The U.S. State Department says that U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have discussed South Africa’s land reform. A spokesperson said Thursday that the president asked Pompeo to investigate reports that the South African government is expropriating land owned by white farmers without compensation. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Pretoria has reacted…
read moreMired in financial woes, Michael Cohen is sticking his hand out and asking the public for help paying for his legal defense, and one anonymous donor already has ponied up $50,000. Through his lawyer, Donald Trump’s former “fixer” says collecting contributions through a GoFundMe page set up after his guilty plea this week is the…
read moreVice President Mike Pence is in Houston, Texas, to reaffirm the Trump administration’s plans to establish an American Space Force by 2020, return Americans to the moon, and set its sight on Mars and beyond. During a speech Thursday at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Pence said that recent Pentagon reports have shown that China is…
read moreFacebook banned a quiz app from its platform for refusing an inspection and concerns that data on as many as 4 million users was misused. The social media company said Wednesday that it took action against the myPersonality app after it found user information was shared with researchers and companies “with only limited protections…
read moreFormer CIA Director Michael Hayden says U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke the security clearance of another former CIA chief, John Brennan, was undemocratic and a threat to the “broad process of how we govern ourselves.” Hayden told VOA that Brennan had not acted in a way that fit any of the 13 criteria…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to study South African “land and farm seizures” and “killing of farmers,” prompting Pretoria to accuse Trump of stoking racial divisions. Trump’s comments have inflamed an already high-octane debate over land in South Africa, a country that remains deeply racially divided…
read moreA new set of tit-for-tat tariffs imposed by the United States and China on each other’s goods took effect Thursday. The U.S. announced earlier this month that it would impose 25 percent tariffs on $16 billion worth of Chinese goods, on top of the 25 percent tariffs it imposed on $34 billion worth of Chinese…
read moreThe White House went on the defensive Wednesday, one day after two former close associates of President Donald Trump became convicted felons. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance law violations. And former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted of fraud charges not related to the 2016 campaign. As VOA National…
read moreParents lament their teenagers’ noses constantly in their phones, but they might want to take stock of their own screen time habits. A study out Wednesday from the Pew Research Center found that two-thirds of parents are concerned about the amount of time their teenage children spend in front of screens, while more than a…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump Wednesday criticized the integrity and legal skills of his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, saying on Twitter that anyone looking for a good lawyer should not retain the services of Cohen. Trump was making his first public statements about his former personal attorney, who a day earlier implicated Trump in a campaign…
read moreThe Democratic National Committee says it has thwarted an attempt to hack its database that houses information on tens of millions of voters across the country. A party official said DNC contractors notified the party Tuesday of an apparent hacking attempt. The committee notified law enforcement. The official said no information was compromised. The…
read moreFrench President Emmanuel Macron will make the tough political choices needed to meet his deficit commitments, his government spokesman said, as he looked to put a bodyguard scandal behind him at his first Cabinet meeting after the summer break. Macron and his ministers in all likelihood need to find savings in next year’s budget, to…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump says he, not his campaign, paid hush money through his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in 2016 just days prior to his election — but asserts he did not know it at the time. “Later on, I knew,” Trump has told Fox News Channel. Part of the interview was released by Fox…
read moreSaudi Arabia has called off both the domestic and international stock listing of state oil giant Aramco, billed as the biggest such deal in history, four senior industry sources said on Wednesday. The financial advisors working on the proposed listing have been disbanded, as Saudi Arabia shifts its attention to a proposed acquisition of a…
read moreDisney is offering to pay full tuition for hourly workers who want to earn a college degree or finish a high school diploma. The Walt Disney Co. said Wednesday it will pay upfront tuition to workers who want to take classes starting in the fall. Disney initially will invest $50 million into the “Disney Aspire”…
read moreParents lament their teenagers’ noses constantly in their phones, but they might benefit from taking stock of their own screen time habits. A new report from the Pew Research Center says two-thirds of parents are concerned about the amount of time their teenage children spend in front of screens. But more than half of teens…
read moreAround the world, 2.6 million newborns die within a month after they are born, according to the World Health Organization. A project called NEST360°, in the Rice 360° Institute for Global Health in Houston, is trying to reduce the number of preventable newborn deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. The key is to provide appropriate medical devices…
read moreSocial media giants Facebook and Twitter said they have removed hundreds of pages and accounts linked to Russia and Iran ahead of the midterm elections in the U.S. Facebook said it had removed 254 Facebook pages and 116 Instagram accounts that originated in Iran and were part of a disinformation campaign that targeted countries around…
read moreFrom an app to diagnose disease on Zambian farms to Tinder-style matchmaking for Senegalese land owners and young farmers, young coders have been finding solutions to hunger in the first Africa-wide hackathon on the issue. Eight teams competed in the hackathon, organized by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and a Rwandan trade organization…
read moreIn the most dramatic day yet in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, federal prosecutors on Tuesday secured the conviction of U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager and a plea agreement from the president’s longtime attorney. As Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues his Russia probe, the following is a…
read moreMexico risks losing long-term passenger growth and billions of dollars if it fails to go through with building a new hub in the capital to alleviate congestion, an executive with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Tuesday. Mexico’s incoming government last week postponed a decision on whether to complete a partially constructed new…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump is lamenting Tuesday’s conviction on federal criminal charges of his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who now faces the possibility of decades in prison. “It’s a very sad thing that happened,” Trump told reporters on the tarmac of Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia, adding he felt very badly for Manafort,…
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