jointly developing quantum computing, undersea, hypersonic, artificial intelligence and cyber technology, the newspaper reported Saturday, citing people familiar with the situation. They are not considering expanding the first pillar, which is designed to deliver nuclear-powered attack submarines to Australia, the Financial Times said. AUKUS, formed by the three countries in 2021, is part of their efforts to push back against China's growing power in the Indo-Pacific region. China has called the AUKUS pact dangerous and warned it could spur a regional arms race. U.S. President Joe Biden has sought to step up partnerships with U.S. allies in Asia, including Japan and the Philippines, amid China's historic military build-up and its growing territorial assertiveness. Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo, wrote in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that Japan was "about to become the first additional Pillar II partner." A senior U.S. administration official told Reuters on Wednesday that some sort of announcement could be expected in the coming week about Japan's involvement but gave no details. Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will likely discuss expanding AUKUS to include Japan when the president hosts the prime minister in Washington on Wednesday, a source with knowledge of the talks said. Australia, however, is wary of beginning new projects until more progress has been made on supplying Canberra with nuclear-powered submarines, said the source, who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media. Obstacles for Japan A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council and China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the FT report. A Japanese foreign ministry spokesperson said the ministry could not immediately comment. Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles has said they would "seek opportunities to engage close partners in AUKUS Pillar II" and any involvement of more countries would be decided and announced by the three partners, a spokesperson from his office said. Britain's defense ministry said it too would like to involve more allies in this work, subject to joint agreement. While the U.S. is keen to see Japanese involvement in Pillar Two, officials and experts say obstacles remain, given a need for Japan to introduce better cyber defenses and stricter rules for guarding secrets. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, an architect of U.S. Indo-Pacific policy, said Wednesday the U.S. was encouraging Japan to do more to protect intellectual property and hold officials accountable for secrets. "It's fair to say that Japan has taken some of those steps, but not all of them," he said. The United States has long said that other countries in Europe and Asia are expected to join the second pillar of AUKUS. The senior U.S. official said any decisions about who would be involved in Pillar Two would be made by the three AUKUS members, whose defense ministers had been considering the questions for many months, based on what countries could bring to the project. Campbell said that other countries had expressed interest in participating in AUKUS. "I think you'll hear that we have something to say about that next week and there also will be further engagement among the three defense ministers of the United States, Australia, and Great Britain as they focus on this effort as well," Campbell told the Center for a New American Security think tank. Campbell also said Wednesday the AUKUS submarine project could help deter any Chinese move against Taiwan, the democratically governed island that Beijing claims as part of China. Biden, Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. are to hold a trilateral summit Thursday.

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.