Chaos, protests and partisan discord marked the first day of Senate confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, conservative U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh. As VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, minority Democrats repeatedly sought to postpone the proceedings, but majority Republicans were determined to plow ahead. …
read moreTop U.S. intelligence and defense officials caution the threat to the U.S. in cyberspace is not diminishing ahead of November’s midterm elections despite indications that Russia’s efforts to disrupt or influence the vote may not match what it did in 2016. The warnings of an ever more insidious and persistent danger come as lawmakers and…
read moreAyanna Pressley is all but assured of becoming the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts, the latest example of the Democratic Party’s embrace of diversity and progressive politics as the recipe for success in the Trump era. The 44-year-old’s upset victory against longtime Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano in Tuesday’s primary sets the stage…
read moreIn the era of superfoods, Maine blueberries aren’t so super. The Maine wild blueberry industry harvests one of the most beloved fruit crops in New England, but it’s locked in a downward skid in a time when other nutrition-packed foods, from acai to quinoa, dominate the conversation about how to eat. And questions linger…
read moreTop Twitter and Facebook executives will defend their companies before U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday, with Facebook insisting it takes election interference seriously and Twitter denying its operations are influenced by politics. But no executive from Alphabet’s Google is expected to testify, after the company declined the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request to send one of its…
read moreFrustrated Venezuelan drivers faced lengthy lines for gasoline in border states Tuesday as the government struggled to roll out a new payment system that President Nicolas Maduro says will reduce smuggling of heavily subsidized fuel. Maduro says the payment system will pave the way for charging international prices for fuel, a massive increase given that…
read moreAs legislators prepare to grill Silicon Valley executives over Russian hacking ahead of midterm elections, some observers say the debate over expanded government oversight is far from over. On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey met with legislators in Washington ahead of Wednesday morning’s hearing, where Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg will answer questions about…
read moreArgentina will have to wait at least until the second half of September to find out whether the International Monetary Fund will agree to the early release of a credit line under a $50 billion backup financing arrangement approved earlier this year, Economy Minister Nicolas Dujovne said Tuesday. Dujovne declined to say how much…
read moreRussia on Tuesday said it has officially warned US internet giant Google against meddling in next Sunday’s local elections by posting opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s videos calling for mass protests. Representatives of Russia’s electoral commission, the Prosecutor-General’s Office and the state internet watchdog at a meeting alleged Navalny uses Google’s services to disseminate illegal information…
read moreWhen Stephen Dennis was raising his two sons in the 1980s, he never heard the phrase “screen time,” nor did he worry much about the hours his kids spent with technology. When he bought an Apple II Plus computer, he considered it an investment in their future and encouraged them to use it as much…
read moreScience fiction has long teased consumers about a future where robots are our personal assistants. But it’s no longer science fiction. The recent spike in consumer-grade “smart speakers” that respond to users’ voice commands has been given a face — with the help of a self-navigating robot that listens to its owner’s commands. Arash Arabasadi…
read moreThe Kushner family real estate firm has amassed more than half a million dollars in unpaid fines for various New York City sanitation and building violations, much of that bill incurred while President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner was running the company. City figures compiled for The Associated Press by a tenant watchdog…
read moreShortly after Joe Biden boarded a recent flight from Washington to New York, a string of passengers began stopping at his seat in coach to deliver some version of the same message: Run, Joe, run. “We’re with you,” one said, according to a Democratic strategist who happened to be on the plane and witnessed the…
read moreTurkey saw the inflation rate rise to nearly 18 percent in August, a 15-year high fueled by a collapse in the Turkish lira, which fell more than 20 percent over the past few weeks. The rising inflation and a falling currency are stoking fears Turkey is on the verge of financial and economic crisis. “It’s…
read moreYemen’s government says it is giving civil servants and pensioners pay raises, after protests against the country’s woeful economy nearly paralyzed a major port city Sunday. Officials have not said when the raises would take effect or how much they will be. Demonstrations against the economy in the port of Aden continued Monday. Many shops…
read moreIt’s coal people like miner Steve Knotts, 62, who make West Virginia Trump Country. So it was no surprise that President Donald Trump picked the state to announce his plan rolling back Obama-era pollution controls on coal-fired power plants. Trump left one thing out of his remarks, though: northern West Virginia coal country will be…
read moreThe Iranian rial hit a record low against the U.S. dollar on the unofficial market Monday amid a deterioration in the economic situation and the reimposition of sanctions by the United States. The dollar was being offered for as much as 128,000 rials, according to foreign exchange website Bonbast.com, which tracks the unofficial market. The…
read moreA key opponent of high-tech, automated weapons known as “killer robots” is blaming countries like the U.S. and Russia for blocking consensus at a U.N.-backed conference, where most countries wanted to ensure that humans stay at the controls of lethal machines. Coordinator Mary Wareham of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots spoke Monday after…
read moreWhen President Donald Trump pulled the plug on an upcoming trip to North Korea by his secretary of state, he pointed a finger of blame at China and the global superpower’s trade practices. In his recent trade breakthrough with Mexico, Trump praised the country’s outgoing president for his help on border security and agriculture. Both…
read morePresident Donald Trump is starting his Labor Day with an attack on a top union leader. Trump tweeted Monday that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka “represented his union poorly on television this weekend.” He added: “it is easy to see why unions are doing so poorly. A Dem!” Trumka appeared on “Fox News Sunday,” where he…
read moreIt was a week of exaggeration and outright fiction for President Donald Trump as he sought to push through a trade pact with Mexico, hyped numbers on jobs and raged against Google and the Russia investigation. He wrongly describes the deal to replace the three-nation North American Free Trade Agreement as “one of the largest”…
read moreAt one of An Nguyen’s old jobs in Hanoi, she had a daily ritual: When she wanted to log in to the computer, she had to answer a cybersecurity question such as “What is spear phishing?” or “How does malware work?” Nguyen did not work in the technology industry, but this was her employer’s way…
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