International Edition - Voice of America VOA

There is a cease-fire deal on the table and it’s up to Hamas to accept or not. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, British Foreign Minister David Cameron and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on behalf of U.S. President Joe Biden all sent that message to the world on Monday. Students at universities across the United States continue to protest the Gaza war. We talk to Scott Gac with Trinity College in the U.S. state of Connecticut. A twice-delayed legislative election got underway in Togo on Monday. And Taylor Swift sold 2.61 million album and streaming units of "The Tortured Poets Department" during its first week of release in the U.S. and set a new global streaming record too.

The White House says U.S. President Joe Biden has again spoken with Netanyahu as Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to the Middle East. Pressure is building on Israel and Hamas to reach a deal that would free some Israeli hostages and bring a cease-fire in the nearly seven-month-long war in Gaza. It’s being widely reported that the International Criminal Court is preparing to issue arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas officials. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday (April 28) issued a fresh plea to the international community to hurry up and deliver more air defenses, start formal talks for his country to enter the European Union, and invite Ukraine to join NATO. And Elon Musk arrived in Beijing on Sunday on an unannounced visit. He wants to discuss the rollout of Full Self-Driving software and permission to transfer data overseas.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday took up Donald Trump's bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump’s lawyers argue that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. We talk to Richard O. Lempert from the University of Michigan School of Law. New York’s highest court on Thursday threw out Harvey Weinstein ’s 2020 rape conviction with a ruling that shocked and disappointed women who celebrated historic gains during the #MeToo era. And paleontologists in Argentina have announced a new herbivorous dinosaur that lived over 90 million years.

Police tangled with student demonstrators in Texas and California while new encampments sprouted Wednesday at Harvard and other colleges as school leaders sought ways to defuse a growing wave of pro-Palestinian protests. A proposed repeal of Arizona’s near-total ban on abortions has won approval from the state House. It’s unclear exactly where the Supreme Court will land after hearing arguments about Idaho's abortion ban. TikTok pushes back on pending U.S. ban if it doesn’t sell the company. We talk to Seth Schachner, Managing Director of Strat Americas, a Los Angeles-based consultancy that provides strategic guidance and helps clients with media and technology partnerships. And NASA is talking to Voyager 1 again! It’s 24 billion kilometers from Earth. That’s the farthest any object has made it into deep space. We talk with Linda J. Spilker at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to move ahead with $95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, bringing the bill to the brink of passage after months of delays and contentious internal debate over how involved the United States should be abroad. We talk with University of Southern California professor Robert English about the aid. What began last week when students at a New York Ivy League school refused to end their protest against Israel’s war with Hamas had turned into a much larger movement by Tuesday as students across the nation set up encampments, occupied buildings and ignored demands to leave. A new robot allows doctors to produce safer and more accurate lung cancer diagnoses.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday said that the United States is looking into allegations of human rights abuses by Israel in its operations against Hamas in Gaza. Two people were seen being taken into custody during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Columbia University on Monday. A prosecutor told jurors that Donald Trump tried to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election by preventing damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public. The statement came Monday at the start of the former president’s historic hush money trial. And on Earth Day a ship which emits no pollution as it sails the seas.