The British Parliament has released some 250 pages worth of documents that show Facebook considered charging developers for data access. Parliament’s media committee seized confidential Facebook documents from the developer of a now-defunct bikini photo searching app as part of its investigation into fake news. The documents show internal discussions about linking data to revenue.…
read moreA new study estimates 164 million people are migrating to foreign countries in search of work, an increase of 9 percent since 2013. The majority of migrant workers are men between the ages of 25 and 64, according to the International Labor Organization’s second edition of Global Estimates on International Migrant Workers. While the number…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump, who rattled global markets Tuesday after declaring himself “a Tariff Man,” predicted in a series of tweets Wednesday the United States and China would negotiate a new trade deal. Trump said China is planning to resume buying U.S. soybeans and natural gas, which he said confirms his claims that China had…
read more“I’m not going to put the country out of business trying to maintain certain standards that probably don’t matter,” President Donald Trump told VOA when asked about the economic impacts of climate change. When not denying its existence, the Trump administration’s approach to climate change essentially comes down to three arguments: the United States has…
read moreFive living American presidents will come together Wednesday to pay final tribute to George Herbert Walker Bush, the nation’s 41st president, who died last Friday at the age of 94. Former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will join the current commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, for Bush’s funeral services at the Washington National Cathedral,…
read moreIncoming members of the Democratic Party’s new U.S. House majority say they’re ready to turn the energy of their campaigns into real power on Capitol Hill. Rep.-elects Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and a handful of other liberal-leaning incoming Democrats used an orientation event for freshman lawmakers Tuesday sponsored by the…
read morePresident Donald Trump insists his new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada will address the exporting of U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas. That pledge, however, comes on the heels of auto giant General Motors’ announcement of the layoff of 14,000 employees in five factories in the United States and Canada. Despite the president’s optimistic pronouncements, the…
read moreFormer New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in Iowa on Tuesday that he would do everything he can to make climate change the defining issue of the 2020 Democratic presidential nominating campaign, despite resistance in regions of the country that his party would likely need to recapture the White House. More than 1,000 miles…
read moreRight-wing President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday he plans to tackle the overhaul of Brazil’s fiscally burdensome pension system with piecemeal reforms that can pass Congress, starting with an increase in the minimum age of retirement. He said reforms should start with the public social security system and advance gradually to make sure they pass…
read moreVolkswagen AG’s chief executive said Tuesday after a meeting at the White House that the German automaker was building an alliance with Ford and might use the U.S. automaker’s plants to build cars. VW CEO Herbert Diess said the company was also “considering building a second car plant” in the United States, adding, “We are in quite advanced negotiations and dialog with…
read morePresident Donald Trump’s former national security adviser provided so much information to the special counsel’s Russia investigation that prosecutors say he shouldn’t do any prison time, according to a court filing Tuesday that describes Michael Flynn’s cooperation as “substantial.” The filing by special counsel Robert Mueller provides the first details of Flynn’s assistance in…
read moreThe University of California at Berkeley on Monday settled a free speech lawsuit accusing the school of discriminating against speakers with conservative views. Under the settlement filed with the federal court in San Francisco, the university will modify its procedures for handling “major events,” which typically draw hundreds of people, and agreed not to charge…
read moreSpeaking to a packed auditorium of enthusiastic young people Nov. 27, Bernie Sanders already seemed to be campaigning for the White House again. But the Vermont senator was appearing at George Washington University as an author — not a presidential candidate. Sanders’ new book, “Where We Go From Here,” went on sale that day,…
read moreThe World Bank will give equal weight to curbing emissions and helping poor countries deal with the “disastrous effects” of a warming world as it steps up investments to tackle climate change in the first half of the 2020s, it said on Monday. The bank and its two sister organizations plan to double their investments…
read moreWhite House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday the Trump administration wants to end subsidies for electric cars and other items, including renewable energy sources. Asked about plans after General Motors announced U.S. plant closings and layoffs last week, Kudlow pointed to the $2,500-to-$7,500 tax credit for consumers who buy plug-in electric vehicles, including…
read moreJeff Bezos boldly predicted five years ago that drones would be carrying Amazon packages to people’s doorsteps by now. Amazon customers are still waiting. And it’s unclear when, if ever, this particular order by the company’s founder and CEO will arrive. Bezos made billions of dollars by transforming the retail sector. But overcoming the regulatory…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump boasted Monday of his “very strong and personal relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, declaring a new U.S.-China trade deal would immediately allow American farmers to sell more of their products to Beijing. Stock markets in Asia and Europe jumped sharply after Trump and Xi, as leaders of the world’s two…
read moreU.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is warning the world is “in deep trouble with climate change.” Speaking Monday at the opening of two weeks of climate talks in Poland, Guterres said it is “the most important gathering on climate change since the Paris Agreement was signed.” He called on the nearly 200 countries represented in Katowice,…
read moreNigeria’s unemployment numbers jumped by nearly 30% this year to 16 million, according to a November report by the National Bureau of Statistics. Another two million are expected to be unemployed by the end of the year. The negative trend comes as Nigeria this year overtook India as having the world’s largest population of people…
read moreFormer FBI director James Comey has reached a deal to testify privately to the House Judiciary Committee, backing off his legal fight for an open hearing, his attorney said Sunday. Comey, whose lawyers went to court to challenge a congressional subpoena, said in a tweet that it was “hard to protect my rights without being…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump has returned home from the Group of 20 meeting of the world’s top economies. After the curtain came down on the summit, the spotlight lingered on the leaders of the two top economies. As VOA’s White House bureau chief Steve Herman reports from Buenos Aires, in the end a truce was…
read moreTeacher Rishi Rawat has one student who is not human, but a machine. Lessons take place at a lab inside the University of Southern California’s (USC) Clinical Science Center in Los Angeles, where Rawat teaches artificial intelligence, or AI. To help the machine learn, Rawat feeds the computer samples of cancer cells. “They’re like a…
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