World Audio/Video - NPR

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports an increase in asylum seekers from several African countries to South America. Among countries seeing a spike in asylum seekers from Africa are Brazil and Argentina. Guest host Jennifer Ludden discusses the trend with journalist Anil Mundra, who has reported on African immigration to Argentina. Mundra is joined by Professor Clarence Lusane, of American University. Lusane works closely with African rights organizations in Brazil.

A federal judge in Minneapolis is set to unseal a roster of documents charging as many as eight new people with terrorism offenses related to the disappearance of young Somali-Americans to fight for a terrorist organization in Somalia, NPR has learned.

One of the most popular programs on Iraqi TV these days is Hotline, a call-in show that allows viewers to take their problems directly to the highest government officials. It offers an unprecedented chance for ordinary Iraqis to confront their government.

In Northern Ireland, a 400-pound car bomb failed to detonate over the weekend. It was placed outside police headquarters in Belfast, and that has residents wondering if dissident factions of the IRA are intent on stepping up violence.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has denounced the actions of some Israeli soldiers who support Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Some Israelis say the soldiers are heros. Palestinians demand Israel freeze all settlement activity as a condition for restarting peace talks. The international community views the settlements as illegal.

Iran on Sunday began large-scale air defense war games aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from attack, state TV reported, as an air force commander boasted that the country could deter any military strike by Israel.

Irish Republican Army dissidents left a 400-pound car bomb outside police reform headquarters in Belfast but the homemade device failed to detonate, Northern Ireland's police commander said Sunday.

Rescuers worked in frigid cold to reach 21 miners trapped underground Sunday as the death toll from a huge gas explosion in a northern Chinese mine jumped to 87 — the deadliest blast to hit the beleaguered industry in nearly two years.

Dr. Chris Coppola was a pediatrician in the U.S. before he shipped off to Iraq. As a military surgeon, he expected to treat soldiers, but he found himself helping war-ravaged Iraqi children as well. Host Liane Hansen speaks with Dr. Coppola about his memoir, Coppola: A Pediatric Surgeon in Iraq.

Iranian media reported this week that five people arrested in the protests following Iran's presidential election have been sentenced to death. Tehran says the prisoners had connections to "counter-revolutionary groups," but activists say Iran is going too far in persecuting dissenters. Host Scott Simon talks to Hadi Ghaemi, director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

This week, the Senate faced a crucial vote on health care. The Obama administration fended off criticism over Sept. 11 trials in New York, and Hamid Karzai was sworn in for another term as president of Afghanistan. Host Scott Simon reviews the week in the news with NPR Senior News Analyst Dan Schorr.

While President Obama weighs his options on Afghanistan, one thing is clear: The U.S. is beefing up its civilian presence there. The aid effort has been hobbled from the start, and many experts consider it a weak link in the struggle to build a stable society in the conflicted country. Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew insists that the U.S. is now recruiting the right kind of people, but before those people head to Afghanistan, they get trained to work with the military at a base in Indiana.

The massive reservoir behind China's Three Gorges Dam was supposed to be filled to capacity this month. But landslides on the reservoir and water shortages downstream have delayed the process. Questions have been raised about the dam, which is the world's largest hydropower project, and what it might mean for the Yangtze River.

Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again, a Florence museum said Friday.

Brazil's ghettos are poverty stricken and violent. But there are people fighting against the odds to turn things around for the poor children of Rio de Janeiro. Among them is an unusual apostle: a Rio socialite who founded a school for slum-dwelling children and views education as an equalizer.

When the Marines of "America's Battalion" first arrived in Afghanistan, they were eager to get into the fight against the Taliban. Now, as they wrap up their seven-month deployment — and after the loss of a dozen comrades — they see warfare in a different light.

News from Yemen has been dominated recently by an escalating rebellion along the border with Saudi Arabia. But the country has been making news for decades because of its severe overuse of a rapidly disappearing water supply, the result of natural and political causes.

Raging floods engulfed northern England's Lake District on Friday, killing a police officer and trapping dozens in their swamped homes. In Ireland, more than 3 feet of water shut down the center of the country's second-largest city, Cork, and more than a dozen other towns and villages.

Police arrested three members of a gang in the Peruvian jungle that allegedly has been killing people and draining fat from the corpses to sell on the black market for use in cosmetics. Medical experts expressed doubt about an international black market for human fat, though it does have cosmetic applications.

Two children and a policeman were among those killed in the blast, which wounded at least 23 others when the motorcyclist detonated the explosives in a busy city square in western Afghanistan, officials said.

Another man has been indicted on terrorism charges in a federal investigation into the recruitment of Minnesota Somalis to fight in Somalia.

Trade commissioner Catherine Ashton of Britain was selected as the EU's new foreign policy chief and Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy was picked for president. Their appointments suggested the need for compromise outweighed the desire for big names like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Two police officers were killed by a suicide bomber a day after 19 people were killed outside a courthouse in Peshawar. The bombings brought to eight the number of militant attacks in less than two weeks in the city on the Afghan border.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai pledged Thursday to prosecute corrupt officials, and said the country would control it own security within five years. Karzai's comments came in an inauguration speech that kicked off his second term of office amid a growing Taliban insurgency and a cloud of corruption allegations.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai was inaugurated in Kabul on Thursday for a new term amid tight security and ceremonial flourishes. But his second term is already beset by severe doubts that he will be any more effective at tackling the country's rampant corruption.

Recovery will accelerate next year due to "substantial improvements" in financial markets and fast-growing Asian countries, but is likely to remain fragile, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said. The OECD more than doubled its estimate for 2010 growth in its 30 member countries to 1.9 percent, from the 0.7 percent forecast in June.

More than two years ago, U.S. and South Korea signed a bilateral free trade agreement but lawmakers of both countries have yet to ratify the deal. Officials from both countries hope the deal will create new jobs and open up markets. However, auto trade is a major hurdle.

President Obama wraps up his trip to Asia with a stop in South Korea, where leader Lee Myung-bak joked that Obama had saved the best for last. The two men discussed a range of issues, including free trade and the ever-present nuclear threat from North Korea.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai was sworn in for another five-year term Thursday. Watching with a critical eye were foreign dignitaries who are pressing Karzai to make his second term in office far better than his first. Karzai promised to prosecute corrupt officials.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai promised Thursday to prosecute corrupt government officials and end a culture of impunity, speaking during an inauguration closely watched by the international community for signs that his administration is moving beyond the cronyism and graft of the past five years.

When Ayon committed suicide in 1999, she was just 32 years old — and already a star in the Cuban art world. A major exhibit of her work now under way in Havana has revived an enduring mystery in Cuba — about art, African myths and the shadowy, all-male secret society known as Abakua.

Prices for MRIs are much cheaper in Japan than in the U.S. The difference in prices provides some insight into why health care costs are so high in the U.S. There's something else at work, too. MRIs are very popular in Japan: Some people get them every year even if they aren't sick.

President Obama, in his first trip to China as president, met Wednesday with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Harry Harding, dean of the University of Virginia's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, discusses what the China visit say about U.S.-China relations.

Under the deal, Iran would send low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enriching and then to France to be converted into fuel rods, which would be returned to Iran. This would reduce the stockpile of material that Iran could enrich to a higher level and possibly use to make nuclear weapons.

The U.S. economic downturn and tighter border security has not deterred migrants from Central America seeking to enter the United States. But they are being abused in new and alarming ways. Tens of thousands of them are robbed, kidnapped and even killed attempting to cross Mexico.

A top Iraqi official vetoed the country's election law Wednesday, throwing plans to hold parliamentary elections in January into disarray. The move could unravel hard-won compromises, and it could complicate U.S. efforts to withdraw U.S. combat troops next year.

Iraq's Sunni Arab vice president vetoed part of a key election law, a move that could delay national polls slated for January even as the top U.S. commander in Iraq said the timetable for American troop drawdown is on track.

The secretary of state will attend Thursday's ceremony for Afghan leader Hamid Karzai in Kabul and meet with top U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChystal. Security is being tightened in the capital for the inauguration, which could be a target for militants.

The attempt marked the second time in seven months that Somali pirates have targeted the U.S.-flagged cargo ship. In April, pirates took the ship's captain hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days before he was freed by Navy SEAL sharpshooters.