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VOA News Video Report: "An already bad situation in the West African nation of Burkina Faso appears to be getting worse."

"The Pentagon is developing new military options for Venezuela aimed at deterring Russian, Cuban and Chinese influence inside the regime of President Nicolas Maduro, but stopping short of any kinetic military actions, according to a defense official familiar with the effort."

"New details on the Army’s future vertical lift program show more about what they and their Marine Corps and special operations partners want out of their latest helicopter program, the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft."

"The U.S. military confirmed Monday that it carried out an airstrike that killed the deputy leader of Islamic State militants in Somalia. U.S. Africa Command said Sunday's airstrike near the village of Xiriiro in Somalia's Bari region killed Abdihakim Mohamed Ibrahim."

"This week President Donald Trump signed an executive order extending a presidential declaration of a national emergency concerning Somalia for another year, calling the Islamist insurgency plaguing that country an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to the US."

"There’s No Good Way to End a Bad War, but Some Options Are Worse Than Others"

"The Philippines is edging further back into a once strained alliance with the United States as China, a friend of three years, keeps challenging Manila’s maritime claims and offers less aid than many Filipinos had hoped."

"With Islamic State’s physical caliphate destroyed, the West faces an urgent challenge: what to do with foreign fighters and their families. Mishandling the problem could create decades of security threats in the U.S. and Europe, and several American allies are bungling this test."

"The Taliban on Friday announced their annual spring offensive, which comes as the US and Afghan politicians try to negotiate for a peace settlement with the Islamist militants."

"More than four years after a brutal civil war in Yemen that has claimed thousands of lives and has pushed millions to the brink of starvation, Houthi rebels are ready to establish relations with the United States, an official responsible for the group's foreign affairs told VOA."

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week described a powerful Iranian military commander as a “terrorist,” while discussing options the U.S. government could have to further punish Iran for its destabilizing activities in the Middle East. “Qassem Soleimani has the blood of Americans on his hands … as does the force that he leads,” Pompeo said during an interview with Fox News. “America is determined each time we find an organization, institution or an individual that has taken the lives of Americans, it is our responsibility.”

"Within the last two weeks, protests that are being called “Arab Spring 2.0” have led to the fall of presidents in Algeria and Sudan. But these aren’t just people’s revolutions: In both cases, the army stepped in, purportedly in support of the anti-government demonstrators."

"North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he is open to a third summit with President Donald Trump, but set the year’s end as a deadline for Washington to offer mutually acceptable terms for an agreement to salvage the high-stakes nuclear diplomacy, the North’s state-run media said Saturday."

"For months, employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross have made weekly visits to a detention camp in northern Syria bearing a photograph of a petite woman in her early 60s."

"President Trump’s proposal for a 'deal of the century' to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict promises practical improvements in the lives of Palestinians but is likely to stop short of ensuring a separate, fully sovereign Palestinian state, according to people familiar with the main elements of the effort."

"The war wasn’t going to last forever, we foolishly thought, and someday we needed to figure out what it all meant."

"At a time when others were closing their doors to refugees, Canada stepped in to help, offering to resettle more than 1,000 of the Islamic State’s most vulnerable victims, particularly Yazidi women and girls who, like Melkeya, survived sexual enslavement."

"Trump administration officials took a victory lap Friday after the International Criminal Court decided not to proceed with an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan, hailing it as vindication of their insistence that the court has no jurisdiction over U.S. forces who might have been implicated in a probe."

"The International Criminal Court has announced it will not pursue an investigation into alleged war crimes by U.S. troops and allies in Afghanistan."

Read an excerpt and the introduction of this new report, as well as timely and important, from RAND. Also, links to the main report.

"The Taliban disclosed Thursday that the United Nations has temporarily removed sanctions against its senior leaders who are negotiating a deal with the United States for ending the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan."

"The Taliban says it has temporarily stopped the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) from carrying out relief work in the areas they control in Afghanistan and revoked security guarantees for their staff."

"Omar al-Bashir, dictator of 30 years, has been facing a popular uprising since December."

"The United States has charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with one count of conspiracy to hack a computer related to his role in the 2010 release of reams of secret American documents, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday just hours after British authorities arrested him in London."

"A dual citizen of Libya and the U.S. has marched an army to the Libyan capital of Tripoli, but don’t expect U.S. forces to stop him. The only solution to the conflict, a U.S. Africa Command spokesman told Military Times, is a political one."