The World: Latest Stories

The people of Rjukan, a town in Norway, live in a valley so deep, surrounded by mountains so high that the sun used to not reach them from late October until March. But 13 years ago, three giant mirrors were installed on the mountainside, reflecting sunlight down into the town square even during the darkest months. From our partners at Deutsche Welle, DW, reporter Lars Bevanger spoke to the man behind the idea.

When Israelis went to the polls last week, the livelihoods of Palestinians living under occupation was not a top concern for most Jewish voters. But the outcome of the vote will have a direct impact on Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza. The World's Carolyn Beeler reports from a village outside Ramallah on what the election results mean for Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Twenty-year-old Italian Andrea Kimi Antonelli has become the youngest driver in F1 history to be crowned champion. Giles Richards, sports reporter for The Guardian was in the crowd in Mexico City's Hermanos Rodriguez Autodromo for Sunday's race. Richards tells The World's Host Marco Werman that Antonelli is an impossibly young" champion and destined for greatness.

On Sunday, Mexicans celebrated "Dia de muertos," an annual holiday when families honor deceased relatives. One popular character always shows up: La Catrina, a fancy skeleton lady wearing an elegant dress and a flowered hat. In 2024, The World's Tibisay Zea went to a big parade in Mexico City, to get the story behind La Catrina's starring role in the seasonal festivities.This story originally aired on Nov. 1, 2024.

It was just one Saturday night - on Oct. 24 - but the group of around 500 mostly under-aged teenagers, calling themselves "Blocus" managed to loot several downtown stores in Barcelona, Spain. What worries police more is the group's online presence and its calls for more ransacking. On Halloween, hundreds of police kept another call to chaos from materializing, but at a high cost. The World's Gerry Hadden reports.

Climate change is not just an environmental problem; it can be a mental health one, as well. A new study of 20,000 adults in Nigeria's northern states, where most people make a living from farming and herding, explores the links between climate change, poverty and drug use. The World's Host Marco Werman spoke with with the lead author of this study, Abdullahi Abdulwahab Yakubu, a senior lecturer from Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.

Since World War II, the US has built up the world's most powerful navy. But in recent years, China has been playing a game of catch-up and it now boasts the world's largest military fleet. Oriana Skylar Mastro discusses the situation. She's been an adviser on China strategy at the Pentagon and spoke to the World's Host Marco Werman in her civilian capacity, as the director of the Indo-Pacific Policy Lab at Stanford University.

El Salvador has sent 2,000 troops to Haiti to rescue four military technicians who disappeared in a gang ambush. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele says his forces know how to defeat gangs, pointing to his controversial crackdown at home. But Haiti's gangs are heavily armed and control much of the capital. While some Haitians welcome the intervention, others fear civilian casualties and question whether military force alone can bring lasting security to the country. The World's Tibisay Zea reports.

Almost two years after the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Syrians in the diaspora are still processing all they lost under more than 50 years of rule by the Assad family. You can hear much of that in the music of Tawabil, a trio based in Berlin. Tawabil is composed of a German guitarist and two artists who emigrated from Syria. From our archives, Alexa Dvorson sent us this story from Berlin.

A new survey of the Canadian accent from McGill University has found that the Canadian accent is shifting closer to the American accent. The World's Host Marco Werman learned more from the survey's co-investigator Claire Henderson.

A quick update from Cambodia, where hundreds of people have been evicted from their dream home and forced to walk the proverbial plank. The dream home being the Villa Vie Odyssey, a Florida-based ship, that had been on a world-wide cruise, now indefinitely grounded.

The Norwegian village of Longyearbyen is one of the most remote settlements in the world. It's located on the Svalbard archipelago, a collection of islands way up in the Arctic Circle. Not an easy place to live, and now there's a new challenge for the 2,600 residents there: They've been told not to drink the tap water after tests found higher than average levels of heavy metals and contaminants in the local water supply. The suspected cause: the area's thawing permafrost due to climate change. Marjolaine Verret is an expert on permafrost at the University Centre in Svalbard. She spoke with Host Carolyn Beeler about what's going on.

Through hundreds of hours of interviews with North Korean defectors, author Jieun Baek has pieced together insights into the "Hermit Kingdom's" privileged class of elites. In a new essay for Foreign Affairs, Baek explores the stifled discontent growing among the cadre of high ranking officials running the country for the Kim family. As Baek tells Host Marco Werman, the Kims have created a system of a few carrots and many, brutal sticks to keep the elites in check.

In Turkey, families commemorate their loved ones by sharing lokma - a small, deep-fried desert - and by saying prayers for the departed. Lokmaci Baba, dubbed Papa Doughnut, rolls through Istanbul with his lokma-mobile when summoned by those who lost someone. Reporter Dorian Jones joined him to uncover the story behind this heartfelt ritual.

Around 1 million Ukrainian refugees, most of them women and children, have been living in Poland since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It's a vulnerable group: According to a report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Ukrainian women who have received protection in EU countries are frequently subjected to physical, sexual and psychological violence. Now, in Poland, the situation is becoming even more fraught as support for Ukrainians begins to erode. Adam Easton visited Martynka - a shelter for female refugees escaping gender-based violence in the Polish city of Krakow.

National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek is on a years-long journey around the world, mostly on foot, called the Out of Eden Walk. He recently made a stop in the remote Alaskan village of Kake, population: 543. Many people who live in Kake, and villages like it, come from urban settings seeking what Paul calls a "geographical cure" to the complications of modern life. He speaks to The World's Host Aaron Schachter about how that pans out.

Nobel laureate Maria Ressa's new book, "The Fight Back: A Citizen's Guide to Standing Up to Dictators," considers how online networks can be harnessed to drive real-world change. Ressa tells The World's Host Marco Werman that pro-democracy advocates must build their own technology if they want to wrestle back control of citizens' destinies.

The votes are still being counted in Israel after Tuesday's parliamentary elections. One thing that's clear is that no party or coalition of parties has a definitive shot at forming a government. So now, the horse-trading and wrangling begins. The World's Carolyn Beeler reports from Jerusalem.

A quick update that is not directly related to the Israeli election, but very much involves Mideast politics. You'll recall that about a month ago, the American rapper Macklemore was supposed to open for Ed Sheeran on his Loop Tour. But arena owners accused Macklemore's pro-Palestinian views of veering into antisemitism, and told Sheeran to drop him from the bill. In response, Macklemore decided to forge his own mini-tour.

King Charles III has embarked on his first official Caribbean tour as monarch but the high stakes trip comes amid renewed calls for Britain to apologize for its role in the transatlantic slave trade and pay reparations. Buckingham Palace has made clear the king will not issue a formal apology, in line with the UK government's position. Some Caribbean leaders look set to demand that the royal family and the UK government do more to confront Britain's colonial past. The World's Europe Correspondent Orla Barry reports.

For the better part of a century, Germany's two-track education system offered prestigious college degrees for the few and high-quality vocational qualifications for the many. But that's changed over the past decade or so, and many more students have gotten a shot at higher education. But, as Valerie Hamilton reports from Weisbach, Germany, that's left the country with a massive shortage of apprentices who might do anything from cutting hair to building weapons.

Monday's 5:00 News in Belgrade began with the anchor offering an apology to viewers for shoddy service over the past decade while Aleksandar Vui's ruling alliance was in power. He said that the journalists at the station didn't ask the right questions, or didn't ask questions at all. Host Marco Werman has more.

Pope Leo XIV will visit Argentina between Nov. 8-11. One of the main stops will be the city of Lujan, where he'll celebrate Mass outside a basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Weeks before his arrival, Catholics walked about 37 miles (60 kilometers) to the same shrine in an annual youth pilgrimage. A record 2.7 million people attended this year, in a town of just over 100,000 inhabitants. Reporter Natalio Cosoy asked two of them to record their journeys.

Hindus across the globe are celebrating Diwali today. The festival of lights involves oil lamps and fireworks. But friendly gambling is also a big part of the holiday spirit, especially for the Hindu diaspora. Sushmita Pathak explains, from a card party in New York City.

Record turnout at the polls by Palestinian citizens of Israel has positioned Arab parties to win a historic 19 out of 120 seats in Israel's parliament. With no coalition gaining an outright majority, one question now is if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's opponents will partner with Arab parties to oust the longstanding leader. From Abu Ghosh, Israel, The World's Carolyn Beeler reports.

Spain's trains have suffered yet another deadly crash, after two in January. Those were due to infrastructure faults, but today's appears to be human error. The World's Gerry Hadden reports from Barcelona.

A vaccine could soon help prevent the deadliest form of skin cancer - melanoma - from returning in those diagnosed. Researchers at the Melanoma Institute Australia led an international human trial of the tailored vaccine, which lowered the risk of recurring melanoma by 42%. To understand the implications of this pioneering vaccine therapy, The World's Host Aaron Schachter spoke to Dr. Robert Vonderheide, the director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania and president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Jamaicans are marking the one year anniversary of the strongest hurricane to ever hit the island. Hurricane Melissa made landfall on Jamaica's southwest coast as a Category 5 storm. The storm tracked north and east, leveling homes and mangling farms and businesses. Ultimately it killed 45 people and displaced thousands more. Since then, recovery has been ongoing but inconsistent.

Next month, world leaders will gather in Antalya, Turkey, for COP31 - the annual United Nations climate summit. For Africa, the stakes couldn't be higher. Last year, extreme weather affected at least 13 million people across the continent and killed more than 3,000, according to the World Meteorological Organization. For African countries, the challenge is not just coping with climate disasters, but securing the money and technology needed to respond. Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman reports from Ghana.

Every morning in Beirut, parents turn on their phones to see what their children are doing thousands of miles away. Lebanon has experienced a sustained wave of emigration, with young people leaving amid an economic crisis, political instability and repeated conflict. Reporter Shirin Jafaari went to Lebanon to see how the people who remain - the parents, grandparents and relatives whose families have been scattered across the world - are adapting and creating new community.

Today, researchers from the American Astronomical Society announced that they've identified an object from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachon mountain in Chile. Astrophysicists Matthew Holman and Kevin Napier are both with the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University & the Smithsonian. They tell Host Marco Werman about what they've found.

Israelis have flocked to the polls in what is considered one of the most important elections in the nation's history. The contest pits Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against former IDF Chief Gadi Eisenkot. Much of the focus has been on whether Netanyahu is responsible for the security failure on Oct. 7, 2023. The World's Carolyn Beeler visited a polling station in Jerusalem to gauge the mood of voters.

The legendary Senegalese big band Orchestra Baobab has undergone many personnel changes since its founding in the 1960s, but it carries on the sound its members formulated years ago - a mix of Latin styles, Senegalese percussion and lyrics in French, Wolof and Portuguese slang from neighboring Cape Verde. They have a new recording that came out last week, "Made in Senegal," and we take a listen with Host Marco Werman.

In what newly elected President Abelardo de la Espriella calls a "cultural counter-revolution," Colombia's government has taken down more than 30 items from the National Museum of Bogota. Most of them reflect leftist, feminist and LGBTQ history. The move has sparked multiple protests from citizens who fear the removals risk erasing the experiences of marginalized communities and sanitizing Colombia's violent past. Reporter Manuel Rueda has the story from Bogota.

The Ukrainian folk band Yagody mixes traditional Ukrainian folk harmonies with modern arrangements and instruments. The group's haunting sound and theatrical performances have caught the country's attention, and led to them being chosen as Ukraine's 2024 Eurovision entrants. Reporter Emily Cohen caught up with the group in April at the acclaimed Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, as part of their first American tour.This story originally aired on April 3, 2026.

French soccer superstar Kylian Mbappe is facing backlash in China after a video circulated of him apparently mentioning an internet meme depicting him as a Chinese dictator." Chinese brands have reportedly dropped sponsorship deals, while state television has threatened to stop broadcasting Spanish soccer league games. Mbappe has since apologized, but the controversy highlights the power of China's consumer market and the consequences international celebrities face for crossing Beijing's political red lines. Isaac Stone Fish, founder of the geopolitical risk consultancy Strategy Risks, joins The World's Host Marco Werman to discuss.

The leaders of Finland and Norway have held an unusual joint call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss future negotiations to help end the war in Ukraine. Julie Wilhelmsen, who

For decades, scientists have thought the Bangka Slow Loris was extinct. The terribly cute - though venomous - primate hasn't been seen in Indonesia for 90 years. The World's Marco Werman explains how the the pack was rediscovered.

When you drive along the highway heading toward Rio de Janeiro's airport in Brazil, you pass a huge neighborhood known as Mare. You wouldn't stop there, unless you had a good reason to. That's because it's a favela, or a poor community. Many favelas are on Rio's hillsides. This one is squeezed between a pair of highways and Guanabara Bay. Roughly 140,000 people live there. It's known for being a hotbed of dangerous drug gangs, violence and police operations. But residents are trying to change that image - with food. Reporter Michael Fox has the story.

You'd be excused for thinking the Japanese folk trio Kekko Seikatsu hails from Appalachia. Their sound is built around the slower environment of the Japanese countryside that they relocated to from Tokyo a few years ago. We can also hear their embrace of acoustic styles from Ireland, as well as the American back porch.

Last night in Brazil's second-round presidential election, Incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pulled off a victory the likes of which the country has never seen. This was the first time in Brazilian history that a candidate lost the first round, and won in the second. His win also bucked the trend of the far-right wave that has been gripping Latin America in recent years. Reporter Michael Fox was in the streets to gauge reaction.

It seems every Scandinavian country has its favorite in the "slow TV" genre. Sweden has the seasonal hit "The Great Moose Migration," Norway has an hours-long train journey and Finland has its own blockbuster of nonstop boredom: a 24/7 livestream of puppies doing puppy things. The World's Joshua Coe has our unbearably cute puppy story.

Serbia is facing an unprecedented political experiment after a student-led movement swept to power, ending Aleksandar Vui's 14 years in office. The movement grew out of nearly two years of relentless protests, and none of its newly elected representatives has ever served in parliament. The World's Europe Correspondent Orla Barry joined host Marco Werman for the latest.

Researchers from the Kunming Institute of Botany in China have discovered a new species of fungus that's challenging previous assumptions about how big a fungus can get. They've named it "D-rex." And it's believed to have emerged, in part, thanks to the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Host Marco Werman has more.

Tiny solar-powered radio tags are allowing scientists to track individual monarch butterflies for the first time, documenting the paths they take on their migration across North America. Last fall, The World's Host Marco Werman spoke with Orley "Chip" Taylor, founder of Monarch Watch, about the new technology and what it tells us about the insects.This story originally aired on Nov. 26, 2025.

More than half a million young Israelis aged 18 to 22 will be eligible to vote in their first elections this week. It's being seen as one of the most consequential elections in the nation's history. Polls project these new voters could lean farther right than the rest of the population. From the city of Sderot, less than a mile from Israel's border with Gaza, The World's Carolyn Beeler reports.

If you're making the long walk to a soccer stadium, or you're just on your feet for hours a day, you might want to consider a pair of "cool shoes." Not as in trendy - but actually cool, and comfortable. They were created by a young Kenyan inventor who wanted to soothe his mother's aching feet. They're made entirely from trash and bits and pieces of old electronics. Reporter Jonathan Miller has the story.This story originally aired on June 23, 2026.

The Russian mercenary group known as Wagner Group gained notoriety during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and expanded operations across West and Central Africa. But then in 2023, Wagner's leader Yevgeny Progozhin, after leading a failed military coup against Moscow, mysteriously died in a plane crash. Most of the Wagner troops were incorporated into the Russian security and intelligence forces, except in the Central African Republic, where Wagner Group continues its work under the leadership of Prigozhin's son, Pavel. The 28-year-old millionaire has expanded and diversified the mercenary business he inherited. Host Carolyn Beeler is joined by Wall Street Journal reporter Nicholas Bariyo, who spoke about his recent investigation, The Playboy Who Inherited the World's Most Notorious Mercenary Force."

France is deploying 70,000 police and military personnel across its cities, with more protests planned for this weekend. The demonstrations that began with high school students angry about conditions in their schools have grown into a broader protest movement fueled by the rising cost of living and declining public services. And France is far from alone. Protests have since spread to several countries across Europe. From Madrid, The World's Europe Correspondent Orla Barry reports.

The ground on which many urban areas rest is subsiding" or sinking lower into the earth - a phenomenon frequently linked to water extraction. A study out this month by a research team in China used satellite imaging to track this sinkage across nearly 500 major cities across the globe. It found that much of this so-called land subsidence" is happening under Asian metropolises. To unpack how cities are sinking and why, The World's Host Carolyn Beeler spoke to Robert Nicholls, a professor of climate adaptation at the University of East Anglia in the UK.