The founder of a Chinese luxury online retailer has been extradited from Indonesia to face charges his company smuggled goods into China by having travelers pretend they were personal belongings, news reports said Monday. Ji Wenhong of Xiu.com joins a growing number of Chinese fugitives who are being returned from abroad to face charges of…
read moreThe port of Tripoli in northern Lebanon wants the world to know it’s ready for business. British safety managers are training local hires to operate heavy machinery and Chinese technicians are running diagnostics on two new container cranes that tower over the harbor, just 28 kilometers (18 miles) from the Syrian border. After…
read morePresident Donald Trump is concluding a 17-day working vacation with a return to a changed White House on Sunday evening. While the president was away, a $3.4-million renovation was completed. It included improving the information technology system, placing new carpeting in West Wing rooms, including the Oval Office, and fixing leaks (of the liquid kind)…
read moreThe United States, Canada and Mexico wrapped up their first round of talks on Sunday to revamp the NAFTA trade pact, vowing to keep up a blistering pace of negotiations that some involved in the process said may be too fast to bridge deep differences. In a joint statement issued at the end of five…
read moreA Florida-based zoo and conservation society announced Sunday that it would not to hold its annual gala at President Trump’s Florida resort. The decision by the Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society is the latest by a charity to move fundraisers from the Mar-a-Lago resort since Trump made comments about white nationalists last week. The…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump will outline the United States’ “path forward” in Afghanistan in a speech Monday night. Trump will “provide an update on the path forward for America’s engagement in Afghanistan and South Asia” in an address to be delivered at 0100 UTC Tuesday from the military base at Fort Myer southwest of the…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump says he wants to be the one to announce details of the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, according to his Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. VOA’s Marcus Harton has more. …
read moreMore than 60 percent of voters in three key states that helped Donald Trump win the presidency now say they are “embarrassed” by him. Asked if Trump’s conduct since taking office made them proud or embarrassed, 64 percent of voters in Michigan and Wisconsin and 63 percent in Pennsylvania say they have been embarrassed, according…
read moreAdd next week’s total eclipse of the sun to the list of worker distractions that cost U.S. companies hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity. American employers will see at least $694 million in missing output for the roughly 20 minutes that outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates workers will take out of…
read moreBrexit minister David Davis called on the European Union on Sunday to relax its position that the two sides must first make progress on a divorce settlement before moving on to discussing future relations. After a slow start to negotiations to unravel more than 40 years of union, Britain is pressing for talks to move…
read moreSometimes, it just doesn’t pay to manufacture in the United States. Labor and land are expensive. It is why most consumer products sold here come from overseas. But a multinational electric guitar manufacturer still produces one-third of its instruments near where it started decades ago. Arash Arabasadi names that tune from Maryland. …
read moreThe head of New York City’s largest evangelical church has resigned from President Donald Trump’s unofficial panel of evangelical advisers, one of the latest resignations in a string of high-profile withdrawals from advisory boards serving the president. A.R. Bernard, head of the 37,000-member Christian Cultural Center, announced this week he submitted a formal letter to…
read moreHansaben Rasid knows what it is like to live without a water tap or a toilet of her own, constantly fearful of being evicted by city officials keen on tearing down illegal settlements like hers in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. The fear and lack of amenities are but a memory today, after she…
read moreThousands of leftist activists marched Saturday through downtown Boston in opposition to a planned free-speech rally that featured right-wing speakers, heavily outnumbering the few dozen people who showed up for the rally. WATCH: VOA’s Carolyn Presutti in Boston WATCH: VOA Spanish service broadcast Celia Mendoza in Boston The rally was organized in July by a…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump will not attend an annual ceremony at Washington’s Kennedy Center honoring the lifetime achievements of select artists to avoid distraction, a White House statement said Saturday. “The president and first lady have decided not to participate in this year’s activities to allow the honorees to celebrate…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon Saturday, tweeting that working with Bannon was “great,” while once again disparaging former Democratic presidential opponent Hillary Clinton. “I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against crooked Hillary Clinton — it was great! Thanks…
read moreIt’s pronounced AN-ti-fa — short for anti-fascists — and it is arguably either a violent far-left militia or a group of human rights activists so dedicated they will risk life and limb to protect democracy. Their participation in the Charlottesville protest last Saturday may have been behind President Donald Trump’s assertion that “many sides” contributed…
read moreThe news that White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was leaving the Trump administration was made public Friday afternoon. By evening, he was back at work at his old job. Bannon left the White House and went directly to the Breitbart News Network, the ultra-conservative online publication he led before joining Donald Trump’s presidential campaign…
read moreHow does a former stay-at-home mom become an employee of a tech company that could be worth more than $1 billion? For Ellein Cheng, mom to a 5½- and a 2½-year-old, the answer involved a “returnship.” So-called returnships are internships that target men and women who have been out of the workforce, either for childrearing…
read moreBillionaire investor Carl Icahn on Friday ended his role as a special adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump after facing criticism that his recommendations on policy could help his own investments. Some Democratic lawmakers and biofuels advocates had argued that Icahn’s policy recommendations to the Republican administration created a conflict of interest with his businesses,…
read moreFitch Ratings has upgraded Greece’s credit rating from CCC to B-, a one-notch improvement that still leaves the bonds issued by the crisis-battered country well below investment grade. The ratings agency said Friday that the outlook of the Greek economy was positive and that it expected talks with the country’s international creditors to be concluded…
read moreMore public backing for innovation, more idea exchanges to nurture global trade and more stability. That’s what two transnational entrepreneurs hope will result from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s travels this week to Latin America, where he has promoted prosperity, security and democracy for the Americas. Liliana “Lili” Gil Valletta, a Colombia native and naturalized…
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