Since Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and took 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days, relations with the U.S. and Iran have been volatile.  Tensions escalated recently after the the U.S. conducted a targeted killing of a top Iranian commander in Iraq. The incident has increased anxiety among many Iranian Americans in the U.S. who already felt vulnerable. VOA’s Julie Taboh talked with a few of them and has this report.

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Russia says good progress has been made in talks in Moscow over a ceasefire in Libya – but a breakthrough deal has yet to be signed between the rival forces. Russia, which supports strongman Khalifa Haftar in the east of the country, helped broker a ceasefire alongside Turkey, which plans to deploy troops to defend Haftar’s rival, the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord based in Tripoli. As Henry Ridgwell reports, more and more foreign powers are getting involved in the conflict – and while hopes have been raised of a longer-term peace deal, there is also a danger the intervention could backfire.

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Who will be celebrating Oscar morning? Brad Pitt for sure. Jennifer Lopez almost certainly. And very possibly the Obamas, too.

Nominations for the 92nd Academy Awards, which will begin at 8:18 a.m. EST Monday, should bring plenty of star power to the Feb. 9 ceremony – a good thing, too, since the show will for the second straight year  go without a host.

Thankfully, this Oscar year isn’t lacking for drama. Netflix is gunning for its first best picture win, a year after Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” fell just short. It has not just one but at least two contenders led by Martin Scorsese’s elegiac crime epic “The Irishman” and Noah Baumbach’s intimate divorce drama “Marriage Story.”

But in the lead up to Monday’s nominations, much of the momentum has gone to  a pair of movies that exalt the big screen with showmanship and celebrity: Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” with Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, and Sam Mendes’ continuous World War I thrill ride, “1917.” Hollywood, in the midst of a streaming upheaval, has so far favored the traditionally released movies.

Still, no definite front-runner has emerged, and nominations morning could tip the scales anew in a rapid-paced awards season that, while not lacking for the usual battery of parties, screenings and Q&As, is more condensed than usual.

The nominations, to be read by Issa Rae and John Cho, will be live streamed on Oscar.com, Oscars.org and the academy’s digital social platforms. The second wave of nominees will begin at 8:30 a.m. EST and be carried live on “Good Morning America.”

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences select anywhere from five to 10 nominees for best picture, depending on how many first-placed votes a film gets. That’s usually meant eight or nine movies. This year, the precursor guild nominations  have suggested the sure things are “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,”  “1917,” “The Irishman,” Taika Waititi’s “JoJo Rabbit” and Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite.”

That leaves a few slots to be battled out by “Joker,” “Little Women,” “Ford v Ferrari,” “Knives Out,” “Bombshell” and “The Farewell.”

“Parasite” will be the first Korean film ever nominated for an Oscar but it’s likely to land several nominations, including Bong for best director and possibly Song Kang Ho for best supporting actor.

The director category will be especially closely watched. Though Greta Gerwig (“Little Women”) is a possibility, the academy is expected to nominate an all-male field despite a year in which women made significant gains behind the camera.  The academy has nominated only men for best director in all but five years; Gerwig was the last woman nominated, two years ago.

In the acting categories, Renee Zellweger (“Judy”) has consistently led the best actress contenders. Should Awkwafina be nominated, she would be only the second woman of Asian descent nominated in the category. (The first, 1936 nominee Merle Oberon, hid her South Asian heritage.)

Pitt has a lock on the supporting actor Oscar, which would be his first ever. Laura Dern (“Marriage Story”) and Lopez have led the supporting actress nominees. A nomination would be the first for Lopez.

The best actor category, after a few lackluster years, has been especially competitive, with Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”) and Adam Driver (“Marriage Story”) as the most entrenched nominees in a field including DiCaprio, Antonio Banderas (“Pain and Glory”), Christian Bale (“Ford v Ferrari”), Eddie Murphy (“Dolemite Is My Name”), Adam Sandler (“Uncut Gems”) and Robert De Niro (“The Irishman”).

While a similar result Monday is unlikely, the British Film Academy last week nominated an all-white field of acting nominees. Widely criticized, the BAFTAs pledged to review its awards process.

Beyonce will likely add an Oscar nomination to her many honors, for her “Lion King” song. “American Factory,” the first release from Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground, is likely to be among the documentary nominees.

After the most dominant box-office year in Hollywood history, the Walt Disney Co. will have reasons to celebrate Monday, though their top films – including the record-setting Marvel blockbuster “Avengers: Endgame” – are expected to be largely relegated to categories like best visual effects. The studio, which has never won a best picture Academy Award, does have a few contenders via its acquisition in April of 20th Century Fox. Both “Ford v Ferrari” and “Jojo Rabbit” (released by specialty label Fox Searchlight) will compete in the top categories.

The 92nd Academy Awards will take place Feb. 9 in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theatre. ABC will again broadcast the show, viewership for which last year rose 12% to 29.6 million.    

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Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II is set to hold face-to-face talks Monday with Prince Harry for the first time since he and his wife, Meghan, unveiled their controversial plan to walk away from royal roles, holding  a dramatic family summit meant to chart a future course for the couple.
    
The meeting reflects the queen’s desire to contain the fallout from Harry and Meghan’s decision to “step back” as senior royals, work to become financially independent and split their time between Britain and North America. The couple, also known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, made the announcement Wednesday without telling the queen or other senior royals first.
    
Before the extraordinary session, Princes William and Harry took the equally unusual step of issuing a statement challenging the accuracy of a newspaper report that there was a severe strain on the relationship between the two brothers.
    
“For brothers who care so deeply about the issues surrounding mental health, the use of inflammatory language in this way is offensive and potentially harmful,” the statement said.
    
The meeting at the monarch’s private Sandringham estate in eastern England will also include Harry’s father Prince Charles and his brother Prince William. It comes after days of intense news coverage, in which supporters of the royal family’s feuding factions used the British media to paint conflicting pictures of who was to blame for the rift.
    
William is expected to travel to Sandringham from London and Harry from his home in Windsor, west of the British capital. Charles has flown  back from the Gulf nation of Oman, where he attended a condolence ceremony Sunday following the death of Sultan Qaboos bin Said.
    
Meghan, who is in Canada with the couple’s baby son Archie, is likely to join the meeting by phone.
    
Buckingham Palace said “a range of possibilities” would be discussed, but the queen was determined to resolve the situation within “days, not weeks.” The goal was to agree on next steps at Monday’s gathering, which follows days of talks among royal courtiers and officials from the U.K. and Canada. Buckingham Palace stressed, however, that “any decision will take time to be implemented.”
    
One of the more fraught questions that needs to be worked out is precisely what it means for a royal to be financially independent and what activities can be undertaken to make money. Other royals who have ventured into the world of commerce have found it complicated.
    
Prince Andrew, for example, has faced heated questions about his relationship with the late convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew, the queen’s second son, has relinquished royal duties and patronages after being accused by a woman who says she was an Epstein trafficking victim who slept with the prince.
    
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex also face questions on paying for taxpayer-funded security. Home Secretary Priti Patel refused to comment, but said safety was a priority.
    
“I’m not going to provide any detailed information on the security arrangements for either them or any members of the royal family or for any protected individuals, that’s thoroughly inappropriate for me to do so” she told the BBC. “At this moment in time, right now, the royal family themselves need some time and space for them to work through the current issues that they’re dealing with.”
    
The meeting comes amid days of days of discussions about the future of the monarchy following the surprise announcement. Senior royals were said to be hurt, Harry and Meghan’s friends have told Britain’s media that the couple were being pushed aside because of the desire of the Windsors to concentrate on the core of the royal family and focus on those in the line of succession – Prince Charles, William and William’s son George.
    
Tom Bradby, a TV journalist who is close to Harry and Meghan, warned in the Sunday Times that the royal family badly needed a peace deal to prevent “a protracted war” that could damage the monarchy.
    
With much at stake, the talks could be a step toward a changed monarchy.
   
“This is a seismic moment in royal history and British society,” Kate Williams, a historian at the University of Reading, wrote in the Observer. “It tells historians of the future much about our society, its self-perceptions, prejudices and fears. And most of all, it should mark our realization as we didn’t learn after (Princess) Diana that those who marry into the royal family are not our dolls to attack and throw around as we please.”

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President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Sunday that a monument will be put up to memorialize nine U.S.-Mexican dual citizens ambushed and slain last year by suspected drug gang assassins along a remote road in the northern border region near New Mexico.

In remarks to members of the small town of La Mora, which was shattered by the Nov. 4 killings of three women and six children from the extended Langford, LeBaron and Miller families, Lopez Obrador said the first goal is to bring those responsible to justice.

Speaking after meeting with victims’ relatives, the president said an agreement had been reached with municipal and Sonora state officials to establish a monument of some sort “here where these lamentable and painful events took place,” and also for special recognition of those who risked their lives to rush to the aid of victims and survivors.

“So that we exalt this, the true solidarity: He who is willing to give his life for another,” Lopez Obrador said.

He promised to meet with family members in two months to give them another in-person update on the investigation and to return in four to six months to present a plan on regional development including road improvements.

The mostly bilingual American-Mexicans have lived in northern Mexico for decades and consider themselves Mormons, though they are not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The community’s origins in Mexico date to the official end of polygamy over a century ago by the LDS church, which prompted many families that continued the practice to establish colonies elsewhere. Many of those in northern Mexico have by now, over the generations, abandoned polygamy as well.

La Mora is a hamlet of about 300 people in Sonora state while Colonia LeBaron is a larger town of over 2,000 on the other side of the mountains in Chihuahua; the two are linked by a bone-jarring and treacherous dirt road where the attack occurred as the women and children were traveling to visit relatives.

The areas lie in the territory of rival drug gangs with the Sinaloa cartel of convicted kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman holding sway in Sonora and the Juarez cartel dominant in Chihuahua.

The killings sowed grief and fear in the tightly knit communities, and dozens fled La Mora for the United States in the subsequent days out of concerns for their safety. What was once a tranquil and even idyllic life in a fertile river valley surrounded by mountains and desert scrub had grown increasingly tenuous as criminal gangs exerted their influence and fought each other, some said.

“Broken hearts, defeated, and through the fault of crime. I personally do not understand how so many people continue to die in such a beautiful country, such good people and with such richness,” community member Margaret Langford said at Sunday’s ceremony. “I was born in Chihuahua but I have been living for 20 years here in La Mora, a place that was so tranquil and neighbors we treasure so much.”

“I love this  country and it pains me to my soul to think of not being able to live here,” Langford said. “This massacre has left us lost and destroyed. I ask God that it not be what defines our community..”

Mexico has been posting homicide totals in recent years at all-time highs since comparable records began to be kept in the 1990s.

Lopez Obrador repeated Sunday that his security strategy aims to address root causes of violence such as poverty, inequality and lack of opportunity, particularly for young people, rather than the military offensive launched in 2006 by then-President Felipe Calderon and continued under Lopez Obrador’s predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto.

“Deprive the fish of water,” the president said “so there are no longer young people who want to be cartel killers.”

Victims’ relatives said Thursday that U.S. authorities told them they had detained two suspects in the killings, and Mexican prosecutors said earlier in the week that more than 40 suspects had been identified.

Previously, Mexican prosecutors said three men were arrested and charged with organized crime for drug offenses, though none apparently yet faced homicide charges in the case.

Four other suspects were said to be under a form of house arrest, and the name of one suspect partially matched the police chief of the town of Janos, Chihuahua, near the eastern terminus of the connecting dirt road.

Local media reported the chief had been on the payroll of La Linea drug gang, which is allied with the Juarez cartel.

“I know there are things that do not take away the pain, that the pain remains in our hearts, but without doubt, justice, Mr. president, … will relieve a little bit the pain of these families,” Sonora Gov. Claudia Pavlovich Arellano said Sunday.

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Retired Pope Benedict XVI has broken his silence to reaffirm the value of priestly celibacy, co-authoring a bombshell book at the precise moment that Pope Francis is weighing whether to allow married men to be ordained to address the Catholic priest shortage.

Benedict wrote the book, “From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church,” along with his fellow conservative, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, who heads the Vatican’s liturgy office and has been a quiet critic of Francis.

The French daily Le Figaro published excerpts of the book late Sunday; The Associated Press obtained galleys of the English edition, which is being published by Ignatius Press.

Benedict’s intervention is extraordinary, given he had promised to remain “hidden from the world” when he retired in 2013 and pledged his obedience to the new pope. He has largely held to that pledge, though he penned an odd essay last year on the sexual abuse scandal that blamed the crisis on the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

His reaffirmation of priestly celibacy, however, gets to the heart of a fraught policy issue that Francis is expected to weigh in on, and could well be considered a public attempt by the former pope to sway the thinking of the current one.

The authors clearly anticipated that potential interpretation, and stressed in their joint introduction that they were penning the book “in a spirit of filial obedience, to Pope Francis.“

Francis has said he would write a document based on the outcome of the October 2019 synod of bishops on the Amazon. A majority of bishops at the meeting called for the ordination of married men to address the priest shortage in the Amazon, where the faithful can go months without having a Mass.

Francis has expressed sympathy with the Amazonian plight. While he has long reaffirmed the gift of a celibate priesthood in the Latin rite church, he has stressed that celibacy is a tradition, not doctrine, and therefore can change, and that there could be pastoral reasons to allow for a exception in a particular place.

Benedict addresses the issue head-on in his chapter in the brief book, which is composed of a joint introduction and conclusion penned by Benedict and Sarah, and then a chapter apiece in between. True to his theological form, Benedict’s chapter is dense with biblical references and he explains in scholarly terms what he says is the “necessary“ foundation for the celibate priesthood that dates from the times of the apostles.

“The priesthood of Jesus Christ causes us to enter into a life that consists of becoming one with him and renouncing all that belongs only to us,” he writes. “For priests, this is the foundation of the necessity of celibacy but also of liturgical prayer, meditation on the Word of God and the renunciation of material goods.”

Marriage, he writes, requires man to give himself totally to his family. “Since serving the Lord likewise requires the total gift of a man, it does not seem possible to carry on the two vocations simultaneously. Thus, the ability to renounce marriage so as to place oneself totally at the Lord’s disposition became a criterion for priestly ministry.”

The joint conclusion of the book makes the case even stronger, acknowledging the crisis of the Catholic priesthood that it says has been “wounded by the revelation of so many scandals, disconcerted by the constant questioning of their consecrated celibacy.”

Dedicating the book to priests of the world, the two authors urge them to persevere, and for all faithful to hold firm and support them in their celibate ministry.

“It is urgent and necessary for everyone-bishops, priests and lay people-to stop letting themselves be intimidated by the wrong-headed pleas, the theatrical productions, the diabolical lies and the fashionable errors that try to put down priestly celibacy,” they write. “It is urgent and necessary for everyone-bishops, priests and lay people-to take a fresh look with the eyes of faith at the Church and at priestly celibacy which protects her mystery.”

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China’s health officials say there is no danger that a new strain of coronavirus could cause a worldwide spread of pneumonia-like illness similar to the 2003 SARS  (Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus) pandemic. More than 40 people have been diagnosed with the new virus in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province and one person has died from the complications caused by it. Chinese authorities are applying measures to prevent the spread of the infection within the city as well as in other parts of China. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

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The leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said Sunday that Iran’s missile attacks on two bases in Iraq housing U.S. forces was only the start of the retaliation for America’s killing a top Iranian general in a drone strike.

Hassan Nasrallah described Iran’s ballistic missile response as a “slap” to Washington, one that sent a message. The limited strikes caused no casualties and appeared to be mainly a show of force.

The leader of Hezbollah, which is closely aligned with Iran, said the strikes were the “first step down a long path” that will ensure U.S. troops withdraw from the region. 

“The Americans must remove their bases, soldiers and officers and ships from our region. The alternative … to leaving vertically is leaving horizontally. This is a decisive and firm decision,”  Nasrallah said. 

“We are speaking about the start of a phase, about a new battle, about a new era in the region,” he added.

His 90-minute televised speech marked one week since the killing of Iran’s Gen. Qassim Soleimani. 

Nasrallah praised Soleimani for his steadfast support for Hezbollah. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has provided training for Hezbollah, which fought in the war in Syria alongside Iran-backed militias that Soleimani directed. 

Nasrallah said that the world is a different place after Soleimani’s death, and not a safer place as some U.S. officials have declared. 

Iran had for days been promising to respond forcefully to Soleimani’s killing. But after the ballistic missile strikes, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the country had “concluded proportionate measures in self-defense.”

Nasrallah also praised the Iran’s leadership for admitting to accidentally shooting down a Ukrainian passenger plane on the night it launched the missile attacks. He called the acknowledgement “transparency that is unparalleled in the world.” 

The plane crash early Wednesday killed all 176 people on board, mostly Iranians and Iranian-Canadians. Iran had initially pointed to a technical failure and insisted the armed forces were not to blame.

Hezbollah is one of Iran’s main allies in the region and is a sworn enemy of Israel, with which it has had a series of confrontations, lastly in 2006.

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Fires in Australia are increasingly under control as cooler temperatures and light winds stay consistent, according to fire fighting officials.

Teams near the town of Bodalla in New South Wales, the state most affected by weeks of bushfires, said Sunday that they were able to move from defense to offense, working to ensure a fire would not reach a major highway, the Associated Press reported.

The Gospers Mountain fire northwest of Sydney, which has been burning since October, is under control as of Sunday thanks to light rain, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Sunday.

As of Sunday evening, 111 fires were still burning across the state of New South Wales – 40 of them still uncontrolled, according to the NSW Rural Fire Service.

At 8:30pm there are 111 bush and grass fires burning across NSW, all at the Advice alert level, with 40 not yet contained. While it’s been pleasing to hear of rain falling across parts of the state today, many of these fires will still take some time to fully contain. #NSWRFSpic.twitter.com/ZtF2IgDzkc

— NSW RFS (@NSWRFS) January 12, 2020

Since September, at least 27 people have died in Australia’s bushfires. More than 10 million hectares (24 million acres) of land — an area bigger than Portugal — have been scorched.

Climate change rallies have been held in Australia by thousands of protesters critical of the government’s handling of the bushfire crisis. A demonstration in Sydney Saturday has reportedly drew 30,000 people.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has come under scrutiny for his response to the wildfires — most recently for underplaying the role of climate change in the devastating wildfires.

The prime minister has previously defended his energy and climate policies as adequate and responsible, but on Sunday said his government was working to create a long-term program designed to reduce the risk of natural disasters “in response to the climate changing,” the Associated Press reported.

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Islamist rebels killed 30 soldiers and wounded another 70, some seriously, during fierce fighting last week in eastern DR Congo, army officials said.

They suffered the losses during the latest offensive Thursday against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), in North Kivu province, Major Mak Hazukai told journalists Saturday.

The army captured the ADF’s headquarters during the battle at Madina, and killed 40 rebel fighters, including five of their leaders, Hazukai added.

On Friday, the cabinet posted a tweet on the prime minister’s account congratulating the army on their capture of what they described as the one of the last bastions of the ADF.

North Kivu sits on the border with Uganda. The ADF, rebels originally from Uganda, has been waging a campaign of violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo for years.

Hazukai described them as “Islamist fundamentalists”.

The army announced its campaign against the ADF on October 30. The rebels are accused of having killed more than a thousand people in the Beni region, in the northern part of North Kivu, since 2014.

ADF fighters killed at least 150 civilians over November and December in reprisal according to official sources and local groups. That rising toll has sparked anger over the authorities’ response.

There have been demonstrations in the city of Beni, where local people accuse the UN peacekeeping force MONUSCO of failing to protect them. At the end of November, local people looted a MONUSCO base there.

Since then, the UN force and the army have announced joint patrols in the region.

The ADF began as an Islamist rebellion hostile to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. 

It fell back into eastern DRC in 1995 and appears to have halted raids inside Uganda. Its recruits today are people of various nationalities.

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Eleven migrants, including eight children, died Saturday when their vessel sank in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey, state news agency Anadolu reported. 

The boat sank off Cesme, a popular tourist resort in western Turkey opposite the Greek island of Chios, Anadolu said, adding that eight others were rescued. 

The nationality of the victims was not yet known. 

The sinking came hours after another boat sank in the Aegean near the Greek island of Paxi, leaving at least 12 dead. 

Turkey has taken in around 4 million migrants and refugees, most of them Syrians, and is an important transit country for those fleeing conflicts and seeking to reach Europe, largely via Greece. 

An agreement reached in March 2016 between Ankara and the European Union succeeded in considerably reducing the number of people arriving on the five islands closest to Turkey. 

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The death toll from Thursday’s attack by suspected jihadists on a Niger army base has risen to at least 89, four security sources said, surpassing a raid last month that killed 71 soldiers as the deadliest against Nigerien forces in years. 

The government said Thursday that 25 soldiers had been killed, according to a provisional toll, while successfully repelling the attack by assailants aboard motorcycles and other vehicles in the western town of Chinagodrar. 

Four security sources told Reuters that at least 89 members of Niger’s security forces killed in the attack were buried Saturday in the capital, Niamey. 

One source said the actual death toll was most likely higher because some soldiers were buried immediately Thursday in Chinagodrar. 

Defense Minister Issoufou Katambe said that an updated death toll would be announced after a national security council meeting on Sunday. 

Deteriorating situation

The Chinagodrar attack, coming a month after the raid in nearby Inates by fighters from an Islamic State affiliate that killed 71 soldiers, highlights the deteriorating security situation near Niger’s borders with Mali and Burkina Faso. 

Attacks have risen fourfold over the past year in Niger, killing nearly 400 people, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit research organization, despite efforts by international forces to stop militants linked to Islamic State and al-Qaida. 

French fighter jets were scrambled Thursday to scare off the attackers, France’s regional task force said, possibly averting an even heavier casualty count. 

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but Katambe said Friday that the army would launch a new offensive against jihadists. 

West Africa’s Sahel region, a semiarid belt beneath the Sahara, has been in crisis since 2012, when ethnic Tuareg rebels and loosely aligned jihadists seized the northern two-thirds of Mali, forcing France to intervene to temporarily beat them back. 

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