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The closing of the Acropolis in Greece is just one sign of a heat wave that's suffocating southern Europe this week. Meteorologists say temperatures are expected to keep hitting well into the triple digits through Sunday. Host Carolyn Beeler and Marco Werman have more.

Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was arrested as he was about to board a one-way flight back to Syria. Sheikh had been living in Los Angeles since 2020 and is accused of killing and torturing Syrian political dissidents. Host Carolyn Beeler speaks with Mouaz Mustafa of the Syrian Emergency Taskforce about the role his organization played in the case against Shei...

Poppy seeds are a flavorful ingredient in Trader Joe's "Everything But the Bagel" seasoning blend, and in South Korea, they are classified as a narcotic — which has led to a ban on importation of the product. Hosts Marco Werman and Carolyn Beeler tell how poppy seeds, beloved in cakes, muffins and on bagels, are now increasingly under scrutiny by authorities around the globe.

It's summer and the US and other countries are seeing a rise in rates of COVID-19. Could certain aspects of summer life be contributing: like huddling indoors with air conditioning? Or is it new variants? Host Carolyn Beeler explores these questions with Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public health.

Latinos make up a little more than 10% of North Carolina's population. But they're expected to play a key role in this November's election. The Biden campaign is using Spanish-language media to target Latino voters. Meanwhile, a conservative nonprofit called the LIBRE Initiative is playing a long game. It's not necessarily trying to get Latinos to vote for Donald Trump, but to embrace conservative...

Friends and enemies alike spy on each other across the globe. But in the tense relationship between the US and China, spycraft takes on a more complicated and dangerous dimension. The World's Marco Werman talks espionage with journalist Jane Perlez, host of the podcast “Face Off: The US versus China.”

California is in the middle of an ambitious plan to offer transitional kindergarten (TK) to all 4-year-olds by the 2025–26 school year. It's poised to be the largest free preschool program in the country. A lot of the kids heading to TK are dual-language learners. KQED's Daisy Nguyen reports on the challenges California faces as it tries to add a new grade to its sprawling public school system. 

Pastor Khader Khalilia has spent the last decade educating his congregation at Redeemer-St John’s Lutheran Church in Dyker Heights, New York. For starters, many of his congregants initially assumed that all Palestinians were Muslims. Khalilia speaks with The World’s Marco Werman about challenges he’s encountered as one of the few Palestinian faith leaders in the US to lead a Christian church. 

The legendary singing couple from Mali, Amadou and Mariam, are back with a new single titled "Mogolu," which means "the people" in their language Bambara. It's an embrace of the connections that can be made simply by traveling and making human connections. Hosts Marco Werman and Carolyn Beeler have more on their story. 

Robert Menendez , a New Jersey senator, and former head of the Senate foreign relations committee, has been convicted of bribery, fraud and extortion. The jury in the Manhattan court found Menendez guilty of acting on behalf of Egyptian intelligence and steering financial aid and weapons to the country. The World's Shirin Jaafari reports.

Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro is under major pressure. The country will hold elections on July 28, and he’s performing badly in the polls. Under his 11-year rule, Venezuela’s economy collapsed, oppression increased, and about 20% of the country’s population left. A diaspora of millions of people could have been crucial for the electoral outcome. But as The World’s Tibisay Zea...

Ri Il-kyu served as a North Korean diplomat in Cuba, up until he decided to defect to South Korea late last year. The details of his account appeared in South Korean newspapers on Tuesday. Ri's defection is the latest in a string of officials fleeing from North Korea over the last several years, and it will be embarrassing for dictator Kim Jong-un. The World's Matthew Bell reports.

The men's 1,500-meter race at the Paris Olympics is bound to entertain, with medal contenders from Kenya and the US. The reigning Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen  and reigning World Champion Josh Kerr are getting a lot of attention, too. A fierce rivalry has formed between them in the past year. The World's Bianca Hillier reports. 

A few weeks ago, a scandal erupted in India following the results of a medical school entrance test. An abnormally high number of students received perfect scores on the fiercely competitive exam. It turns out that exam questions had been improperly shared before the test. As Sushmita Pathak reports from Delhi, the scandal is shining a light on India's toxic exam culture. 

The new study says ice melt from the Earth's poles is slowing the planet's rotation. By the end of the century, days will be longer by a few milliseconds, but this is enough to disrupt the internet, GPS systems and more. Host Carolyn Beeler speaks with Benedikt Soja, a leading author of the study.

Hosts Marco Werman and Carolyn Beeler offer a global roundup of news about animals that listeners might have missed. 

Britain's new Prime Minister Keir Starmer is promising to "smash the gangs" that traffic undocumented migrants across the English channel from France. He has also ditched the controversial Rwanda policy, which threatened to send migrants to the east African country to have their asylum claims processed there. Starmer says a new border security command unit will reduce the numbers crossing the chan...

The photography project, "Rwanda Reseen, 100 Days," exhibits snapshots and portraits of daily life and people in Rwanda. The images were printed on waterproof material and hung around the country. The two photographers behind the project, Jacques Nkinzingabo and Bill Bamberger, talk about the exhibit, how they created it, and what the photos mean to them and their subjects. 

A court in Moscow handed Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen an eight-year prison term in absentia for criticizing the Russian military. The case stems from a YouTube interview Gessen conducted in 2022 with anti-war Russian blogger Yuri Dud. Gessen, who lives in the US and is a columnist for The New York Times, is unlikely to be imprisoned unless they travel to a country with an extradition t...

The weekend's scene of a former American president, and current presidential candidate, being grazed by a bullet in broad daylight grabbed headlines around the globe. As the World’s Matthew Bell reports, the reactions from international leaders came quickly.

Two days after winning Wimbledon, Czech tennis champion Barbora Krejcikova is back in the top-10 ranking of tennis players. Winning the women's singles title on Saturday catapulted her 22 places up the list, as host Carolyn Beeler explains.

During the past two weeks of nationwide anti-tax demonstrations, one institution has drawn the ire of many of the young Kenyans out on the street: The International Monetary Fund (IMF). They blame the IMF for encouraging Kenya’s government to increase taxes in return for debt help and credit. It’s not the first time the IMF has been criticized by Africans for giving loans that come with strict con...

Anchored by volunteers and funded by donations, Istanbul's Open Radio is considered one of Turkey's last bastions of free speech. After a guest on a news program mentioned the 1915 Armenian genocide on air, Turkey's broadcast regulator issued the station a hefty fine, and told them to take the program off the air. They didn't. The World reports from Istanbul.

Dozens of people who had sought shelter in a makeshift camp were killed and many more injured in Israeli airstrikes on Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza. Al-Mawasi was previously designated a "safe zone" by Israel, which prompted thousands to seek shelter there. Israel's military leadership claim the strikes targeted members of Hamas' military leadership in Gaza. Host Carolyn Beeler speaks with Hassan Mo...

The government of Cyprus declared a “migrant emergency” in April after more than 2,000 people arrived there by sea in the first three months of 2024. That's compared to just 78 in the same period of 2023. Many are Syrians fleeing war and economic crises in Lebanon, which has been home to more than a million refugees since the Syrian civil war started. Vera Haller reports from Nicosia, Cyprus, that...