For The World

More than 100 wildfires are stretching thousands of firefighters to their limits in northern Portugal this week. Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro declared a state of calamity for the hardest-hit areas late on Tuesday. Host Marco Werman explains that European Union officials are calling this an example of the continent’s “climate breakdown.”

The Pantanal, Brazil’s wetlands region, covers an area roughly the size of England. Although this region is typically flooded for much of the year, droughts have led to wildfires, destroying large swaths of vegetation and wildlife.

A year ago, Azerbaijan’s military took control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Some 100,000 Armenians fled the enclave, a region within Azerbaijan made up largely of Armenian residents. Many families who fled Nagorno-Karabakh are still struggling to adjust to life in their new home.

In a rare expression of consensus, most of the UN General Assembly supports the establishment of an intergovernmental panel to help keep track of AI and guide policy discussions and recommendations. Ian Bremmer is the rapporteur who wrote the proposal on behalf of the secretary-general’s AI advisory board and explains what the panel would do and why it could be important.

Contrary to election-year rhetoric, Mexican drug cartels don’t rely on migrants crossing the border illegally to bring fentanyl into the country. The truth is, in many ways, more disturbing. Rather than use undocumented migrants who are already vulnerable to capture, and even death, the cartels use people who regularly cross the border legally. And an increasing number of these people are high school and college students. Gustavo Solis of KPBS in San Diego reports.

Singer-songwriter Susan O’Neill is an award-winning artist from Ireland. She’s hoping to break through to a wider audience with her new album ‘Now in a Minute.’ Susan O’Neill describes the inspiration behind it and plays a few tracks.

People watch the speech of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on a tv screen as they sit in a cafe in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Sept. 19, 2024.

In Lebanon today, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech, acknowledging the deadly attacks this week that caused pagers and walkie-talkies to explode across the country. He called it a “severe blow.” But Nasrallah also promised that Hezbollah will continue attacking Israel until the war in Gaza ends. Host Marco Werman speaks with The World’s Matthew Bell about the escalating conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

The US and Chinese militaries seldom see eye to eye, but at least they are talking again. A top Chinese military commander is in Hawaii today to meet the head of US Indo-Pacific Command. It’s the latest high-level sit-down between the two nuclear-armed superpowers — drawing down a period of nearly two years when China cut communication. Can more face time avert a dangerous conflict? The World’s Patrick Winn reports.

Israel’s planting of explosives in everyday low-tech items like pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon raises new security concerns. Will these kinds of things be added to lists of suspicious objects? And why were these very simple forms of technology used as explosive devices? Host Carolyn Beeler explores these questions with Richard Forno, assistant director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Center for Cybersecurity.