Melania Trump says she loves President Donald Trump and has “much more important things to think about” than allegations he cheated on her with a porn star, a Playboy Playmate or anyone else. Mrs. Trump, who was interviewed by ABC while touring Africa last week, said people are just spreading rumors about her marriage.…
read moreNew York’s most conservative congressional district is unexpectedly in play as Republican incumbent Chris Collins, one of President Donald Trump’s first supporters, fights insider trading charges while seeking re-election. Republican leaders in a western New York district that Trump swept overwhelmingly in 2016 are counting on party and presidential loyalty, even if it means voting…
read moreThe head of Russia’s space agency said Friday that two astronauts who survived the midair failure of a Russian rocket would fly again and would provisionally travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in spring of next year. Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, was speaking a day after Russian cosmonaut Alexei…
read moreA U.S. astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut made an emergency return to earth Thursday shortly after launching on what was supposed to be a mission to the International Space Station. Rescuers reached American Nick Hague and Russian Alexei Ovchinin after their emergency landing in Kazakhstan. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb recently sat down with Hague…
read moreFacebook announced Thursday that it had deleted over 800 mostly U.S.-based pages and accounts that were posting politically oriented spam and engaging in “inauthentic behavior.” The social media giant declined a request from VOA News to name the 559 pages and 251 accounts. Nation in Distress, a pro-President Donald Trump page identified by The Washington Post as…
read moreElon Musk replied with a tweet saying “This is incorrect” after the Financial Times reported that outgoing Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. Chief Executive James Murdoch was the lead candidate to replace him as Tesla Inc. chairman. Tesla has until Nov. 13 to appoint an independent chairman of the board, part of settlements reached last month between Tesla, Musk and U.S.…
read moreParties to a new global treaty to combat the illicit sale of tobacco products have taken the first steps toward cracking down on this multi-billion dollar trade. At a three-day meeting at the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva they have outlined a plan to shut down the lucrative black market trade in…
read moreOne of Donald Trump’s top economic advisers says the president is not trying to improperly influence the U.S. central bank. The director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, spoke to the television network CNBC a day after Trump said the U.S. Federal Reserve is “loco” (crazy) for raising interest rates. On Thursday, Trump continued his attacks…
read moreMissouri’s top election official on Thursday said the state was appealing a judge’s ruling that blocked enforcement of parts of a voter photo identification law, adding that the ruling was causing “mass confusion” ahead of a key election for a U.S. Senate seat. Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft in a statement said the state…
read moreArkansas’ highest court on Thursday upheld a voter ID law that is nearly identical to a restriction struck down by the court four years ago. The Arkansas Supreme Court reversed a judge’s ruling against the law approved last year by the Republican-controlled Legislature and governor. A judge had blocked officials from enforcing the restriction, but…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump said that Wednesday’s stock market sell-off was in fact a long-awaited “correction,” and that the Federal Reserve, which has been raising U.S. interest rates, had gone “crazy.” Trump’s use of the word correction to describe the sell-off could be significant. A stock market correction is defined as a decline of at…
read moreA characteristic twinkle in his eye, Ronald Reagan waves to a crowd from aboard a rail car in a hologram revealed Wednesday at the late president’s namesake library in Southern California. “We think we made a good beginning, but you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” the digital resurrection of the nation’s 40th president says in his…
read moreThe U.S. Air Force on Wednesday said that it had awarded a total of $2.3 billion in contracts to develop rocket launch systems for national security missions. The awards go to Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin; United Launch Services, part of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) joint venture between Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin…
read moreThe question before a panel of U.S. appeals court judges: Should non-native residents of Guam have a say in the territory’s future relationship with the United States? Three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were at the University of Hawaii’s law school Wednesday to listen to arguments in an appeal of a…
read morePresident Donald Trump is stepping up his attack on Democrats over a health care proposal called Medicare for All, claiming it “would end Medicare as we know it and take away benefits that seniors have paid for their entire lives.” One senator who has introduced a Medicare for All proposal dismissed Trump’s statements as lies.…
read moreMat Beren and his friends used to drive by the vast greenhouses of southern British Columbia and joke about how much weed they could grow there. Years later, it’s no joke. The tomato and pepper plants that once filled some of those greenhouses have been replaced with a new cash crop: marijuana. Beren and other…
read moreU.S. stocks posted their worst loss since February on Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average finishing the day down more than 800 points. The losses were widespread as bond yields remained high after steep increases last week. Companies that have been the biggest winners on the market the last few years, including technology companies and retailers,…
read morePresident Donald Trump says he has been speaking to one of his former advisers, Dina Powell, about the possibility of succeeding Nikki Haley as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and he plans to speak with others about the post. At the White House on Wednesday, Trump said Powell is one of many people…
read moreGoogle will begin offering its pay-to-carpool service throughout the U.S., an effort to reduce the commute-time congestion that its popular Waze navigation app is designed to avoid. The expansion announced Wednesday builds upon a carpooling system that Waze began testing two years ago in northern California and Israel before gradually extending it into Brazil and…
read moreChants of “Lock her up!” rang once again throughout an Iowa arena as President Donald Trump rallied supporters Tuesday night. But this time, the staple of Trump’s 2016 campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton had a new target: California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Trump, who was in the state boosting Republican candidates ahead of the Nov. 6…
read moreDark, dirty and slow, Zimbabwe’s trains, like much else in the impoverished southern African country, have seen better days. Once the preferred mode of transport for most Zimbabweans, the state-run rail service mirrors the decline in the country’s economic fortunes during the last two decades under the leadership of former President Robert Mugabe. Gilbert Mthinzima…
read moreLynn Fedele sits at a booth at a natural-food deli, next to a wall painted light jungle green with bright red accents. She sips a steaming cup of peppermint chamomile tea and talks politics. “I think it’s very important to take the House out of the hands of the Republicans,” she sighs, referring to the…
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