YCLOAK

Also, Russian cosmonauts put in work at the International Space Station. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi wraps up The Week in Space.
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Farmers across the country and around the world might one day leave the confines of their tractor cabs and operate autonomous tractors remotely through an app. But will farmers, big and small, be willing to trust the technology? VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Palestinian militants fired a rocket into southern Israel for the first time in months on Monday, in another escalation after clashes at a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, a series of deadly attacks inside Israel and military raids across the occupied West Bank.

Israel said it intercepted the rocket, and there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. Israel holds Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers responsible for all such projectiles and usually launches airstrikes in their wake. It was the first such rocket fire since New Year’s Eve.

Early Tuesday, Israeli fighter jets carried out a series of airstrikes in southern Gaza Strip, targeting a “weapons manufacturing site” for Hamas, the Israeli military said. There were no reports of injuries.

Hours earlier, the leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group, which boasts an arsenal of rockets, had issued a brief, cryptic warning, condemning Israeli “violations” in Jerusalem.

Ziad al-Nakhala, who is based outside the Palestinian territories, said threats to tighten an Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza imposed after Hamas seized power 15 years ago “can’t silence us from what’s happening in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.”

However, no Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the rocket fire.

Palestinians and Israeli police clashed over the weekend in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, which has long been an epicenter of Israeli-

Palestinian violence. It is the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because the mosque stands on a hilltop where Jewish temples were located in antiquity.

Protests and clashes there this time last year helped trigger an 11-day Gaza war.

Police said they were responding to Palestinian stone-throwing and that they were committed to ensuring that Jews, Christians and Muslims — whose major holidays are converging this year — could celebrate them safely in the Holy Land. Palestinians view the presence of Israeli police at the site as a provocation and said they used excessive force.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Monday, ahead of the rocket fire, that Israel has been the target of a “Hamas-led incitement campaign.”

The latest tensions come during the rare confluence of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the week-long Jewish holiday of Passover. Christians are also celebrating their holy week leading up to Orthodox Easter. Tens of thousands of visitors have flocked to Jerusalem’s Old City — home to major holy sites for all three faiths — for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Jordan and Egypt, which made peace with Israel decades ago and coordinate with it on security matters, have condemned its actions at the mosque. Jordan — which serves as custodian of the site — summoned Israel’s charge d’affaires on Monday in protest.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II discussed the violence with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, agreeing on “the need to stop all illegal and provocative Israeli measures” there, according to a statement. Jordan planned to convene a meeting of other Arab states on the issue.

Israel has been working to improve relations with Jordan over the past year and has recently normalized relations with other Arab states. But the latest tensions have brought renewed attention to the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians, which Israel has sought to sideline in recent years.

The U.S. State Department urged all sides to “exercise restraint, to avoid provocative actions and rhetoric, and preserve the historic status quo” at the holy site. Spokesperson Ned Price said U.S. officials were in touch with counterparts across the region to try and calm tensions.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled a closed-door meeting on the tensions for Tuesday.

In Israel, an Arab party that made history last year by joining the governing coalition suspended its participation on Sunday — a largely symbolic act that nevertheless reflected the sensitivity of the holy site, which is at the emotional heart of the century-old conflict.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — which includes the Old City — in the 1967 Mideast War. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally and is building and expanding Jewish settlements across the West Bank, which it views as the biblical and historical heartland of the Jewish people.

The last serious and substantive peace talks collapsed more than a decade ago.

The Palestinians have long feared that Israel plans to take over or partition the mosque compound. In recent weeks, calls by Jewish extremists to sacrifice animals there have circulated widely among Palestinians on social media, sparking calls to defend the mosque.

Israeli authorities say they have no intention of changing the status quo, and police are enforcing a prohibition on animal sacrifices. Israel allows Jews to visit the site but not to pray there. In recent years large numbers of nationalist and religious Jews have regularly visited under police escort, angering the Palestinians and Jordan.

Israel says police were forced to enter the compound early Friday after Palestinians stockpiled stones and hurled rocks at the gate through which Jewish visitors typically enter. That gate also leads to the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.

Recent weeks have seen a series of Palestinian attacks inside Israel that killed 14 people. Israel has launched near-daily arrest raids and other military operations in the occupied West Bank that it says are aimed at preventing more.

The military said Monday it arrested 11 Palestinians in operations across the territory overnight. In a raid near the city of Jenin, the army said dozens of Palestinians hurled rocks and explosives toward troops.

Soldiers “responded with live ammunition toward the suspects who hurled explosive devices,” the military said. The Palestinian Health Ministry said two men were hospitalized after being critically wounded.

Two of the recent attackers came from in and around Jenin, which has long been a bastion of armed struggle against Israeli rule.

At least 26 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press count. Many had carried out attacks or were involved in clashes, but an unarmed woman and a lawyer who appears to have been a bystander were also among those killed.
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The flight debut of NASA’s mega moon rocket faces additional delays following a string of failed fueling tests. 

Officials said Monday it will be challenging to meet a launch window in early to mid-June. The next opportunity to send an empty capsule to the moon on a test flight would be at the end of June or July. 

The 30-story Space Launch System rocket has been on the pad at Kennedy Space Center for the past month. It will return to the hangar next week for valve and fuel leak repairs. The problems cropped up earlier this month, preventing NASA from filling the rocket’s fuel tanks for a critical dress rehearsal. 

The rocket will likely spend weeks in the hangar before heading back to the pad for a testing redo, said launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. 

Managers are considering various options for getting back on track. 

“It’s just a matter of what’s the right time, what’s the right way to do that,” said Tom Whitmeyer, a NASA deputy associate administrator. 

NASA wants this test flight under its belt before putting astronauts on board for the second launch, a lunar flyaround targeted for 2024. The third mission would attempt to land astronauts on the moon around 2025, more than a half-century after NASA’s Apollo moonshots. 
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Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after six months aboard their country’s newest orbital station in the longest crewed mission to date for China’s ambitious space program.

The Shenzhou 13 space capsule landed in the Gobi desert in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, shown live on state TV.

During the mission, astronaut Wang Yaping carried out the first spacewalk by a Chinese woman. Wang and crewmates Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu beamed back physics lessons for high school students.

China launched its first astronaut into space in 2003 and landed robot rovers on the moon in 2013 and on Mars last year. Officials have discussed a possible crewed mission to the moon.

On Saturday, state TV showed images from inside the capsule as it traveled at 200 meters per second over Africa before entering the atmosphere.

The trio were the second crew aboard Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace. Its core module, Tianhe, was launched in April 2021. Plans call for completing construction this year by adding two more modules.

Authorities have yet to announce a date for launching the next Tiangong crew.

China is excluded from the International Space Station due to U.S. unease that its space program is run by the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army.

China was the third nation to launch an astronaut into space on its own after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

Tiangong is China’s third space station following predecessors launched in 2011 and 2016.

The government announced in 2020 that China’s first reusable spacecraft had landed following a test flight but no photos or details of the vehicle have been released.

On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping visited the launch site in Wenchang on the southern island of Hainan from which the Tianhe module was fired into orbit.

“Persist in pursuing the frontiers of world aerospace development and the major strategic needs of national aerospace,” Xi told staff at the site, all of them in military uniform.
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The World Health Organization says a variety of crises are adversely impacting the health of millions and blocking needed humanitarian aid in war-torn hotspots around the world.   

War, climate disasters, and COVID-19 are threatening global health and undermining the capacity to build and maintain economically viable and stable societies.  These multiple crises are most pronounced in war-torn countries.

Ukraine, a once thriving society, is now shattered. Since Russia invaded 51 days ago, thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed or injured.

The WHO has confirmed 119 attacks on health care personnel and facilities since the start of the war there.  WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said health services are severely disrupted, particularly in the east of the country, now the epicenter of the fighting.

“For the sake of humanity, I urge Russia to come back to the table and to work for peace,” he said. “In the meantime, humanitarian corridors must be established so that medical supplies, food, and water can be delivered, and civilians can move to safety.”  

On another front, the World Food Program says 4.6 million people in the embattled Tigray province of northern Ethiopia are suffering from acute hunger.  Hundreds of thousands reportedly are on the verge of famine.

The Ethiopian government called a humanitarian truce three weeks ago.  Despite this, WHO chief Tedros said a blockade, one of the longest in the country’s history, continues. Few life-saving supplies, he said, are reaching Tigray.

“In effect, the siege by the Ethiopian and Eritrean forces continues,” he said. “To avert the humanitarian calamity and hundreds of thousands more people from dying, we need unfettered humanitarian access from those reinforcing the siege.” 

Tedros warned the Horn of Africa and Sahel are at high risk of famine. He said conflict, years of drought, heavy flooding, and COVID-19 have destroyed peoples’ ability to cultivate the land, grow their crop and raise their cattle.  

He said many people are already starving and millions are on the move. He expressed concern about the impact this humanitarian crisis is having on peoples’ health and on regional security.
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The first all-private charter to the International Space Station. Plus, a look back in history at a moon mission gone wrong, and an auction offering some of the most-expensive dust on Earth. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Climate change will accelerate at an unprecedented pace if governments don’t act soon, according to a recent report by the United Nations. For many people, such news can spur conflicting emotions. Hopelessness that it’s all too late? A sense of urgency to do something? VOA’s Julie Taboh spoke with a few young people about their concerns for the fate of the planet.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban into law Thursday as the state joined a growing conservative push to restrict access ahead of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could limit the procedure nationwide.

The new law marks a significant blow to abortion access in the South, where Florida has provided wider access to the procedure than its regional neighbors.

The new law, which takes effect July 1, contains exceptions if the abortion is necessary to save a mother’s life, prevent serious injury or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. It does not allow for exemptions in cases where pregnancies were caused by rape, incest or human trafficking. Under current law, Florida allows abortions up to 24 weeks.

“This will represent the most significant protections for life that have been enacted in this state in a generation,” DeSantis said as he signed the bill at the “Nación de Fe” (“Nation of Faith”), an evangelical church in the city of Kissimmee that serves members of the Latino population.

DeSantis, a Republican rising star and potential 2024 presidential candidate, signed the measure after several women delivered speeches about how they chose not to have abortions or, in the case of one, regretted having done so.

Some of the people in attendance, including young children, stood behind the speakers holding signs saying “Choose life,” while those who spoke stood at a podium to which was affixed a sign displaying an infant’s feet and a heartbeat reading, “Protect Life.”

Debate over the proposal grew deeply personal and revealing inside the Florida legislature, with lawmakers recalling their own abortions and experiences with sexual assault in often tearful speeches on the House and Senate floors.

Elsewhere in the United States, Republican lawmakers have introduced new abortion restrictions, some similar to a Texas law that bans abortion after roughly six weeks and leaves enforcement up to private citizens, which the U.S. Supreme Court decided to leave in place.

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt recently signed a bill to make it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by up to a decade in prison. Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in March signed legislation to outlaw abortion after 15 weeks if the U.S. Supreme Court leaves Mississippi’s law in place.

If Roe is overturned, 26 states are certain or likely to quickly ban or severely restrict abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that supports abortion rights. During debate of the Florida legislation, Republicans have said they want the state to be well placed to limit access to abortions if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds Mississippi’s law.
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Businessman Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter, saying the social media giant “needs to be transformed as a private company.”

He is already Twitter’s largest shareholder, owning more than 9% of the company, and a regulatory filing showed he offered $54.20 per share to buy the rest.

That price would value the company at about $43 billion and represents a 38% premium above the stock’s closing price on April 1, the last trading day before Musk bought his 9%.

“My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” Musk said.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The pandemic plunged 77 million more people into extreme poverty last year and many developing countries can’t recover because of the crippling cost of debt repayments — and that was before the added impact of the war in Ukraine, a U.N. report said Tuesday.

The report said rich countries could support their recovery from pandemic slumps with record amounts borrowed at ultra-low interest rates. But the poorest countries spent billions of dollars servicing their debts and faced much higher borrowing costs, preventing them from spending on improving education and health care, protecting the environment and reducing inequality.

According to the U.N., 812 million people lived in extreme poverty — on $1.90 a day or less — in 2019, and by 2021 amid the pandemic the number had risen to 889 million.

The report is on financing to achieve U.N. development goals for 2030, including ending poverty, ensuring quality education for all young people and achieving gender equality.

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said at a news conference that the effort “is coming at a critical moment for humanity, adding to the compounding crises of climate assaults on our natural systems and the protracted COVID-19 pandemic.”

Added to this, she said, is the global impact of the war in Ukraine. A U.N. analysis indicates “1.7 billion people are faced with exposure to spiking food, energy and fertilizer costs as a result of the war in Ukraine,” Mohammed said.

The report estimates that GDP per capita in 20% of developing countries will not return to pre-2019 levels by the end of 2023, even before absorbing the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

It says the poorest developing countries, on average, pay 14% of their revenue for interest on their debts, with many forced to cut budgets for education, infrastructure and capital spending as a result of the pandemic. Rich developed countries pay only 3.5%, it says.

The war in Ukraine will exacerbate these challenges, the report said, and it will also bring higher energy and commodity prices, renewed supply chain disruptions, higher inflation, lower growth and increased volatility in financial markets.

Mohammed said “it would be a tragedy” if rich donor nations increased military expenditures as a result of the war and cut aid to developing countries and reduced efforts to address the climate crisis.

The U.N. already was “off track” in efforts to reach the U.N. development goals before the pandemic hit and brought new problems, she said. Now, the war and its impact will set these efforts back again, “so the big message is that we need more resources,” she said.

“There is no excuse for inaction at this defining moment of collective responsibility, to ensure hundreds of millions of people are lifted out of hunger and poverty,” Mohammed said. “We must invest in access for decent and green jobs, social protection, health care and education leaving no one behind.”

The report’s recommendations include speeding up debt relief and expanding eligibility to highly indebted middle-income countries, aligning the international tax system to address such issues as inequality in availability of coronavirus vaccines and access to medical products, accelerating investment in sustainable energy, and improving information sharing.

The report was produced by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs in collaboration with more than 60 international agencies, including the U.N. system and international financial institutions. 
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