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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.    …

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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”…