A group of House Republicans is preparing a letter asking Speaker Paul Ryan to find a legislative fix by December for almost 800,000 undocumented young people brought to the U.S. as children. Their eligibility to remain in the country hangs in the balance as part of an end-of-year legislative pileup on Capitol Hill. President Donald…
read moreThe few public signs emanating from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation increasingly raise the prospect that former national security adviser Michael Flynn is looking to cut a deal. But many questions remain about what charges, if any, Flynn would face and whether Mueller’s prosecutors are focused on his private business dealings and truthfulness with federal…
read moreThe Pentagon has put off indefinitely a planned ban on using certain cluster bombs, which release explosive sub-munitions, or bomblets. The U.S. military considers them a legitimate and important weapon, although critics say they kill indiscriminately and pose hazards to civilians. A 2010 international treaty outlaws the use of cluster bombs, but the U.S. is…
read moreSince taking charge at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Director Mike Pompeo has earned a reputation as a strong ally of President Donald Trump, despite breaking with the American leader on some key issues. When asked Thursday about media reports of Pompeo’s possible nomination as U.S. Secretary of State, both the CIA and the Office…
read moreGermany, Europe’s most robust economy, said Thursday that its unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent in November, the lowest figure since West and East Germany were unified in 1990. Even as Chancellor Angela Merkel and other Berlin politicians struggle to form a coalition government, the German economy remains strong, with a months-long dip in the…
read moreBritish lawmakers and officials have reacted angrily to President Donald Trump’s retweeting of anti-Muslim videos initially posted by a far-right British leader who has been convicted of hate speech. Trump remains unrepentant for the tweets, and the situation has escalated with members of parliament. VOA’s Jeff Custer reports from Washington. …
read moreOPEC agreed on Thursday to extend oil output cuts until the end of 2018 as it tries to finish clearing a global glut of crude while signalling it could exit the deal earlier if the market overheats. Non-OPEC Russia, which this year reduced production significantly with OPEC for the first time, has been pushing for…
read moreThe International Labor Organization says a majority of the world’s population, four billion people, have no social protection, leaving them mired in an endless cycle of poverty. The report says 45 percent of the global population is covered by at least one social benefit. But that leaves 55 percent without any social protection, a situation…
read moreThe buoyant economic recovery across the 19-country eurozone has pushed unemployment down to its lowest level in nearly nine years but has yet to translate to a sustained pick-up in wages and prices, official figures indicated Thursday. Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, said the jobless rate fell to 8.8 percent in October, from…
read moreThe U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee said it had introduced a bill Wednesday to overhaul a National Security Agency surveillance program to better protect Americans’ privacy. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States. The program…
read moreA key House committee on Wednesday approved a Republican bill to expand gun owners’ rights – the first gun legislation since mass shootings in Las Vegas and Texas killed more than 80 people. On a party-line vote, the Judiciary Committee backed a bill that would allow gun owners with a state-issued concealed carry permit to…
read moreU.S. Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez, who has announced he will not seek re-election to Congress in 2018, said Wednesday he wanted to concentrate his energies “on the national level” and indicated he might be interested in a presidential run in 2020. Fox News reported earlier Wednesday that Gutierrez was weighing such a bid. When asked…
read moreMexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said Wednesday that Trump administration demands for a U.S.-specific automotive content requirement in NAFTA were “not viable,” and he declined to specify when Mexico would formally respond. At a news conference following a series of meetings with senior U.S. trade officials and lawmakers in Washington, Guajardo said that Mexico was…
read moreFacebook Inc. said on Wednesday it was temporarily disabling the ability of advertisers on its social network to exclude racial groups from the intended audience of ads while it studies how the feature could be used to discriminate. Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, told African-American U.S. lawmakers in a letter that the company was…
read moreBroadcast reporters for Russian state-funded TV channel RT will no longer be able to report daily from the U.S. Capitol. A committee that governs Capitol Hill access for broadcast journalists has withdrawn credentials for RT after the company complied earlier this month with a U.S. demand that it register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.…
read moreOpposition has grown among Americans to a Republican tax plan before the U.S. Congress, with 49 percent of people who were aware of the measure saying they opposed it, up from 41 percent in October, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday. Congressional Republicans are trying to rush their tax legislation to a vote…
read moreColombia’s palm oil industry and big businesses have pledged to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains as the country battles to reverse the growing destruction of its tropical rainforests. The commitment signed this week makes Colombia the first country in the world to launch its own chapter of the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020, a global…
read moreThe number of international visitors to the United States through June fell sharply from last year, according to government data released Wednesday. And the number of business travelers fell by much more than the drop in tourists, according to the monthly report from the Commerce Departments National Travel and Tourism Office. Total foreign visitors fell…
read moreTurkey’s deteriorating finances are hurting the country’s banks whose reliance on dollar funding makes them vulnerable to the worst-case scenario: a sudden halt or reversal of foreign investment flows. International investors are growing nervous about Turkey for a variety of reasons. But U.S. legal action against a number of Turkish individuals over alleged Iran sanctions…
read moreThis week, more than 1,000 entrepreneurs, business executives and government officials are in Hyderabad India to discuss ways to empower people to start businesses and build networks. The focus of the 8th annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit is women, who still lag behind men when it comes to founding businesses and getting funding. Michelle Quinn reports…
read moreIrwin Steven Goldstein, President Donald Trump’s selection for under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, is a communications and marketing executive with experience at large corporations as well as in government. Goldstein was confirmed by a Senate voice vote and in the middle of November and is expected to start working at…
read moreU.S. ethanol producers, looking to relieve a growing domestic glut, are hunting for new international fuel markets to replace China and Brazil after trade disputes slashed exports to those top buyers. Without new markets, U.S. producers may have to pare output after spending hundreds of millions of dollars on biofuel production plants in recent years.…
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