The first woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her decades ago provided detailed and emotional testimony Thursday before a Senate panel, saying she is “100 percent” certain of her attacker’s identity and that she feared Kavanaugh was “going to accidentally kill” her during the alleged ordeal. WATCH: Christine Blasey…
read moreThe United States and Japan have agreed to begin negotiations on a bilateral free-trade agreement, reducing the prospect that Washington might impose tariffs against another trading partner. “We’ve agreed today to start trade negotiations between the United States and Japan,” U.S. President Donald Trump said at a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in…
read moreThe ride-hailing service Uber has agreed to pay $148 million to settle claims that it concealed a massive data breach that exposed personal information of drivers and customers. In November 2016, Uber learned that hackers had accessed personal data of about 600,000 Uber drivers, including their driver’s license numbers. Hackers also had stolen email addresses…
read moreU.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg voiced support for the #MeToo movement Wednesday in a striking statement on the eve of a high-stakes U.S. Senate hearing into allegations of sexual misconduct by President Donald Trump’s nominee to the court, Brett Kavanaugh. During a question-and-answer period after an address to first-year law students at Georgetown…
read morePresident Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would “certainly prefer not” to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and that he might delay a highly anticipated meeting with the Justice Department’s No. 2 official. Trump said Rosenstein denied making remarks first attributed to him in a New York Times report, including that he had discussed…
read moreU.S. communications and social media titans are urging lawmakers to craft strong, uniform protections for Americans’ personal data without squashing innovation. The Senate Commerce Committee heard testimony Wednesday from Apple, Amazon.com, Google, Twitter, and AT&T executives at a time when data breaches are commonplace, many Americans are mystified or unaware of how their personal data…
read moreFord chief Jim Hackett on Wednesday ramped up his warnings about the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, saying his company was seeing profits slashed by $1 billion. Hackett said the global automaker could face more damage if the trade confrontations were not resolved quickly. “The metals tariffs took about $1 billion in profit from…
read moreSomalia’s finance minister says World Bank grants to the government are a sign the country has “trustable leadership” again after decades of chaos and corruption. The World Bank said Tuesday it will provide $80 million in grants to Somalia’s federal government, the bank’s first direct grants to a Somali central authority in 27 years. In…
read moreThe Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised a key interest rate for the third time this year in response to a strong U.S. economy and signaled that it expected to maintain a pace of gradual rate hikes. The Fed lifted its short-term rate — a benchmark for many consumer and business loans — by a quarter-point…
read moreSenate Republicans have hired an Arizona prosecutor to question a woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. A press release from committee chairman Chuck Grassley’s office described woman attorney Rachel Mitchell as “a career prosecutor with decades of experience prosecuting sex crimes.” Mitchell worked in the Maricopa County Attorney’s office in Phoenix…
read moreA gaping ideological divide cuts through this year’s gathering of world leaders at the United Nations. It’s not between capitalists and communists, rich and poor, East and West. It’s between multilateralists who advocate nations working together and unilateralists who are pushing for national sovereignty. Despite near-universal hand-wringing about the U.N.’s failings, it was clear who…
read moreMany materials change shape when exposed to heat, electricity or some other kind of energy. That change is usually random, but scientists are now learning how to direct that energy to turn the material into a predetermined shape. VOA’s George Putic visited a lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh that experiments with morphing materials.…
read moreAfter losing his job with a foreign food company in March, Alexander Costa surveyed Brazil’s anemic labor market and decided to start selling cheap lunches by the beach in Rio de Janeiro to try and provide for his young family. “I could have stayed home, looking for work, sending out resumes, with few jobs and…
read moreWhen Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger sold Instagram to Facebook in 2012, the photo-sharing startup’s fiercely loyal fans worried about what would happen to their beloved app under the social media giant’s wings. None of their worst fears materialized. But now that its founders have announced they are leaving in a swirl of well wishes…
read moreAutomakers sought flexibility while environmental groups blasted the Trump administration’s proposal to roll back fuel economy standards at a public hearing on the plan in the industry’s backyard. At the hearing Tuesday in Dearborn, Michigan, home to Ford Motor Co. and just miles from the General Motors and Fiat Chrysler home offices, industry officials repeated…
read moreA newly released memo obtained by Open The Government (OTG) and Project on Government Oversight (POGO) through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) shows that the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) signed off on the policy of separating parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border. According to the document dated April…
read moreIt’s drawing time at this suburban nursery school in Japan, but instead of crayons, tiny fingers are tapping on colors on iPad screens and taking selfies. Digital schooling has arrived in this nation long known for its zealous commitment to “three R’s” education. Coby Preschool, in a small town northeast of Tokyo, is among nearly…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump returns to the stage at the United Nations on Tuesday to address the annual gathering of world leaders. After an international debut last year in which he threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, many are anxious about what message he may bring this year to the U.N. General Assembly. Since last…
read moreA Taiwanese owned company whose parent firm posted a more than half billion dollar profit last year has been refusing to pay compensation in line with an arbitration ruling to hundreds of Cambodian workers it made redundant. Pou Yuen (Cambodia) Enterprise Ltd, which supplies Finnish sporting goods giant Amer Sports, gave workers zero notice when…
read moreChina says it is impossible to hold trade talks with the United States with a new round of tariffs in place. U.S. imposed duties on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, and a retaliatory set of tariffs imposed by Beijing on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods, took effect on Monday. Chinese vice commerce minister…
read moreAt a community center on Shek Lei public housing estate in northern Hong Kong, stacks of mooncake boxes are waiting to be distributed on Mid-Autumn Festival the following day. Inside they contain some of the 76,000 mooncakes that have been collected by Food Grace, a local charity, this holiday season to be redistributed to low-income…
read moreThe U.S. Justice Department said on Monday it will hold a “listening session” with officials from more than a dozen states on Tuesday to discuss consumer protection and the technology industry, an agency official said. The meeting, first announced on Sept. 5, was called by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to discuss whether social media companies…
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