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Several commanders of the Hamas militant group have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, Hamas and Israel announced Wednesday, as clashes between the two sides escalate. The tensions have spilled over into the West Bank, where hundreds of residents in Arab communities staged overnight protests against recent actions of Israeli security forces against Palestinians.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken released the State Department’s annual international religious freedom report, singling out Iran, Myanmar, Russia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and China as some of the world’s worst violators of what Blinken termed a core human right.  VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has the story. 
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Washington plans to lift many coronavirus restrictions and aims for a full reopening by mid-June. The U.S. capital has already vaccinated more than 70% of its residents. Saqib Ul Islam reports on a unique vaccine drive in the city.
Camera: Saqib Ul Islam      Producer: Saqib Ul Islam 
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Among the many stories of World War Two, Nazi Germany’s Siege of Leningrad —  the Soviet city now known as Russia’s Saint Petersburg —  stands among the most harrowing. It also helped shape the world we live in today, as Charles Maynes reports for VOA, from St. Petersburg.Camera: Ricardo Marquina Montañana
 
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The United States’ military footprint in Afghanistan is shrinking at a steady pace, according to U.S. military planners, though they are refusing to say how many troops are still in the country.U.S. Central Command announced Tuesday that it has completed “between 6-12% of the entire retrograde process,” removing the equivalent of more than 100 cargo planeloads of equipment from Afghanistan while turning over another 1,800 pieces of equipment to be destroyed.But Central Command (CENTCOM) and the Pentagon declined to share information on how many of the 2,500 to 3,500 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, citing security concerns.“We have an obligation to keep our people safe,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.“We have to assume that this is going to be an opposed retrograde,” he said. “If we assumed anything less it would be irresponsible of us.” The U.S. has sent elements of an Army Ranger task force to Afghanistan to help protect withdrawing U.S. and coalition forces. It has also sent six B-52 long-range bombers and 12 F-18 fighter-bombers to the region, and officials extended the deployment of the USS Dwight D Eisenhower carrier strike group to the North Arabian Sea to provide additional firepower, if necessary.US, NATO Troops Leaving Afghanistan as Fighting Escalates White House confirms troops, equipment have left the country, the start of the end of America’s longest warIn the weeks leading up to the official start of the U.S. withdrawal, Taliban officials repeatedly threatened to target U.S. and coalition forces, arguing the foreign troops needed to be gone by May 1 — the deadline under an agreement signed between the Taliban and the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump.Despite those threats, though, Taliban commanders have focused their attacks on Afghan government forces.On Monday, Kirby told Pentagon reporters that while the level of violence in Afghanistan was “still too high,” U.S. commanders have not run into any problems that would slow down the U.S. pullout.Following months of internal deliberations and consultation with allies, U.S. President Joe Biden announced last month that all U.S. forces would leave Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which were planned by the al-Qaida terror group in Afghanistan.U.S. military and intelligence officials have voiced concern about the impact the withdrawal will have on their ability to collect information on terrorist groups and counter plots emanating from Afghanistan.U.S. military officials have said they will rely on “over-the-horizon” surveillance and strike capabilities once all U.S. troops have left Afghanistan. But so far, officials say there has been little progress on security needed basing agreements with other countries in the region.“There are very active discussions going on now inside the department to better define what over-the-horizon counterterrorism capabilities we’ll be able to avail ourselves of,” the Pentagon’s Kirby said Tuesday. 
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China on Monday named five foreign-born players for critical World Cup qualifiers starting later this month as the world’s most populous country steps up its controversial naturalization policy.China, who have big ambitions but are perennial underachievers ranked 77th in the world, began drafting in players born overseas in 2019 in a quick fix to reach the Qatar 2022 World Cup.Coach Li Tie has picked a 26-man squad that includes a trio of offensive players originally from Brazil — Elkeson, Fernando Henrique and Alan Carvalho.Also included is their Guangzhou FC teammate Tyias Browning, the former Everton central defender who was born in Liverpool and played for England youth teams.The fifth naturalized player is Nico Yennaris, the former Arsenal midfielder and another to have played for England youth teams before switching to China.In their previous World Cup qualifier, a 2-1 defeat to Syria under former coach Marcello Lippi in November 2019, only Elkeson and Yennaris featured.Some Chinese media, pundits and former internationals have questioned the move to bring in foreign players.China’s hopes of reaching the World Cup are in the balance but Li is boosted by the return of star forward Wu Lei, after he failed to make recent training squads because he was with his Spanish club Espanyol.Under former Everton player Li — who took over when Lippi quit following the Syria defeat — China are second in Asian qualifying Group A, eight points behind leaders Syria.Only the team that finishes top is guaranteed to reach the next stage of qualifying.The rest of the matches in Group A are set to take place in China from May 30 until June 15, with the hosts facing Guam, Maldives, Philippines and Syria.
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The death toll from a powerful bomb blast near a girls’ school in the Afghan capital Kabul has risen more than 60, with more than 100 others injured. No one immediately took responsibility for the deadly attack. The area in Kabul where Saturday’s bombing occurred has suffered deadly attacks previously, and most of them were claimed by the Islamic State terrorist group.
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Helmut Jahn, a prominent German architect who designed an Illinois state government building and worked on the design of the FBI headquarters in Washington, was killed in a bicycle accident outside Chicago. Jahn, 81, was struck Saturday afternoon while riding north on a village street in Campton Hills, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Chicago. Jahn failed to stop at a stop sign at an intersection and was struck by the two vehicles, headed in opposite directions, Campton Hills Police Chief Steven Miller said in a news release. Jahn was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. Authorities say the driver of one of the vehicles that struck Jahn was taken to a hospital for treatment of non-life threatening injuries. A profile posted on the website of his firm, Jahn, says he was born in Germany in 1940 and graduated from Technische Hochschule in Munich. He moved to Chicago in 1966 to study under legendary architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a creator of modernist architecture, at the Illinois Institute of Technology.  Jahn’s professional career began in 1967 when he joined CF Murphy Associates, which later became Murphy/Jahn. He worked on several major projects, including Chicago’s McCormick Place and the United Airlines terminal at O’Hare International Airport, which includes a walkway famous for its colorful lighting. He also had a hand in the design of the J Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI headquarters in Washington.  Jahn’s work internationally includes the Sony Center in Berlin and the Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand.  “Helmut had an exceptional career both for its length and for the consistent quality of the work,” Reed Kroloff, dean of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture, told the Chicago Tribune on Sunday. “At his height, he was one of the most influential architects in the world. Not only formally, but technically. He engaged early on with building-skin technologies that were very advanced. He created buildings of every variety.” One of his more controversial buildings was the James R. Thompson Building, a glass-sheathed, Illinois government office building in Chicago’s Loop that opened in 1985. It was put up for sale last week. State officials say the 17-story building is a drain on state finances because it is inefficient to operate and in need of hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs. Jahn taught at the University of Illinois Chicago, Harvard University, Yale University and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
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A landslide at an artisanal gold mine has killed at least 15 people in northeastern Guinea, the government said on Sunday. The disaster took place on Saturday in remote Siguiri province, 800 km (500 miles) from the capital Conakry. The zone holds some of the West African country’s largest gold reserves.In a statement the government said it had launched an investigation.The bodies of those killed have been recovered and two women were among the casualties, a local resident said by phone, speaking on condition of anonymity.The artisanal gold mines of Siguiri are notoriously dangerous with diggers working in narrow shafts without much protection. 
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  Russia showed off its military might with parades across the country on Sunday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. President Vladimir Putin reviewed the main Victory Day parade on Moscow’s Red Square, featuring some 12,000 troops, nearly 200 pieces of military hardware, and aircraft and helicopter flyovers. Putin watched the display with Soviet war veterans from a review platform. Since coming to power two decades ago, Putin has sought either as president or prime minister to restore symbols of the Soviet and Russian past to boost patriotism. Russian President Putin takes part in a commemoration ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Victory Day, in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2021. (Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via Reuters)Putin, during his address on the 76th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, vowed that Russia will defend its national interests and denounced what he asserted was the return of “Russophobia.” “We will firmly defend our national interests to ensure the safety of our people,” Putin said. This year’s parade comes as the ruling United Russia party faces parliamentary elections in September, with polls showing declining support for the pro-Kremlin party to 27 percent. 
 
Russia’s relations with the West have also nosedived over everything from the fate of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny to the conflict in Ukraine. 
 
In recent weeks, the United States and Russia have expelled each other’s diplomats in a series of retaliatory moves, while Moscow and EU member states been involved in similar tit-for-tat diplomatic disputes. 
 
The military parades come after Russia recently deployed more than 100,000 troops near the border with Ukraine and in annexed Crimea. The buildup prompted alarm in Western capitals over Moscow’s intentions amid an uptick in fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists in the country’s east. 
 
Russia has since withdrawn most of the troops but left behind some military equipment and continues to conduct naval exercises in the Black Sea. 
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The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet said Saturday that the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey had seized an illicit shipment of weapons from a stateless dhow in international waters of the North Arabian Sea on Thursday and Friday.”The cache of weapons included dozens of advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles, thousands of Chinese Type 56 assault rifles, and hundreds of PKM machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades launchers. Other weapon components included advanced optical sights,” the Bahrain-based fleet said in a statement.It added that the materiel was in U.S. custody awaiting final disposition, while the source and intended destination of the materiel were under investigation.”After all illicit cargo was removed, the dhow was assessed for seaworthiness, and after questioning, its crew was provided food and water before being released,” the statement said.
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India reported a record number of COVID-19 deaths in a single day Saturday, and a more contagious variant is partly to blame, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist said.In an interview Saturday with AFP, Soumya Swaminathan warned that “the epidemiological features that we see in India today do indicate that it’s an extremely rapidly spreading variant.”Swaminathan said the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was clearly a contributing factor to the catastrophe in India, her homeland.”There have been many accelerators that are fed into this,” the 62-year-old pediatrician and clinical scientist said, stressing that “a more rapidly spreading virus is one of them.” She added, however, that large gatherings and a lapse in mask-wearing also played a role.The B.1.617 variant was first discovered in India last October. The U.S. and Britain consider it a “variant of concern,” which indicates it is more dangerous than the original virus.The number of cases and deaths are horrifying on their own, but Swaminathan said the additional danger was the increasing likelihood of variants that could outwit vaccines.”Variants which accumulate a lot of mutations may ultimately become resistant to the current vaccines that we have,” she warned.India’s health ministry Saturday reported more than 401,000 new COVID-19 infections and nearly 4,200 deaths in the previous 24-hour period, although public health experts believed the actual numbers were likely much higher.Lockdowns spreadingMore of India’s states imposed stringent lockdown measures in the absence of a national lockdown plan.FILE – Relatives mourn next to the body of a loved one who died of COVID-19, outside a mortuary in Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu state, India, May 5, 2021.The southern state of Tamil Nadu said it would shift from a partial to a full lockdown after neighboring Karnataka state extended a full lockdown Friday.India’s main opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday to implement a national lockdown, accelerate the vaccination campaign and increase tracking of the virus and its mutations.“Allowing the uncontrollable spread of the virus in our country will be devastating not only for our people but also for the rest of the world,” Gandhi said to Modi in a letter.EU summit, criticism of USOn the second day of a European Union summit in Portugal on Saturday, the EU approved a contract extension with Pfizer-BioNTech to provide up to 1.8 billion additional doses of its vaccine through 2023.Pfizer-BioNTech has already provided the EU with 600 million doses, as required in the initial contract.Also at the EU summit, the U.S. faced mounting criticism from EU leaders about U.S. President Joe Biden’s surprise endorsement earlier this week of lifting COVID-19 vaccine patents to make more doses available to poorer countries.European Council President Charles Michel speaks during a media conference at an EU summit in Porto, Portugal, May 8, 2021.“We don’t think, in the short term, that it’s the magic bullet,” said EU Council President Charles Michel.Michel and other EU leaders said the U.S. should instead start boosting U.S. vaccine exports to have maximum impact on the global pandemic.“I’m very clearly urging the U.S. to put an end to the ban on exports of vaccines and on components of vaccines that are preventing them being produced,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.The U.S., like Britain, has limited exports of domestically developed vaccines so it can vaccinate its population first. The EU has become the world’s leading vaccine provider, distributing about 200 million doses to the 27-nation bloc and roughly an equal number to nearly 90 countries around the world.Pope Francis said he supported the temporary suspension of vaccine patents, according to news reports. He added that market forces, as they relate to the vaccines, must not predominate.WHO approves Sinopharm vaccineThe World Health Organization on Friday approved a COVID-19 vaccine developed in China for emergency use worldwide.The vaccine, from China’s state-owned drugmaker, Sinopharm, is the first vaccine manufactured by a non-Western country to be endorsed by WHO.FILE – Empty Sinopharm vaccine vials sit in a cup during a priority COVID-19 vaccination campaign of health workers at a public hospital in Lima, Peru, Feb. 10, 2021.WHO’s decision allowed the Sinopharm vaccine to be included in the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access, or COVAX, an initiative to distribute vaccines to mainly low-income countries.North American numbersIn Washington, the White House COVID-19 Response Team said Friday that its focus was on meeting Biden’s new goal of fully vaccinating 160 million Americans by July 4, as infections, hospitalizations and deaths continued to decline.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that as of Saturday, 151,315,505 people had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 112,626,771 had been fully vaccinated.At the team’s briefing, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said that to help meet Biden’s goal, the government would make walk-up, no-appointment shots available at 20,000 pharmacies around the country. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will also be shipping vaccines from high-volume vaccination centers around the country to smaller community-based sites, where they are more in demand.The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed nearly 3.3 million lives around the world, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The U.S. has suffered the most deaths, with more than 581,000. Brazil is second with more than 421,000 deaths, followed by India, with more than 238,200 deaths.There have been more than 157 million global infections, according to Johns Hopkins. The U.S. has the most, with more than 32.7 million, followed by India, with nearly 21.9 million infections, and Brazil, with more than 15 million.
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On a visit to Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reassured leaders there that the United States will support Kyiv against what he termed “reckless and aggressive” Russian actions but stopped short of announcing increased military aid. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Palestinians and Israeli settlers hurled rocks and chairs at each other in a tense east Jerusalem neighborhood on Thursday before Israeli police moved in to separate them, arresting at least seven people.The violence broke out in Sheikh Jarrah, where dozens of Palestinians are at risk of being evicted following a long legal battle with Jewish settlers trying to acquire property in the neighborhood, which is just north of Jerusalem’s Old City.Pro-Palestinian protesters have been meeting for nightly iftars — the meal held after breaking the daylong fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan — at long tables set up outside. On Thursday, settlers set up a table and awning across the street. They were joined by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of a far-right party with roots in a violent anti-Arab extremist group.Video circulating online later showed protesters on both sides hurling rocks and chairs at each other, and Palestinians tearing down the awning, before Israeli police moved in. There were no reports of serious injuries.”Police and border police are operating to prevent friction between the sides,” the police said in a statement. “At this stage, the event is under control.” It said seven people were arrested for disturbing the peace and attacking police.Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 war, along with the West Bank and Gaza, and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want all three territories to form their future state and consider east Jerusalem their capital.East Jerusalem includes some of the holiest sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims, and its fate is among the most divisive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.In recent weeks, Palestinian protesters have also clashed with Israeli police in Jerusalem over restrictions on outdoor gatherings during Ramadan. 
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India has opened its immunization drive to all adults as it reels under a catastrophic second wave of the novel coronavirus pandemic. But a shortage of vaccines in the country often called a vaccine powerhouse means inoculating a significant part of the 1.4 billion population is still a distant goal. Anjana Pasricha has a report. 
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President Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to officially recognize the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as a genocide. Shake Avoyan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.Camera: Shake Avoyan.
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Issues in the News moderator Kim Lewis discusses with Dan Raviv, columnist for Newsday and Steve Redisch, VOA executive editor the highlights of President Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress, the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, the latest on COVID-19 vaccines as infection rates and deaths surge in India, and the controversial new report by Human Rights Watch that accuses Israel of apartheid and persecution of Palestinians.
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