After a two-week holiday recess, U.S. lawmakers get back to work this week with a long to-do list and deadlines looming at the start of 2018. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports from Washington. …
read moreU.S. vice presidents historically have had widely varying influence in the White House, depending on their relationship with the president. As Donald Trump’s administration prepares for its second year, VOA’s Mike O’Sullivan reports on how Vice President Mike Pence’s role continues to broaden. …
read moreU.S. vice presidents historically have held widely varying influence in the White House, depending on their relationship with the president. As Donald Trump’s administration prepares for its second year, Vice President Mike Pence’s role appears likely to broaden. On overseas trips to Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region, and a recent holiday visit to U.S.…
read moreAn Australian diplomat’s tip appears to have helped persuade the FBI to investigate Russian meddling in the U.S. election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign, The New York Times reported Saturday. Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told the diplomat, Alexander Downer, during a meeting in London in May 2016 that Russia had thousands of…
read moreNorth America couldn’t catch a break in 2017. Parts of the United States were on fire, underwater or lashed by hurricane winds. Mexico shook with back-to-back earthquakes. The Caribbean got hit with a string of hurricanes. The rest of the world, however, fared better. Preliminary research shows there were fewer disasters and deaths this year…
read moreEvery attorney general leaves his imprint on the U.S. Justice Department. Jeff Sessions is no exception. Since being sworn in as the nation’s 84th attorney general in February, the former Republican senator and federal prosecutor has moved to radically overhaul the Justice Department and its approach to law enforcement. From scrapping civil rights protections for…
read moreThe White House said on Friday it was set to kick off talks next week with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on immigration policy, government spending and other issues that need to be wrapped up early in the new year. The expected flurry of legislative activity comes as Republicans and Democrats begin to set the…
read moreThe Trump administration has fired the remaining members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, also known as PACHA. Council members received a letter this week saying that their appointments to the panel were terminated, “effective immediately,” according to a report in The Washington Post. PACHA was established in 1995, during the Clinton administration, to…
read moreThe Trump administration has fired the remaining members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, also known as PACHA. Council members received a letter this week saying that their appointments to the panel were terminated, “effective immediately,” according to a report in The Washington Post. PACHA was established in 1995, during the Clinton administration, to…
read moreGun violence in the US reached record heights in 2017 — more than 60,000 incidents, killing more than 15,000 people, according to a nonprofit organization that tracks gun violence. VOA’s Mariama Diallo looks back at some of the year’s deadliest US mass shootings. …
read moreTransgender people will be allowed for the first time to enlist in the U.S. military starting Monday as ordered by federal courts, the Pentagon said on Friday, after President Donald Trump’s administration decided not to appeal rulings that blocked his transgender ban. Two federal appeals courts, one in Washington and one in Virginia, last week…
read moreThere were no fireworks on Wall Street for the last trading day of the year, as U.S. stocks closed out their best year since 2013 on a down note, with losses in technology and financial stocks keeping equities in negative territory for the session. Major indexes hit a series of record highs in 2017, lifted…
read moreSince taking office, President Donald Trump has broken with previous foreign policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, refusing to certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal and taking a more aggressive stance toward North Korea. Views about these departures are mixed — with some welcoming the forceful projection of American power on the world stage,…
read moreGolf and tweets. Golf and tweets. Repeat. President Donald Trump has been largely out of sight the last two weeks of the year, ensconced at his Florida golf resort where he has played his favorite game almost daily, out of sight of the cameras (mostly). But he’s not out of mind. With a regular but…
read moreWhen the 55-year-old woman stood up to speak at a meeting of shoemakers in south India earlier this month, she was seeing her employers for the first time. She told them about the decades she had spent hunched up in her home, repeatedly pulling a needle through tough leather as she sewed shoe uppers, the…
read morePresident Donald Trump returned to a favorite target Friday, saying that the U.S. Postal Service should charge Amazon.com more money to ship the millions of packages it sends around the world each year. Amazon has been a consistent recipient of Trump’s ire. He has accused the company of failing to pay “internet taxes,” though…
read moreOfficials in the Philippines, one of Asia’s fastest growing economies, are planning a series of economic stimulus measures in 2018 to ease poverty and compensate for a lag in foreign investment. Manila is building $169 billion in infrastructure, such as railways and an airport terminal, while toying with legal changes that would let foreigners own…
read moreAn Oregon state appeals court Thursday let stand $135,000 in damages levied against the owners of a Portland-area bakery for discrimination after they refused on religious grounds to prepare a wedding cake for a local lesbian couple. A three-judge panel of the Oregon Court of Appeals rejected a petition by Melissa and Aaron Klein, former…
read morePresident Donald Trump’s administration is rescinding proposed rules for hydraulic fracturing and other oil- and gas-drilling practices on government lands, government officials announced Thursday. The rules developed under President Barack Obama would have applied mainly in the West, where most federal lands are located. Companies would have had to disclose the chemicals used in fracking,…
read moreIn years past, demand for Apple Inc.’s latest flagship phone was critical to the company’s results over the holiday shopping quarter. That dynamic might be changing, however, as Apple’s widening lineup of devices and services more than makes up for any tepidness in demand this quarter for its lead product, the $999 iPhone X. On Tuesday, Apple’s stock fell 2.5…
read moreBy 2020, China could become the world’s second-largest wine consumer, behind the United States, according to a report by Vinexpo, a leading wine exhibition. “Nowadays, many people in China have given up Baijiu, no more Baijiu,” says Jiawei Wang, a Napa Valley visitor from China, referring to his native country’s traditional grain-based spirits. “Because wine…
read moreU.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has touted the diplomatic accomplishments of President Donald Trump’s administration this year, saying “Americans should be encouraged” by its dealings with the U.S.’ “greatest security threat,” North Korea, along with China and Russia. In an opinion piece published Thursday in The New York Times, Tillerson wrote that Trump “abandoned…
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