China plans to provide an unspecified financial “grant” to Pakistan while the United Arab Emirates is actively considering Islamabad’s request for a fiscal relief package of up to $6 billion to help the country deal with a looming balance-of-payments crisis, Chinese and Pakistani officials say. News of the anticipated financial aid came days after Prime Minister…
read moreA battle is brewing between the Trump administration and some of the president’s biggest supporters in Congress who are concerned that sanctions to be reimposed on Iran early next month won’t be tough enough. As President Donald Trump prepares to reimpose a second batch of Iran sanctions that had been eased under the 2015 nuclear deal, conservative…
read moreFormer U.S. President Barack Obama is blasting President Donald Trump’s Republican Party for allegedly deceiving the American public on a variety of issues, including taxes and health care. Obama, Trump’s predecessor in the White House, delivered two fiery speeches Friday in Wisconsin and Michigan, urging people to vote for the states’ Democratic candidates in the Nov.…
read morePresident Donald Trump lectured the media at length on Friday evening, accusing reporters of trying “to use the sinister actions of one individual to score political points” against him hours after police apprehended a staunch supporter of his in connection with the mail-bomb scare targeting Democrats and CNN. Trump was campaigning in Charlotte, North…
read moreIt may surprise you that cement is responsible for 7 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. That’s because it takes a lot of heat to produce the basic powdery base of cement that eventually becomes concrete. But it turns out that simple fibers from carrots could not only reduce that carbon footprint but also make…
read moreAuthorities have arrested a 59-year-old man in connection with the mail bombs sent to celebrities, prominent news outlets, and Democratic politicians. The suspect has a long criminal record, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports. …
read moreMegyn Kelly, the former Fox News Channel personality who made a rocky transition to softer news at NBC, was fired from her morning show Friday after triggering a furor by suggesting it was OK for white people to wear blackface at Halloween. “‘Megyn Kelly Today’ is not returning,” NBC News said in a statement. The…
read moreFacebook announced Friday that it had removed 82 Iranian-linked accounts on Facebook and Instagram. A Facebook spokesperson answered VOA’s questions about its process and efforts to detect what it calls “coordinated inauthentic behavior” by accounts pretending to be U.S. and U.K. citizens and aimed at U.S. and U.K. audiences. Q: Facebook’s post says there were…
read moreThe state of California on Friday agreed not to enforce its own state net neutrality law until a final court decision on the Trump administration’s decision to overturn the 2015 Obama-era open internet rules. The move likely means the California net neutrality law, which was set to take effect Jan. 1, now will be on…
read moreU.S. gun-control advocates have outspent gun-rights groups by more than 40 percent on next month’s congressional elections, reversing the National Rifle Association’s long-standing dominance in spending on gun politics. Boosted largely by the personal fortune of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who is considering a 2020 presidential run, the gun-control spending almost entirely benefits Democrats, who are seeking to wrest majorities from…
read moreStock markets around the world tumbled Friday while U.S. Treasury prices rose along with demand for safer bets as better-than-expected U.S. economic data did little to ease anxiety over disappointing corporate profits and trade wars. Wall Street closed above its session lows, but earnings reports from Amazon.com and Alphabet, issued late Thursday, rekindled a rush…
read moreFar-right extremists have ramped up an intimidating wave of anti-Semitic harassment against Jewish journalists, political candidates and others ahead of next month’s U.S. midterm elections, according to a report released Friday by a Jewish civil rights group. The Anti-Defamation League’s report says its researchers analyzed more than 7.5 million Twitter messages from Aug. 31 to…
read moreU.S. stock market indexes fell sharply in Friday’s early trading, but saw losses ease later in the day. At one point the S&P 500 and the Dow were down by two percent or more, while the NASDAQ was off by 3.5 percent at one point. Investors worried about faltering growth, rising interest rates, trade tensions,…
read moreU.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton says Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to visit Washington next year. Bolton said on Friday in the ex-Soviet nation of Georgia: “We have invited President Putin to Washington after the first of the year for, basically, a full day of consultations.” He says no date has been…
read moreThe U.S. economy grew at a robust annual rate of 3.5 percent in the July-September quarter as the strongest burst of consumer spending in nearly four years helped offset a sharp drag from trade. The Commerce Department said Friday that the third quarter’s gross domestic product, the country’s total output of goods and services, followed…
read moreU.S. authorities are investigating a string of suspicious packages, containing suspected pipe bombs, addressed to prominent Democrats and other critics of the Trump administration. Two former presidents, vice president and presidential candidate have been targeted, as well as a movie star and a news network. President Donald Trump has condemned the packages as an attack…
read moreLess than two weeks before the midterm elections, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a plan to lower prices for some prescription drugs, saying it would stop unfair practices that force Americans to pay much more than people in other countries for the same medications. “We are taking aim at the global freeloading that forces American…
read moreTop trade officials from 12 countries and the European Union on Thursday vowed to reform World Trade Organization rules in the face of U.S. actions that threaten to paralyze the body and address some of Washington’s complaints about Chinese subsidies. The officials, meeting in the Canadian capital Ottawa, said they shared a “common resolve for…
read moreMajor U.S. stock indexes made strong gains in Thursday’s trading after some upbeat profit reports by major companies. The Nasdaq composite posted its biggest daily gain since March, as Microsoft’s upbeat earnings spurred a rebound in technology names and investors snapped up oversold shares. The Nasdaq added 209.94 points, or 2.95 percent, to 7,318.34, a day after it confirmed a correction and registered its biggest decline…
read moreBritish regulators slapped Facebook on Thursday with a fine of 500,000 pounds ($644,000) — the maximum possible — for failing to protect the privacy of its users in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. At the same time, European Union lawmakers demanded an audit of Facebook to better understand how it handles information, reinforcing how regulators in…
read moreU.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has called on the Justice Department on Thursday to launch a criminal investigation into one of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers and her lawyer. The Republican lawmaker wants prosecutors to determine if Julie Swetnick and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, made false statements to Congress last month about…
read moreGoogle is abandoning plans to establish a campus for tech startups in Berlin after protests from residents worried about gentrification. The internet giant confirmed reports Thursday it will sublet the former electrical substation in the capital’s Kreuzberg district to two charitable organizations, Betterplace.org and Karuna. Google has more than a dozen so-called campuses around the…
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