A Saudi Arabian government app that allows men in the country to monitor and control their female relatives’ travel at the click of a button should be removed from Google and Apple’s online stores, a U.S. politician and activists said on Wednesday. Human rights campaigners argued the tech giants are enabling abuses against women and…
read moreThe Somali government says it will award exploration licenses to foreign oil companies later this year, despite calls from the opposition to wait until laws and regulations governing the oil sector are in place. Seismic surveys conducted by two British companies, Soma Oil & Gas and Spectrum Geo, suggest that Somalia has promising oil reserves…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he has made no decision on whether to sign proposed bipartisan legislation for limited new barrier construction along the U.S.-Mexico border in order to avert another partial government shutdown Friday over the dispute. “We’ll be looking for land mines [in the bill]” but “we have not gotten it…
read moreThe U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee postponed a vote on Wednesday on whether to approve Ronald Vitiello, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Committee Chairman Ron Johnson did not elaborate on the reasons for the delay, but the postponement came one day after ICE’s employee union urged…
read moreFor the 750 million people globally who can’t read, using a smartphone can be difficult. One company is helping illiterate and low literacy users get connected. Tina Trinh reports. …
read moreA new report finds the world’s unemployment rate has dropped to five percent, the lowest level since the global economic crisis in 2008. The International Labor Organization reports the jobs being created, however, are poor quality jobs that keep most of the world’s workers mired in poverty. Slightly more than 172 million people globally were…
read moreThe Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential field continued to grow this week with the formal entry of Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. But a new poll suggests good news for two men who are not yet in the race, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran in 2016, and former Vice President Joe…
read moreDemocrats pushed on Tuesday for a nationwide paid family leave system in the United States, the only developed nation that does not guarantee pay to workers taking time off to care for children or other relatives. The proposal would establish a national insurance program to provide workers with up to 12 weeks paid leave per…
read moreThe proportion of Americans found to be “alarmed” by climate change has doubled in just five years, the pollsters behind a nationwide survey revealed on Tuesday. Twenty-nine percent of respondents to the poll conducted last December by Yale and George Mason universities were in the alarmed category — an all-time high — and twice the…
read moreThe U.S. military wants to expand its use of artificial intelligence in warfare, but says it will take care to deploy the technology in accordance with the nation’s values. The Pentagon outlined its first AI strategy in a report released Tuesday. The plan calls for accelerating the use of AI systems throughout the…
read moreRepublican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that the U.S. Senate will vote on a Green New Deal introduced by Democrats that aims to slash U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to negligible levels in a decade. “I’ve noted with great interest the Green New Deal, and we’re going to be voting on that in the…
read moreThe national debt has passed a new milestone, topping $22 trillion for the first time. The Treasury Department’s daily statement showed Tuesday that total outstanding public debt stands at $22.01 trillion. It stood at $19.95 trillion when President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017. The debt figure has been rising at a faster…
read moreA social venture in Myanmar is boosting farm outputs with customized technologies and giving loans for seasonal migration to raise incomes in one of the world’s poorest countries. Proximity Designs, which was set up in 2004 in the country’s commercial hub Yangon, focuses on farming, on which more than two-thirds of the population relies to…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he could let the March 1 deadline for a trade agreement with China “slide for a little while,” but that he would prefer not to and expects to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to close the deal at some point. Trump’s top trade negotiator and Treasury…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump has called for the resignation of Democratic freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who apologize Monday after drawing widespread condemnation from both Republicans and her fellow Democrats for comments deemed anti-Semitic. The president told reporters Tuesday that Omar’s apology was “lame” and added, “She didn’t mean a word of it.” Trump called on…
read moreRussian lawmakers backed tighter internet controls on Tuesday to defend against foreign meddling in draft legislation that critics warn could disrupt Russia’s internet and be used to stifle dissent. The legislation, which some Russian media have likened to an online “iron curtain,” passed its first of three readings in the 450-seat lower chamber of parliament.…
read moreSocial media service Reddit Inc. says it has raised $300 million in a financing round led by Chinese internet giant Tencent. Reddit’s CEO, Steve Huffman, told CNBC on Monday that values the privately held company at $3 billion. Half the new money came from Tencent, Asia’s most valuable tech company. Other investors included Sequoia, Fidelity,…
read moreThe Trump administration threatened on Monday to veto an effort in the U.S. Congress to end U.S. military support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in the war in Yemen, continuing a stand-off with lawmakers over policy toward the kingdom. Democrats and Republicans re-introduced the war powers resolution two weeks ago as a way to send…
read moreThe Iowa Democratic Party on Monday proposed the biggest changes to the state’s famed caucuses in nearly 50 years by recommending Iowans be able to participate virtually. If approved, the measure would allow people to caucus using telephones or smart devices during the days leading up to the Feb. 3 caucus night. It’s…
read morePresident Donald Trump on Monday presented the border wall as a work in progress, hailing the start of a “big, big portion” with much more coming soon. That’s a hefty exaggeration from a president who has yet to see an extra mile of barrier completed since he took office. With another possible government shutdown…
read moreA union declared total victory in a mass strike by about 25,000 workers at 48 assembly plants in a Mexican border city, but the movement spawned a storm of wildcat walkouts Monday at other businesses. The Industrial Workers and Laborers’ Union won 20 percent wage increases at all 48 “maquiladora” factories in Matamoros, across…
read moreVale SA, the world’s largest iron ore miner, knew last year that the dam in Brazil that collapsed in January and killed at least 165 people had a heightened risk of rupturing, according to an internal document seen by Reuters on Monday. The report, dated Oct. 3, 2018, shows that Vale classified Dam 1 at…
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