For The World

This past winter, around 20 monks from a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Texas walked from their home in Fort Worth to Washington, DC. The 2,000-mile walk was to promote peace, and ask for federal recognition of the Buddha's day of birth. WUNC reporter Aaron Sanchez-Guerra checked in on the marchers' progress while they were in North Carolina.

One in three French university students skips a daily meal regularly, as they struggle with rising housing costs and inflation. Meahwhile, 600,000 live below the poverty line. But volunteers are coming to help, with groceries and more. The World's Gerry Hadden filed this report from Montpelier, France, last fall.

Every four years, Americans joke about leaving the US if their preferred presidential candidate loses. For some, though, the idea is more than a punchline — it's a genuine exit plan. More often than not, it's not about politics but about exploring options.

Immigration officials in the Dominican Republic are staking out hospitals. When people who are pregnant arrive, they are arrested and deported — sometimes soon after they've given birth, along with their newborns. The World's Host Carolyn Beeler speaks with Tirana Hassan, the CEO of the US branch of Doctors Without Borders.

Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical Monday, outlining his priorities in leading the world's 1.4 billion Catholics. While the focus of “Magnificent Humanity” was heavily on his concerns about AI, the pontiff also apologized for one of the Church's historic wrongs: supporting the slave trade. To learn more, The World's Host Carolyn Beeler spoke with Father Chris Kellerman, a Jesuit priest and the author of “All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church.”

The Strait of Hormuz has now been closed for 88 days. And the impact of that closure, along with the US-Israel war with Iran that triggered it, is intensifying rifts among Gulf countries. Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, joins The World's Host Marco Werman to discuss what's behind the growing divisions.

Each year, Gloucestershire holds its annual downhill race where contestants chase a wheel of cheese. It's a madcap, slightly terrifying thing to watch but always great fun. Hosts Marco Werman and Carolyn Beeler explain what it's all about.

Colombia has faced a dramatic increase in violence in the weeks before its presidential election this weekend. Crime is a central voter concern, and that could be bad news for Iván Cepeda, the candidate for the nation's ruling party. But there's still has a good chance that Cepeda can pull it off, thanks to progress the party has made in other areas, such as improving economic conditions for blue collar workers. Manuel Rueda reports from Bogota.

FIFA, the organizer of the soccer World Cup, has a clear policy against political flags or signs during matches. It includes in that ban the Lion and Sun flag that once flew officially in Iran before the 1979 Islamic revolution. But a group linked to the Iranian diaspora in the US says it will sue to reverse that stand. The World's Gerry Hadden reports.

The American Farm Bureau Federation this year called the shortage of a skilled, reliable workforce the “single greatest threat to agriculture.” As the weather warms on the 7,000 mostly small farms in Massachusetts, GBH News Reporter Liz Neisloss found that strain is easy to see.