Month: August 2019

Amanda Browder works with fabrics of all kinds. But, instead of creating clothing for people, she "dresses up" buildings with her unique style of installation art. Maxim Moskalkov has the story.   ...

More than a year has passed since protests against changes to Nicaraguas pension program turned into a full scale socio-political crisis. The government crackdown by President Daniel Ortega has resulted in more than 200 deaths, and forced more than 65,000 people to leave the country. Among them journalists who say they've been targeted. But even though they're not there, many of these journalists are still sending the news back home. VOA reporter Cristina Caicedo Smit has the story.   ...

For many years, the United States has been issuing advisories, warning potential travelers about countries plagued by terrorism or armed conflict.  But now, Amnesty International, Japan, Uruguay and other countries are warning about the danger of travel to the U.S., citing gun violence. This sparked a response from President Donald Trump, as VOA's Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.   ...

Effects of the largest immigration raid in at least a decade are likely to ripple for years through six Mississippi small towns that host poultry plants. A store owner who caters to Latino poultry plant workers fears he will have to close. A school superintendent is trying to rebuild trust with the Spanish-speaking community. And the CEO of a local bank says the effects are likely to touch every business in her town. More than 100 civil rights activists, union organizers and clergy members in Mississippi denounced the raid, but the state's Republican Gov. Phil Bryant commended federal immigration authorities for the arrests, tweeting that anyone in the country illegally has to "bear the responsibility of that federal violation." Officials said 680 people were initially detained during Wednesday's operation. U.S.…

Indonesian investigators will give their final report next month on the crash of a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX jet that killed 189 people last October, the country's civil aviation authority said on Friday. The 737 MAX, Boeing's best-selling jet, was grounded globally in March following another fatal crash of the jet operated by Ethiopian Airlines. The two crashes together killed 346 people. A draft of the report by the transport safety agency (KNKT) will be sent next week to Boeing, Lion Air, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and other parties to seek feedback, said Polana Pramesti, director general of civil aviation. "After getting the responses, KNKT will release it in September," Pramesti told Reuters. The report will include the facts and a chronology of the Lion Air crash, the…

The U.N. refugee agency says fighting over Libya's capital of Tripoli has displaced more than 105,000 people since April, when a Libyan commander launched an offensive to take the city from the U.N.-backed government. The UNHCR tweeted on Friday that its relief aid could only reach about 2,200 out of 21,000 displaced families and that those displaced "continue to be in need of support, peace and stability." Libya has been plagued with political instability since the ouster and killing of longtime dictator Moammar Qaddafi in 2011. In April, the self-styled Libyan National Army of commander Khalifa Hifter launched an offensive on Tripoli. Although Hifter, who is based in eastern Libya, boasts support from key Arab governments, his military campaign has so far resulted in a stalemated conflict.   ...

NEW DELHI - As Indian Kashmir remained in an unprecedented lockdown, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised Kashmiris the beginning of a "new era" as a result of his government's decision to scrap the region's special status and bring it under New Delhi's control.     In an address Thursday on television and radio, Modi defended revoking the constitutional provision under which Kashmir could make its own laws, saying it had impeded its progress, given rise to terrorism and was used as a weapon by rival Pakistan to "instigate some people." India will now rid the region of "terrorism and terrorists," he said.     New Delhi blames Islamabad for fomenting a violent three-decade separatist insurgency in the disputed Himalayan region that both counties claim.     With Kashmir in a…

Investigators believe a man who stabbed four people to death and wounded two others targeted his victims at random during a bloody rampage across two Southern California cities, authorities said.    The 33-year-old man from the city of Garden Grove was "full of anger" when he carried out violent attacks and robberies at businesses and killed two men at his own apartment complex during the two-hour wave of violence Wednesday, police said. He was arrested as he walked out of a convenience store in the neighboring city Santa Ana, dropping a knife and a gun he had taken from a security guard he had just killed. Authorities planned to release his name Thursday afternoon. The violence appeared to be random and the only known motives seem to be "robbery, hate,…

The chief facilitator of negotiations between Venezuela's socialist administration and opposition has downplayed the decision by President Nicolas Maduro to skip a scheduled round of talks. Dag Nylander of Norway's Foreign Affairs Ministry told The Associated Press on Thursday he's in contact with both sides about finding a date for talks to resume. Maduro on Wednesday night said he had decided not to send envoys to the Caribbean island of Barbados, where talks were to resume Thursday. That was to protest the Trump administration's decision to freeze the Venezuelan government's assets in the U.S. and threaten to retaliate against foreign companies that continue to do business with his government. Maduro's government also said it would review the mechanism of the talks to ensure it contributes to an efficient solution to…

Expanding access to a promising but costly treatment, Medicare said Wednesday that it would cover for some blood cancers a breakthrough gene therapy that revs up a patient's own immune cells to destroy malignancies.  Officials said Medicare would cover CAR-T cell therapies for certain types of lymphoma and leukemia, uses that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The cost can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient, not counting hospitalization and other expenses. Medicare Administrator Seema Verma said the decision would provide consistent and predictable access nationwide, opening up treatment options for some patients “who had nowhere else to turn.” Turbocharge, reprogram cells  CAR-T uses gene therapy techniques to turbocharge the patient's own immune system cells, reprogramming them to harbor a “receptor” that zeroes in on cancer, and then…

Samsung unveiled a new version of the Galaxy Note smartphone on Wednesday with fast 5G network connection and improved camera features, hoping the premium model helps it revive slumping profit and widen the gap with struggling rival Huawei. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has emerged as the biggest beneficiary  of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.'s trouble in the second quarter with a nearly 7% jump in smartphone sales, as the Chinese firm sold fewer phones in the global market after it was put on a U.S. trade blacklist in May. With emphasis on improved video and photography features, which helped Huawei become the world's No. 2 smartphone vendor, Samsung hopes the Galaxy Note 10 will appeal to YouTubers and fans of social media. Along with its first foldable phone, the big-screen Note…

North Korea is encouraging its beauty-conscious middle class women to choose domestic cosmetics over foreign brands in an effort to boost self-reliance as international sanctions deepen.  Promoting homegrown beauty has been a political strategy since the days of state founder Kim Il Sung, but has become more focused under his foreign-educated grandson, Kim Jong Un.  The international popularity in recent years of South Korea’s K-beauty trend — innovative cosmetic products with natural ingredients such as ginseng and snail slime — has added momentum, say defectors who fled the North and experts who study the isolated state.  But North Korea’s push has yet to translate to a winning formula, marred by quality issues and constraints in obtaining foreign ingredients because of sanctions over its nuclear program.  FILE - North Korean leader…

President Trump is bringing a message aimed at national unity and healing to the sites of the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. But the words he offers for a divided America will be complicated by his own incendiary, anti-immigrant rhetoric that mirrors language linked to one of the shooters. It is a highly unusual predicament for an American president to at once try to console a community and a nation at the same time he is being criticized as contributing to a combustible climate that can spawn violence. White House officials said Trump's visits Wednesday to Texas and Ohio, where 31 people were killed and dozens wounded, would be similar to those he's paid to grieving communities including Parkland, Florida, and Las Vegas, with the president and first…

Ayaz Gul in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report. As Kashmir remained locked down for a second straight day, India’s parliament approved scrapping the special status that gave Kashmir significant autonomy, and passed a bill to split the state.  Plunged in a communications blackout and a virtual shutdown, it has been difficult to ascertain the reaction local residents to the radical steps. Curfew-like restrictions continued on Tuesday. Troops patrolled deserted streets with barbed wire barricades in the capital, Srinagar, while the internet, mobile and landlines remained suspended to stem protests in the region wracked by a violent separatist struggle for three decades.    The measures passed by an overwhelming majority in the lower house of parliament are being seen as a message that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take a…

The Buddhist enclave of Ladakh cheered India's move to break it away from Jammu and Kashmir state, a change that could spur tourism and help New Delhi counter China's influence in the contested western Himalayas. Beijing, though, criticized the announcement, made on Monday by the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of a wider policy shift that also ended Jammu and Kashmir's right to set its own laws. In a statement on Tuesday, China said the decision was unacceptable and undermined its territorial sovereignty. Ladakh is an arid, mountainous area of around 59,146 square kilometers (22,836 square miles), much of it uninhabitable, that only has 274,000 residents. The rest of Jammu and Kashmir is roughly 163,090 square kilometres (62,969 square miles) with a population of some 12.2…

2019 marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to the shores of Colonial North America. A lot has happened for African Americans since that dark chapter in American history. VOA’s Julie Taboh caught up with father and son artists who are commemorating the anniversary with a unique project. ...

2019 marks the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans to be brought to what is now the United States, arriving in the English colony of Virginia. In Ghana, the anniversary has been dubbed the “Year of Return,” and the country is welcoming the African diaspora with expedited visas and numerous events to discover their roots, even if they don’t know their lineage is Ghanaian.  Esha Sarai went to Accra to speak with some of the people bridging the gap between the continents. ...

In Angola, young people people are learning about the history of the slave trade in the classroom, as VOA’s Mayra de Lassalette and Betty Ayoub found when they traveled to the African nation.  Mayra de Lassalette narrates their report. ...

Sudan's Transitional Military Council and opposition coalition finalized a power-sharing agreement Sunday that aims to stabilize the country for the first time since the military ousted Omar al-Bashir in April after months of mass demonstrations.  The final agreement came after weeks of tense talks and repeated attacks on pro-democracy protesters by TMC security forces.  Thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Khartoum on Sunday to celebrate the signing of the deal. Israa Mohamed applauded the agreement, saying it will be a base for a civilian country. However, he added, the only thing that guarantees the agreement's success is to keep an eye on the revolution demands.  Sudanese celebrate following a signing ceremony in the capital Khartoum, Sudan, Aug. 4, 2019. Protester Abdallah Ali has been demanding political change since December. He said…

The Greek Orthodox Church says it has filed a new lawsuit against a Jewish settler group in a bid to overturn an Israeli Supreme Court decision upholding the sale of three properties in predominantly Palestinian parts of Jerusalem's Old City. The Patriarchate claimed in a statement Monday that it had “clear proof” of corruption in the long-disputed 2004 sale of Old City properties, including two Palestinian-run hotels. In June, the court ruled in favor of the Israeli organization, which seeks to increase the Jewish presence in Palestinian areas of the contested holy city. Most Orthodox Christians in Jerusalem are Palestinian, and the sale of the properties to Israelis sparked outrage. Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and Palestinians seek it as capital of a future state.  …

The United States might seem more divided than ever, but that could be because Americans have a distorted impression of people with opposing political views. “Democrats and Republicans overestimate the proportion of people on the other side of the political aisle who hold extreme views by a factor of about two,” says Daniel Yudkin, associate director of research at More in Common. “So, another way of saying that is that there are about half as many people with extreme views on the other side than Democrats and Republicans think.”  For example, 87% of Republicans say “properly controlled immigration can be good for America.” But Democrats believe only about half of Republicans would agree with that statement. And while Republicans think almost half of Democrats believe “most police are bad people,”…

France and Germany on Sunday condemned a Russian police crackdown on a banned opposition rally that saw hundreds detained, with Paris criticizing an "excessive use of force" after a second weekend of protests over the exclusion of opposition candidates from local Moscow polls next month. Berlin said the police action on Saturday "violated" Russia's international obligations and undermines the right to fair elections in the country. The arrests on Saturday were "out of all proportion to the peaceful nature of the protests against the exclusion of independent candidates" from city elections in Moscow, the German government said. Crowds had walked along the capital's central boulevard in a protest "stroll" over the refusal by officials to let opposition candidates run in September polls for city parliament seats -- a local issue…

VOA’s Ibrahim Rahimi contributed to this report from Paktia, Afghanistan. A mini-bus carrying the employees of a private television station in Afghanistan has been struck by a magnetic bomb pasted to the vehicle, killing two people and injuring three others, all civilians, Afghan officials said Sunday. Nasrat Rahimi, a spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs said Sunday that a bomb was placed inside the vehicle carrying the employees of Khorshid TV, a privately-owned TV station that is headquartered in the capital, Kabul. According to officials, two people have been killed in the attack including the driver of the vehicle and a civilian passing by. Three others were wounded, two are employees of Khorshid TV and the third person is a civilian who was near the vehicle. No group…

After two mass shootings in a span of 13 hours, there have now been more than 250 such events this year in which at least four people were shot or killed, besides the shooter. Officials in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, report 29 fatalities and at least 50 injured from shootings this weekend in those cities.  Republican and Democrat politicians shared their reactions to the massacres. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more. ...

A daredevil French inventor succeeded Sunday in his second attempt to cross the English Channel on a jet-powered hoverboard, taking off from the northern French coast amid a crowd of onlookers. Franky Zapata, 40, has to swap out his backpack full of kerosene by landing on a boat about halfway through the expected 20-minute trip toward St. Margaret's Bay in Dover, on England's southern coast. Zapata failed to pull off the tricky refueling maneuver during the first attempt on his Flyboard July 25, hitting the platform and tumbling into the waters of the busy shipping lane. He hopes to make the 35-kilometer (22-mile) crossing at an average speed of 140 kilometers an hour (87 mph) and at a height of 15-20 meters (50-65 feet) above the water. This time the…

For one intense week, 40 boys and 20 girls from 29 African countries were chosen for a highly selective program to train with current and former players from the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA).  The NBA’s Basketball Without Borders program has been scouting and training girls and boys across the continent for 17 years. Teenage girls who took part say working with women from the continent who played for WNBA teams has motivated them to stay in the game.  Iris was scouted by the program from her local team in Gabon. (E. Sarai/VOA) “This experience has been so enriching for us,” Iris, a 16-year-old from Gabon, told VOA. “It’s helped me a lot, I’ve learned new things and it’s renewed my enthusiasm, my desire to…

White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman contributed to this report. Police officials in El Paso, Texas, say they are investigating as a possible hate crime the mass shooting Saturday at a Walmart that ended with at least 20 people killed and 26 wounded. Police chief Greg Allen said the police have an online posting reportedly written by the 21-year-old white male suspect now in custody, that indicates the shooting spree was intended to target Hispanics. The post appeared online about an hour before the shooting and included language that complained about the “Hispanic invasion” of Texas. The author of the manifesto wrote that he expected to be killed during the attack. Shoppers exit with their hands up after a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Aug. 3,…

U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper says he wants to see American ground-based intermediate-range conventional missiles deployed to Asia. Speaking to reporters on his first international trip as head of the Defense Department, Esper said the weapons were important due to the “the great distances” covered in the Indo-Pacific region. The United States previously was unable to pursue ground-based missiles with a range of 500-5,500 kilometers because of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a decades-old arms control pact with Russia. Washington withdrew from that pact on Friday, citing years of Russian violations. “It’s about time that we were unburdened by the treaty and kind of allowed to pursue our own interests, and our NATO allies share that view as well,” Esper said. He declined to discuss when or where in…