Boeing Co’s Starliner astronaut spacecraft landed in the New Mexico desert on Sunday, the company said, after faulty software forced officials to cut short an unmanned mission aimed at taking it to the International Space Station.The landing at 7:58 a.m. ET (1258 GMT) in the White Sands desert capped a turbulent 48 hours for Boeing’s…
read moreIt took a blaze that nearly destroyed Paris’ most famous cathedral to reveal a gap in global safety regulations for lead, a toxic building material found across many historic cities.After the Notre Dame fire in April spewed dozens of tons of toxic lead-dust into the atmosphere in just a few hours, Paris authorities discovered a…
read more2019 began with cheers at the U.S. Capitol as a record number of women as well as ethnic and religious minority members were sworn in as lawmakers. But, as 435 representatives and 100 senators got down to work, polarized politics regularly stalled progress in the politically-divided Congress, which ended the year consumed by the impeachment…
read moreHouse Democrats asked for documents from federal prosecutors and Florida law enforcement officials on Friday as part of a probe into how financier Jeffrey Epstein received a secret plea deal more than a decade ago after he was accused of molesting underage girls.The House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a letter to U.S. Attorney…
read moreThe Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog found no wrongdoing or misconduct by immigration officials in the deaths of two migrant children last December.The Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security released two brief statements Friday evening on the deaths of Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin, who died Dec. 8, and Felipe Gómez Alonzo,…
read moreFacebook Inc has taken down a well-financed campaign that used dozens of artificially generated faces to spread pro-Trump and anti-Chinese government messages, the company and outside researchers said on Friday.Researchers from New York-based Graphika and the Digitial Forensics Research Lab, an arm of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, said it was the first time they had…
read moreThe U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is holding talks with General Motors Co. on the automaker’s petition to deploy a limited number of self-driving vehicles on American roads without steering wheels or other human controls, the head of the agency said Friday. Acting NHTSA Administrator James Owens said his agency aims to decide soon on GM’s January 2018 petition as well as on a…
read moreRepublican Wisconsin lawmakers took steps Friday to spend taxpayer dollars to hire their own attorney and intervene in a federal lawsuit seeking to stop the purge of more than 200,000 voter registrations. The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed the lawsuit this week against the state Elections Commission. It did so after a state judge ruled…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump has accepted the invitation from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to deliver his state of the union speech on Feb. 4, the White House said Friday.The invite for the annual presidential speech to Congress comes at a charged political moment, with Trump freshly impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress,…
read moreTwitter says it has removed nearly 6,000 accounts it has deemed tied to a state-backed information operation in Saudi Arabia.Twitter says the accounts violated its “platform manipulation policies” and targeted discussions related to Saudi Arabia and advancing its geopolitical interests.The 5,929 accounts removed are part of a larger group of 88,000 accounts engaged in “spammy…
read moreBoeing’s new Starliner capsule went off course after launch Friday and won’t dock with the International Space Station during its first test flight. It was supposed to be a crucial dress rehearsal for next year’s inaugural launch with astronauts.The blastoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, went flawlessly as the Atlas V rocket lifted off with the Starliner…
read moreEthiopia has launched its first satellite.The satellite was launched into space Friday from at a space station in China. Ethiopian and Chinese officials and scientists, however, watched a live broadcast of the Ethiopian Remote Sensing Satellite launch at the Entoto Observatory and Research Center, north of the East African country’s capital, Addis Ababa. “This will be…
read moreNancy Pelosi promised as speaker she would “show the power of the gavel.”This year, she laid it out for all to see.The past week alone, the Democratic leader delivered a $1.4 trillion government funding package to stop a shutdown, pushed through the bipartisan U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, and passed her party’s plan to lower prescription drug…
read moreThe Democratic presidential candidates held their liveliest debate yet Thursday in Los Angeles, California. Seven contenders were on the debate stage and clashed over the economy, health care, climate change, campaign finance reform and who best can defeat President Donald Trump next year. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington …
read moreThe Senate approved a bill Thursday to crack down on robocalls, sending to President Donald Trump a measure meant to combat a persistent and costly problem for Americans.The bill, which Trump is expected to sign, would stiffen enforcement and require that phone companies offer free consumer tools to identify and block scam calls. It also…
read moreCanada’s minister of health, Patty Hajdu, on Thursday proposed banning promotion and advertising of vaping products in public spaces, convenience stores and online, in an effort to curb youth use of e-cigarettes.Hajdu also announced new mandatory health warnings on vaping product packaging.The proposed regulations come amid growing fears surrounding vaping’s safety and mounting evidence that…
read moreA study by a U.S. agency has found that facial recognition technology often performs unevenly based on a person’s race, gender or age.But the nuanced report published Thursday is unlikely to allay the concerns of critics who worry about bias in face-scanning applications that are increasingly being adopted by law enforcement, airports and a variety…
read moreLOS ANGELES — It was touch and go for a while, but the final Democratic presidential debate of the year is on for Thursday night, with seven of the leading contenders thrashing it out on stage at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.A labor dispute between a university contractor and a food services union representing…
read moreThe World Health Organization says insecurity and lack of access in conflict-ridden parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo remain major threats to ending the Ebola outbreak there.The latest reports put the number of confirmed cases at 3,354, including 2,218 deaths.Health officials are concerned progress made against the Ebola outbreak in the North Kivu and…
read moreSweeping new fuel rules aiming to cut pollution belching from ships and save lives are now just a couple of weeks away, but with no central policing agency and several countries still not signed up to them, compliance is a major concern. From January 2020, ships must use fuel with a sulfur content of 0.5%,…
read moreFacebook says it will clamp down on efforts to use its services to interfere with the 2020 U.S. census, including the posting of misleading information about when and how to participate, who can participate and what happens to people who do.The social media giant said Thursday that it is also prohibiting advertisements that portray taking…
read moreThe World Health Organization projects that, for the first time, the number of men smoking around the world is dropping, indicating measures to end the global tobacco epidemic are paying off.WHO officials called it a major shift in the fight against tobacco, which every year kills more than eight million people prematurely.Data from 143 countries…
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