The World Food Program warns 1.9 million Mozambicans battered by two devastating cyclones earlier this year are at risk of severe food shortages without urgent international assistance.  Hundreds of people were killed, tens of thousands made homeless and livelihoods lost when Cyclones Idai and Kenneth hit Mozambique with devastating force in March and April. The destructive power of the two storms has wreaked havoc on the country’s infrastructure and agriculture. Many crops that were about to be harvested and farm infrastructure were destroyed.  The impact of these two disasters lingers on, threatening widespread hunger among survivors of these twin disasters.   A man waits to receive food aid outside a camp for displaced survivors of cyclone Idai in Dombe, Mozambique, April 4, 2019. World Food Program spokesman Herve Verhoosel says more than 1.6 million people are suffering from acute food insecurity and the worst is yet to come. “It is expected that the upcoming lean season it will be very difficult in Mozambique with just below 2 million people projected to be in crisis situation if there is no humanitarian intervention before,” Verhoosel said. “The lean season is the period from October this year until the next harvest season in …

Updated 5:50 a.m. July 20, 2019. Agence France-Presse contributed to this report. GENEVA — Iran has taken a British-flagged oil tanker it seized in the Strait of Hormuz to Bandar Abbas port, where it and its crew will remain while an investigation into the vessel’s conduct is carried out, Iran’s Fars news agency said Saturday. The Stena Impero was in an accident with an Iranian fishing boat whose distress call it ignored, the agency quoted the head of Ports and Maritime Organization in southern Hormozgan province, Allahmorad Afifipour, as saying. It was taken to Bander Abbas, on Iran’s southern coast and facing the strait.  “All its 23 crew members will remain on the ship until the probe is over,” Afifipour said. The crew is made up of 18 Indian nationals and five others of other nationalities, he said. The tanker’s operator, Stena Bulk, said Friday the ship had been “in full compliance with all navigation and international regulations,” but was no longer under the crew’s control and could not be contacted. FILE – British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt prepares to give an interview outside his home in London, June 24, 2019. Britain’s foreign minister Jeremy Hunt said Saturday that he was worried …

Officials say the death toll has risen to 152 in monsoon flooding in South Asia as millions of people and animals continue to face the brunt in three countries. At least 90 people have died in Nepal and 50 in India’s Assam state. A dozen people have been killed in neighboring Bangladesh. Shiv Kumar, a government official in Assam, said Saturday that 10 rare one-horned rhinos have died at the Kaziranga National Park after swirling gray waters of the Brahmaputra River burst its banks and entered the reserve. A one-horned rhinoceros walks in floodwaters in Pobitora wildlife sanctuary, east of Gauhati, India, July 19, 2019. The sanctuary has the highest density of the one-horned Rhinoceros in the world. Some 4.8 million people in about 3,700 villages across the state are still affected by the floods, though the frequency of rains has decreased in the past 24 hours, the Assam Disaster Response Authority said. More than 2.5 million have also been hit by flooding in India’s Bihar state. Amid the flooding, 20-year-old Imrana Khatoon delivered her first baby on a boat in floodwaters early Friday while on her way to a hospital in Assam’s flooded Gagalmari village, locals said. The woman …

Summer in the city is hot. How hot? A team at the University of Georgia is developing a way to map how hot it is in so-called urban heat islands, down to the level of individual street blocks. Faith Lapidus reports. …

Fifty years ago, two American astronauts became the first humans to walk on the Moon. But before humans had left Earth, animal astronauts had blazed a trail into space. VOA’s Kerry Hensley has more. …

Many victims of an arson attack on an animation studio in the western Japanese city of Kyoto were young with bright futures, some joining only in April, the company president said Saturday, as the death told climbed to 34. Thursday’s attack on Kyoto Animation, famous in Japan and overseas for its series and movies, was the worst mass killing in two decades in a country with some of the world’s lowest crime rates. Company president Hideaki Hatta said many of the victims were young women. “Some of them joined us just in April. And on the eighth of July, I gave them a small, but their first, bonus,” he said. “People who had a promising future lost their lives. I don’t know what to say. Rather than feeling anger, I just don’t have words,” Hatta said. Policemen stand behind a police line at the torched Kyoto Animation building in Kyoto Fifteen of the victims were in their 20s and 11 were in their 30s, public broadcaster NHK said. Six were in their 40s and one was at least 60. The age of the latest victim, a man who died in hospital, was not known. The names of the victims have …

Officials in Hawaii said Friday that they will not call up additional National Guard troops or use force on peaceful telescope protesters blocking access to the state’s highest peak. Gov. David Ige said that his priority is to keep everyone in the community safe, including the activists at the base of Mauna Kea. The 80 guard members on the Big Island since the start of the protests will remain, state officials said. “We will not be utilizing tear gas, as some of the rumors have been (saying),” Ige said. “We are looking for the best way forward without hurting anyone.” The governor said last week that National Guard units would be used to transport personnel and equipment as well as to enforce road closures. Hawaii Gov. David Ige speaks at a news conference in Honolulu, July 17, 2019, about issuing an emergency proclamation in response to protesters blocking a road to prevent the construction of a giant telescope. Ige said Friday no more troops would be called in to the Big Island, but he stopped short of removing an emergency proclamation that he enacted Wednesday. The emergency order broadened the state’s authority to remove protesters from the mountain, including the …

The Trump administration has told federally funded family planning clinics it is considering a delay in enforcing a controversial rule that bars them from referring women for abortions. That comes after clinics had vowed defiance. Two people attending meetings this week between the Department of Health and Human Services and clinic representatives told The Associated Press that officials said the clinics should be given more time to comply with the rule’s new requirements. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly before any decision has been announced. HHS said Friday that its policy has not changed. Rule announced, to take effect immediately On Monday, agency officials announced that the government would immediately begin enforcing the rule, catching the clinics off-guard and prompting an outcry. Planned Parenthood said its 400 clinics would defy the requirement. Some states, including Illinois and Maryland, backed the clinics. The family planning program serves about 4 million women a year, and many low-income women get basic health care from the clinics. The administration’s abortion restrictions, cheered by social and religious conservatives, are being challenged in court by groups representing the clinics, several states, and the American Medical Association. The litigation …

In the Spanish colonial fortress that serves as his official residence, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello is under siege. Motorcyclists, celebrities, horse enthusiasts and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Puerto Ricans have swarmed outside La Fortaleza (The Fort) in Old San Juan this week, demanding Rossello resign over a series of leaked online chats insulting women, political opponents and even victims of Hurricane Maria.  Rossello, the telegenic 40-year-old son of a former governor, has dropped his normally intense rhythm of public appearances and gone into relatively long periods of near-silence in the media, intensifying questions about his future. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello speaks during a press conference in La Fortaleza’s Tea Room, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 16, 2019. For much of his 2½ years in office, Rossello has given three or four lengthy news conferences a week, comfortably fielding question after question in Spanish and English from the local and international press. And that’s on top of public appearances, one-on-one interviews and televised meetings with visiting politicians and members of his administration.  But since July 11, when Rossello cut short a family vacation in France and returned home to face the first signs of what has become …

The Trump administration is considering more dramatic cuts to the U.S. refugee program, with one official suggesting the White House not allow any refugees into the country in the coming fiscal year. In a Politico report released Thursday, government officials from several federal agencies attended a meeting last week and discussed several options that included a ceiling of 10,000 — well below the current refugee ceiling of 30,000, which is already an all-time low for the program. The U.S. resettled 23,190 refugees since the beginning of fiscal 2019 last October. With 2½ months remaining until the count resets, the U.S. is on track to fall short of this year’s cap, according to U.S. State Department data. Since the so-called “refugee ceiling” is an upper limit, and not a quota, the government is not required to meet the annual admissions number. Multiple figures Scott Arbeiter, president of World Relief, one of the primary refugee resettlement nongovernmental organizations in the U.S., said he has heard multiple figures proposed for the coming fiscal year, all well below the program’s historical annual threshold of around 60,000 to 70,000. In President Barack Obama’s last year two years in office, his administration made a concerted effort …

Joaquin Guzman, the convicted Mexican drug lord known as “El Chapo,” has been transferred to a “Supermax” prison in Colorado from which no one has ever escaped, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said in a statement Friday. Guzman was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years on Wednesday in a federal court in Brooklyn after a jury convicted him of drug trafficking and engaging in multiple murder conspiracies as a top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s largest, most violent drug trafficking organizations. Before he was finally captured in 2016, Guzman twice escaped maximum-security prisons in Mexico. “We can confirm that Joaquin Guzman is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at United States Penitentiary (USP) Administrative Maximum (ADX) Florence, located in Florence, Colorado,” the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said in its statement. The Bureau of Prisons declined to comment further. FILE – This Oct. 15, 2015 file photo shows a guard tower looming over a federal prison complex which houses a Supermax facility outside Florence, Colorado. Guzman was whisked away early Friday from a secret location in New York, on his way to the Supermax prison in Florence, his attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, told the Denver Post. The prison …

The Wall Street Journal says Equifax will pay around $700 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over a 2017 data breach that exposed Social Security numbers and other private information of nearly 150 million people. The Journal, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, said the settlement could be announced as soon as Monday. Equifax declined to comment. The report says the deal would resolve investigations by the FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and most state attorneys general. It would also resolve a nationwide consumer class-action lawsuit. Spokesmen for the FTC and the CFPB didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment Friday night. The breach was one of the largest affecting people’s private information. Atlanta-based Equifax did not notice the attack for more than six weeks. The compromised data included Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, driver license numbers and credit card numbers. The company said earlier this year that it had set aside around $700 million to cover anticipated settlements and fines.   …

The United States and Pakistan this month started cracking down against armed militant groups, in what analysts describe as establishing a groundwork ahead of the meeting between the U.S. President Donald Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in Washington early next week. Pakistani authorities in Punjab province Wednesday arrested the head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, Hafiz Saeed, who is alleged to have been the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, including six Americans. Trump, in a tweet following the detention, praised the “great pressure” exerted over the past two years against the cleric. FILE – Hafiz Saeed, head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, second from right, addresses supporters during a protest against U.S. drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal region, in Lahore, Nov. 29, 2013. Some experts say the move by the Pakistani government just days ahead of Khan’s maiden trip to Washington serves as a goodwill gesture to improve relations with the Trump administration, which has accused Pakistan of failing to rein in extremists operating on its soil. Marvin Weinbaum, the director of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Program at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, told VOA that Pakistan is hoping its recent moves against armed Islamists …

President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on a Somali-born congresswoman Friday while reversing his previous criticisms of a North Carolina crowd who chanted “send her back,” defending them as “patriots” while again questioning the loyalty of four Democratic lawmakers of color. In a week that has been full of hostile exchanges over race and love of country on both sides, Trump returned to a pattern that has become familiar during controversies of his own making: Ignite a firestorm, backtrack from it, but then double down on his original, inflammatory position.    “You know what I’m unhappy with?” Trump answered when reporters at the White House asked if he was unhappy with the Wednesday night crowd. “Those people in North Carolina, that stadium was packed. It was a record crowd. And I could have filled it 10 times, as you know. Those are incredible people. They are incredible patriots. But I’m unhappy when a congresswoman goes and says, ‘I’m going to be the president’s nightmare.’” FILE – From left, U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez respond to remarks by President Donald Trump, at the Capitol in Washington, July 15, 2019. It was another dizzying twist in …

VOA Connect Episode 79 – We look at great personal and human achievements, and what communities are doing to preserve our planet.   …

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had “sympathized” with Donald Trump before the 2016 presidential election that swept Trump to power because of his desire to restore normal relations with Russia.  In an interview with U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone dated June 19 and published on the Kremlin website Friday, Putin also said that any alleged Russian hackers were still not able to influence the vote’s outcome.  The Russian president reiterated that he had not and would not interfere in U.S. elections.  The Moscow-Washington ties have long been strained by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement findings, denied by the Kremlin, that Russia tried to influence the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election to boost Trump’s chances of winning the White House.  U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies say Russia used disinformation and other tactics to support Trump’s 2016 campaign. Putin has denied it.  “And whichever our bloggers — I don’t know who works there in the internet — had expressed their point of view on the situation in the USA in this or that way, this had not been able to play a decisive role. This is nonsense,” Putin said.  “But we had sympathized with him [Trump], because he said that he wanted to restore normal relations with Russia. What’s bad in this? And of course, we couldn’t unwelcome …

A 42-year-old man from Brooklyn, New York, is back on U.S. soil, charged with fighting for the Islamic State terror group as a sniper before rising through the ranks to become an emir. Charges against Ruslan Maratovich Asainov were unsealed Friday, a day after U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces handed him over to U.S. law enforcement officials. The U.S. military then flew Asainov to New York, where he appeared before a judge Friday. According to court documents, Asainov, a naturalized citizen who came to the U.S. from Kazakhstan, traveled to Syria in late 2013, where he began fighting with IS as a sniper. Training camps Eventually, he became one of the terror group’s emirs, responsible for establishing training camps for IS recruits and for teaching them how to use weapons. He also began communicating with a confidential informant for the FBI, asking for money while periodically sending the informant photos of himself and other IS fighters in combat gear. “We [IS] are the worst terrorist organization in the world that has ever existed,” he allegedly wrote in one communication, adding he wished to die on the battlefield. In other messages, officials say Asainov talked about fighting in places like Kobani, Deir …

LOS ANGELES — Universal says it will release two new Halloween films, including one with the ominous title Halloween Ends.    The studio said Friday that the first of the films, Halloween Kills, will be released in 2020 and the second film will come in 2021.      A teaser video includes the voice of Jamie Lee Curtis, who starred in the original 1978 film and last year’s blockbuster sequel, Halloween. The video states the saga of Curtis’ character, Laurie Strode, and villain Michael Myers “isn’t over.”    Universal says Halloween Kills will be released on Oct. 16, 2020, and Halloween Ends will arrive Oct. 15, 2021.    Last year’s film set records and earned $253.5 million worldwide.    Curtis is also serving as a producer on the films, which are being overseen by Blumhouse Productions.  …

The U.S. government on Friday expanded its policy requiring asylum-seekers to wait outside the country to one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities, where thousands of people are already camped, some for several months. The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that it would implement its Migrant Protection Protocols in Brownsville, Texas, across the border from Matamoros, Mexico. DHS says it anticipates the first asylum-seekers will be sent back to Mexico starting Friday. Under the so-called Remain in Mexico policy, asylum-seekers are briefly processed and given a date to return for an immigration court hearing before being sent back across the southern border. Since January, the policy has been implemented at several border cities including San Diego and El Paso, Texas. The U.S. is trying to curtail the large flow of Central American migrants passing through Mexico to seek asylum under American law. The Trump administration has pressured Mexico to crack down on migrants, threatening earlier this year to impose crippling tariffs until both sides agreed on new measures targeting migration. Matamoros  Matamoros is at the eastern edge of the U.S.-Mexico border in Tamaulipas state, where organized crime gangs are dominant and the U.S. government warns citizens not to visit due …

First lady Melania Trump says her husband’s administration is working with the State Department to try to bring rapper A$AP Rocky home. The president also tells reporters that many members of the African American community have asked him to intervene. The platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated artist has been behind bars in Sweden while police investigate a fight he was involved in in Stockholm earlier this month. Kim Kardashian West, Diddy, Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes and Nicki Minaj are some of the celebrities who have shown public support for the Grammy-nominated Rocky. Kardashian West thanked Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner on Twitter Thursday evening for their “efforts to Free ASAP Rocky & his two friends.” She says their “commitment to justice reform is so appreciated.” …

A group of international astrophysicists and astronomers are speaking out against what they call the “criminalization” of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) and their allies protesting the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s “big island.” In an Demonstrators gather to block a road at the base of Hawaii’s tallest mountain, Monday, July 15, 2019, in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to protest the construction of a giant telescope on land that some Native Hawaiians consider sacred.   Protesters insist they won’t back down and are calling on Hawaii Governor David Ige to rescind an  emergency proclamation he issued Wednesday that broadens the state’s power to restrict access to Maunakea and clear the way for construction crews. The proclamation followed the arrest of a group of more than 30 activists who refused to move from the site Wednesday. ‘Reserved for the gods’ In February, Lanakila Mangauil, activist and director of the FILE – Observatories and telescopes sit atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s tallest mountain and designated construction site for a new $1.4 billion telescope, near Hilo, Hawaii, Aug. 31, 2015. ‘Probing time and space’ The University of California and the California Institute of Technology in 2003 began …

The United Nations says Zimbabwe’s food situation is moving from a crisis to an emergency. It says a majority of the population is food insecure because of El Nino-induced drought and the ongoing economic meltdown. Columbus Mavhunga has the story from a poor township just outside the capital, Harare. …

Spain’s center-left Socialist party and the United We Can party edged closer to a deal on forming a coalition government after the far-left party’s leader removed a key obstacle by saying Friday he would not insist on being part of a future Cabinet. Isabel Celaa, the spokeswoman for the Socialist caretaker government, said acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was ready to create a coalition with the United We Can party, so long as its leader, Pablo Iglesias, was not part of it. Sanchez said Thursday he has deep differences of opinion with Iglesias on such issues as the Catalonia region’s demands for independence, which the Socialists oppose. Nevertheless, Celaa said Friday that “the offer of a coalition government is on the table” for United We Can to consider before parliament next week holds confidence votes on the Socialist party’s bid to take office. Iglesias signaled he was thinking of taking the offer. “I won’t be the Socialists’ excuse for there not to be a coalition of parties on the left,” he said in a tweet hours after Celaa spoke. However, he said he wants his party’s Cabinet seats to be proportional to the number of parliamentary seats it captured in …