The United States cricket team beat Pakistan — a former world champion — on Thursday, achieving one of the biggest upsets in T20 Cricket World Cup history. This year’s tournament is being hosted by the United States and the West Indies. Saqib Ul Islam has more from the games in Dallas, Texas. …

PARIS — U.S. President Joe Biden capped his visit to France by being feted with a tres-chic state visit Saturday — finishing with a flourish a trip that launches a frantic six-week diplomatic push that analysts say could radically alter Europe’s security architecture, right as the continent holds parliamentary elections that could shift the politics sharply inward at a time when Biden is stressing the need for global unity. Leonie Allard, a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and a former French defense official, told VOA, “I believe that we are in a very significant sequence, not only for Ukraine, but really the future of European security, the future of the European architecture. With the NATO Summit coming, with the G7 summit coming, with European elections, U.S. elections — it’s definitely a turning point for the future of the architecture in Europe.” Complicating things further: In the coming days, hundreds of millions of European voters will elect members of the 720-strong European parliament. If voters choose right-leaning representatives, analysts say, it could shift the continent inward at a critical time. “I mean, you’ll have a lot of far-right members that will complicate things, but they may not necessarily be …

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Leaders of the United Methodist Church expressed regret over last week’s decision by the branch in Ivory Coast to leave the union following the church’s decision to repeal a long-standing ban on LGBTQ+ clergy but pledged to accept it. The developments were the latest in a series of ripple effects in conservative Africa, which is home to the vast majority of United Methodists outside the United States, amid disputes on sexuality and theology that have shaken the Methodist churches. In early May, delegates at the church’s first legislative gathering in five years voted overwhelmingly to remove a rule forbidding “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained or appointed as ministers. It was a sharp contrast to past General Conferences of the United Methodist Church, which had steadily reinforced the ban and related penalties amid debate and protests. The change doesn’t mandate or even explicitly affirm LGBTQ+ clergy, but it means the church no longer forbids them. But each member church was free to decide for itself — and while some bishops favored staying on, others pushed to disaffiliate. On May 28, Ivory Coast’s church voted to split from the United Methodists. With over 1.2 million members, the West African …

Washington — When the parents of Karim Sadiq and Taj Maluk fled a wrecked Afghanistan torn apart by the 1979 Soviet invasion and infighting warlords, they didn’t imagine their children — Karim and Taj — would return to reunite the war-torn nation through cricket.  Taj Maluk became the first coach of the Afghan national team. Fans refer to him as one of the founding fathers of Afghan cricket. Younger brother Karim Sadiq played a key role in Afghanistan’s qualification in the World Cup in 2010, creating history for the cricket-loving nation of more than 40 million.  The brothers were brought up in a refugee camp called Katcha Garhi, in Peshawar, Pakistan. The family left a decent life in the eastern Nangarhar province to live in a sea of mud houses and poverty.  “Life was all struggle those days,” Karim Sadiq recalls. “Doing odd jobs in the night and playing cricket in the daytime. We used a stick as a bat, used to make plastic balls from plastic waste material.”  There was an old black-and-white TV set in their refugee camp where the young and elders watched international matches, including Pakistan winning the 1992 World Cup. These events had a huge influence …

Los Angeles — How does it feel for Mick Jagger to be back on tour singing, dancing and strutting across stadium concert stages at 80 years old? “Like being on stage at 78,” the Rolling Stones frontman, who has thrilled audiences for more than six decades, said a day after playing a packed show outside Boston. “It took a couple of shows to get into the groove, but now we’re into it,” Jagger said. “I’m feeling good.” He sang “What a drag it is getting old,” back in the 1960s. But Jagger, who turns 81 on July 26, is still having a blast and has no plans to stop rocking anytime soon. Now swinging through the U.S. on the “Hackney Diamonds” tour, the group will look at opportunities to play in other countries next year, Jagger said in an interview. “We’ll consider those offers, where we’re going to go and where it will be fun, you know?” he said. “It could be Europe, could be South America, could be anywhere.” Jagger also said the Stones are likely to release more new music soon.   The current tour is named for the critically praised album the Stones debuted last October, the first …

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia said Tuesday pilgrims can expect average high temperatures of 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) during the Hajj, which last year saw thousands of cases of heat stress. “The expected climate for Hajj this year will witness an increase in average temperatures of 1½  to 2 degrees above normal in Mecca and Medina,” national meteorology center chief Ayman Ghulam told a press conference. The forecast indicates “relative humidity 25%, rain rates close to zero, average maximum temperature 44 degrees,” he said. The Hajj, which begins on June 14, is one of the five pillars of Islam and must be undertaken at least once by all Muslims who have the means to do so. It involves a series of rites completed over four days in Mecca and its surroundings in the west of oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Last year more than 1.8 million Muslims took part in the Hajj, official figures showed. More than 2,000 people suffered heat stress, according to Saudi authorities, after temperatures soared to 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit). The real number of heat stress cases — which includes heatstroke, exhaustion, cramps and rashes — was probably far higher, as many sufferers were not …

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ORAN, Algeria — Algeria wants to lure more visitors to the cultural and scenic treasures of Africa’s largest country, shedding its status as a tourism backwater and expanding a sector outshone by competitors in neighboring Morocco and Tunisia.   The giant north African country offers Roman and Islamic sites, beaches and mountains just an hour’s flight from Europe, and haunting Saharan landscapes, where visitors can sleep on dunes under the stars and ride camels with Tuareg nomads.   But while tourist-friendly Morocco welcomed 14.5 million visitors in 2023, bigger, richer Algeria hosted just 3.3 million foreign tourists, according the tourism ministry.   About 1.2 million of those holiday-makers were Algerians from the diaspora visiting families.   The lack of travelers is testimony to Algeria’s neglect of a sector that remains one of world tourism’s undiscovered gems.   As Algeria’s oil and gas revenues grew in the 1960s and 70s, successive governments lost interest in developing mass tourism. A descent into political strife in the 1990s pushed the country further off the beaten track.   But while security is now much improved, Algeria needs to tackle an inflexible visa system and poor transport links, as well as grant privileges to local and …

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ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria adopted a new national anthem Wednesday after lawmakers passed a law that replaced the current one with a version dropped nearly a half-century ago, sparking widespread criticism about how the law was hastily passed without much public input. President Bola Tinubu’s assent to the law comes a day after it was approved by both chambers of Nigeria’s National Assembly, which is dominated by the governing party. The federal lawmakers introduced and passed the bill in less than a week, an unusually fast process for important bills that usually take weeks or months to be considered. The Arise, O Compatriots anthem being replaced had been in use since 1978, when it was introduced by the military government. The anthem was composed at a time when the country was reeling from a deadly civil war and calls on Nigerians to “serve our fatherland with love and strength” and not to let “the labor of our heroes past (to be) in vain.” The new version that takes immediate effect was first introduced in 1960 when Nigeria gained independence from Britain before it was dropped by the military. Titled Nigeria We Hail Thee, it was written by Lillian Jean Williams, a …

PARIS — Of all the decisions Paris Olympics organizers made about where to hold each sport, sending surfing competitions to the other side of the world — in the Pacific waters of Tahiti — provoked the strongest reactions. Tahitians and others railed against the building of a new viewing tower on Teahupo’o reef because of fears it would hurt marine life. But organizers say it wasn’t just the world-class waves that lured them to the French territory 16,000 kilometers away. Paris Olympic officials had set an ambitious target of halving their overall carbon footprint compared with the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Games. Tahiti’s surfing reef is too far offshore for fans to see the action clearly from the beach, so organizers say they calculated that most would watch on television instead of taking flights, a major source of carbon emissions. And fewer spectators, they said, would require little new construction, another key emissions source. “We actually did the math,” said Georgina Grenon, director of environmental excellence for the Paris Games. “There was less impact in Tahiti compared to other metropolitan areas.” Tahiti’s selection provides a window into Games organizers’ approach to hitting their goal of reducing emissions, the driver of …

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washington — Chinese artists walk a tightrope when trying to create content acceptable to Beijing’s standards while attempting to seek success among Western audiences. More than one artist who has gained recognition in the West has been punished by Chinese censors, with Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye being the most recent case. The 2024 Cannes Film Festival featured Lou’s pseudodocumentary “An Unfinished Film” as an Official Selection, and it drew positive reviews. However, the film hardly has any chance to be publicly screened in China. “An Unfinished Film” is about a film crew’s 2020 experience at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan. The fictional plot follows the members of a film crew as they attempt to reshoot a movie, then are forced indoors as the city goes on lockdown. During this time, the wife of an actor, a member of the film crew, was about to give birth. She tried to rush out of the hotel but was beaten by the security guard. In the movie version, the wife of Jiang Cheng, the main character, was about to give birth. Desperate to be at the hospital with his wife, Jiang tried to break through the blockade but ended up in …

WASHINGTON — Marian Shields Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died. She was 86. Robinson’s death was announced by Michelle Obama and other family members in a statement that said, “There was and will be only one Marian Robinson. In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life.” She had been a widow and lifelong Chicago resident when she moved to the executive mansion in 2009 to help care for granddaughters Malia and Sasha. In her early 70s, Robinson initially resisted the idea of starting over in Washington, and Michelle Obama had to enlist her brother, Craig Robinson, to help persuade their mother to move. “There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle raised with me, not the least of which was the opportunity to continue spending time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and to assist in giving them a sense of normalcy that is a priority for both of their parents, as has been from the time Barack began his political career,” Marian Robinson wrote in the foreword to A Game of Character, a memoir …

A new Netflix series has turned attention to a historic red-light district in Pakistan. Set in Lahore, “Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar” is one of the most popular non-English series on the streaming platform. But as VOA’s Pakistan bureau chief Sarah Zaman reports, not everyone is happy with the attention. Videographer: Wajid Asad; video editor: Malik Waqar Ahmed. …

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ACCRA, Ghana — Meet Ace-Liam Ankrah, a Ghana toddler who has set the record as the world’s youngest male artist. His mother, Chantelle Kukua Eghan, says it all started by accident when her son, who at the time was 6 months old, discovered her acrylic paints. Eghan, an artist and founder of Arts and Cocktails Studio, a bar that that offers painting lessons in Ghana’s capital, Accra, said she was looking for a way to keep her son busy while working on her own paintings. “I spread out a canvas on the floor and added paint to it, and then in the process of crawling he ended up spreading all the colors on the canvas,” she said. And that’s how his first artwork, “The Crawl,” was born, Eghan, 25, told The Associated Press. After that and with his mother’s prodding, Ace-Liam kept on painting. Eghan decided to apply for the record last June. In November, Guinness World Records told her that to break a previous record, her son needed to exhibit and sell paintings. She arranged for Ace-Liam’s first exhibition at the Museum of Science and Technology in Accra in January, where nine out of 10 of his pieces listed were …

The artists from South Africa’s Mzansi Gay Choir are known not just for their music, but also for their role in LGBTQI advocacy. Ihsaan Haffejee brings us this story from a rehearsal studio in Johannesburg, where the musicians gather for a practice session. …

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America’s oldest Chinatown sustains traditions even as members of the Chinese diaspora continue to spread out and evolve. Matt Dibble has the story from San Francisco, California. …

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Los Angeles’ Chinatown has undergone many changes, as immigrants from mainland China join those from Hong Kong, Taiwan and other parts of Southeast Asia. As Mike O’Sullivan reports, the growing community has also expanded to the suburbs, where recent arrivals find much that is familiar. Mo Yu contributed. …

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