The World: Latest Stories

Puccini's "Crisantemi" was played in Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu before an audience of 2,292 plants that filled the venue to capacity.

In 2001, Northern Ireland dismantled its repressive, and mostly Protestant, police force. The idea was to include more Catholics and to make the police more accountable to all of the people they serve after three decades of sectarian violence. Could Northern Ireland serve as a model for change in a deeply divided United States?

War is getting sneakier. And mercenaries could be changing war in ways that the US might not be prepared for.

Kirill Koroteev, a lawyer and the head of international practice at the Agora International Human Rights Group, spoke to The World's host Marco Werman about the case.

Jamaica shares the US’ history of colonialism and slavery, and now has one of the highest rates of fatal police shootings. Activists there are thinking about what the global moment of police accountability could mean for their country.

As Brazil tops 1 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus, the country’s Indigenous peoples mourn the death of a historic leader.

Part of the appeal for Chinese urbanites is a peek into life in the countryside. But the promise of a bargain is also a draw.

The Tohono O'odham Nation has been confined to a tiny fraction of the lands it once held in the desert Southwest. Now the Trump administration’s border wall expansion threatens to further damage and restrict their access to sacred and archeological sites.

Almost 30 years after moving to Ghana, Mona Boyd celebrates Juneteenth. This year, Boyd is reflecting on the meaning of Juneteenth in the context of the latest swell of activism against racism in the United States.

Nicholas Burns, a former career foreign service officer, worked with former Trump White House national security adviser John Bolton. Burns spoke to The World’s host Marco Werman about the most disturbing allegations in Bolton's book, which comes out Tuesday.

The aim is to prompt the Syrian president to negotiate an end to the war that has lasted almost a decade.

Author, editor and literary critic John Freeman’s new volume of poetry, “The Park,” explores how the public Luxembourg Gardens can be a refuge and provide access to beauty for some while excluding others.

Out on bail after facing charges of cyber libel, veteran Filipina journalist Maria Ressa tells The World's Marco Werman that working in journalism in the Philippines is "tougher than a war zone" and that this moment is "a battle for the truth."

The guests at Hotel Flamingo in Ciudad Juárez aren't tourists on vacation — they're people who tried to cross into the US but, for a variety of reasons, have been sent back to this border city and need a safe place to stay.

And as the pandemic hit this spring, Michelle Aguilar Ramirez, a young Latina in South Seattle, lost her interest in politics. But the Black Lives Matter protests have reignited her commitment.

Where people received cash payments from the government, there was 30% less deforestation.

Thursday’s much-anticipated ruling ended a yearslong legal battle around how the Trump administration ended the program and provides some relief to the approximately 650,000 DACA recipients in the country.

In the wake of George Floyd's death and the protests in the US, some in the Middle East are highlighting anti-black racism at home.

Eusebius McKaiser, a South African author and political analyst, speaks to The World's host Marco Werman about what the US might learn from South Africa's own reckoning with race and racism.

Michael Pack, a close ally of conservative political strategists including Steve Bannon, has been confirmed by the Senate as the head of VOA, America's tax-payer funded federal media agency.

Maha al-Mutairi filmed herself after being called in to the police station for being an openly transgender woman in Kuwait, where “imitating the opposite sex” is illegal. Her message went viral, and sparked a groundswell of support and attention for the LGBTQ community in the country.

It’s one of many recent incidents of police violence against Indigenous and black people causing an outcry.

COVID-19 has left Venezuelans across the region reeling and with dwindling options, at the same moment the World Health Organization declared Latin America the new epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ali Kushayb, a former militia leader, appeared at the International Criminal Court after more than a decade evading charges of war crimes against humanity. Some Darfuris say Kushayb’s arrest is a sign that justice — long-elusive — could be on the horizon.

Sarah Hegazi will be remembered as someone who just wanted to be herself — and was imprisoned and tortured for doing so. On Saturday, the Egyptian LGBTQ activist died by suicide in exile in Canada. She was 30 years old.

The World's host Marco Werman speaks with Siana Bangura, an author, poet and organizer in London, and Miski Noor, an organizer and writer with Black Visions Collective in Minneapolis. They've each been organizing and pushing for changes to policing in their cities for years.

One economist calls it a “modern policy for a modern labor market.”

Across the Americas, police violence disproportionately targets young black men. The protests sparked by George Floyd's death in Minneapolis have shined a new light on police brutality in South America.

Researchers at the Swear Lab at Keele University in the UK have found that swearing can actually increase a person’s pain tolerance.

Many health care workers say the pandemic and systemic racism are intertwined. But they stress the need for people to take precautions as COVID-19 continues to spread.

A world leader in cutting emissions from electricity production, the German government, in thrall to the auto industry, ‘overlooked’ pollution from cars and trucks.

Critics of the Trump administration say it’s trying to dodge accountability for atrocities, including torture.

By taking steps to address obesity, we can improve outcomes from the COVID-19 pandemic, says Tufts cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian.

Foreign residents in Sweden are reconsidering life in the Nordic country as a result of its light-handed approach to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Travel bubbles" are popping up around the world in an attempt to revitalize tourism economies.

In mid-April, reports of “imported cases” of COVID-19 from abroad stoked fears and prejudices in the country.

"If you want to change, it has to start with an acknowledgment," says Stan Henkeman, executive director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town.

Approximately every 30 seconds, a Latino in the US turns 18. Young Latinos could swing the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election — if they come out to vote.

The proposal includes a number of changes that would make it more difficult for applicants to gain asylum in the US — including changing which applicants would get asylum hearings in the first place.

This is only the latest of Brazil’s tumultuous fight with the coronavirus. The country has over 710,000 confirmed infections, the second-highest number of cases after the United States. It recently overtook Italy as the country with the third-highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the world, with more than 37,000 deaths.

The pandemic is robbing the world of institutional memories of the past as older people fall victim to COVID-19. Indira Lakshmanan, the senior executive editor for National Geographic, shares her mother's story.

A recent exchange of alleged cyberattacks on critical infrastructure between the two regional rivals is rattling the Middle East and threatens to change the unofficial but implicit agreement on the rules of engagement.

Leticia Arcila, a 20-year-old first-generation Mexican American living in Atlanta, was eager to cast her vote for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Georgia primary. When the coronavirus hit, the primary was delayed — and Sanders dropped out of the race.

The Strade Aperte plan, translated as “Open Roads,” is one of the world’s most dramatic examples of how city planners around the world, after COVID-19 lockdowns, are redesigning city streets to be friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists.

The mental health repercussions of the 2015 MERS outbreak were little acknowledged. But this time around, experts are sounding the alarm on the mental health crisis of the novel coronavirus as it sweeps the globe.

George Floyd’s killing sparked protests across the world. In France, it reignited calls for justice for Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old French Malian man who died in police custody almost four years ago.

On Saturday, around 100 demonstrators walked through downtown Seoul in protest of the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in what was perhaps the first showing of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the nation.

James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral and former NATO supreme allied commander said he’s “quite surprised” that two major military leaders refused to testify regarding military use to quell protests. He thinks “It’s a significant misstep by the Department of Defense,” he told The World.

International human rights advocates observing how the US is handling the protests have said the US may be violating international law. The World spoke to UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard on the use of force by US police.

Could the US become a so-called “competitive authoritarian regime” which only bears the “outer look of democracy?”