On National Religious Freedom Day, Thursday, the Trump administration released what it calls an updated guidance laying out “constitutional protections for prayer and religious expression in public schools.” “You have the right to pray,” President Donald Trump declared during a ceremony in the Oval Office. “And that’s a very important and powerful right. There’s nothing more…
read moreAn ancient and rare species of tree has been saved from Australia’s bush fires by a specialist team of firefighters. Australia’s Wollemi pines survived the dinosaurs, and were protected from huge blazes near Sydney by water-bombing aircraft and specialist firefighters, who were winched into a narrow gorge by helicopter. “It was a military-style operation,” said…
read moreThe Pentagon has received a request from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to divert funds to help build roughly 270 miles of fencing on the southern U.S. border with Mexico, according to a senior U.S. Defense Department official.The Defense Department “is now beginning an assessment of that request for assistance,” which was sent Wednesday,…
read moreThere is a chance that for the first time in years, the U.S. public may not hear directly from top intelligence officials about the biggest and most pressing threats facing the nation.U.S. intelligence officials declined Thursday to rule out the possibility that the country’s intelligence chiefs would forgo the public portion of the annual Worldwide…
read moreRep. Liz Cheney, a junior but rising GOP leader in the House, is opting to stay on that chamber’s leadership track rather than run for a Senate seat in her home state of Wyoming.The move keeps the combative second-term lawmaker positioned to advance in the House GOP hierarchy.Cheney told her colleagues at a closed-door meeting…
read moreSouth Carolina will be the fourth U.S. state to hold a presidential nominating contest in 2020 and the first in which African Americans constitute a major portion of the electorate. Statewide polls show former Vice President Joe Biden leading a crowded Democratic field competing to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.…
read moreOhio’s Statehouse would join a small number of others around the country with outdoor monuments dedicated to real women in U.S. history under a proposal expected Thursday to create a memorial to Ohio women who fought for voting rights.Currently, all statues of historical figures outside the Statehouse are of men, including Christopher Columbus, President William…
read moreThe The World Health Organization reports that 3,382 cases of Ebola, including 2,232 deaths, have occurred in Congo’s North Kivu and Ituri provinces since the start of the outbreak in August 2018. The epidemic is unfolding in an area affected by a two decades-long conflict that has claimed countless lives.Capobianco says this unstable, dangerous situation…
read moreUkraine’s Interior Ministry has opened two criminal investigations into possible surveillance of former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv Marie Yovanovitch. Details are still coming in.The news comes as an associate of U.S. President Donald Trump’s person lawyer said the president was aware of a campaign to pressure the Ukrainian government to carry out investigations that would…
read moreThe Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump begins Thursday with preliminary proceedings, including House lawmakers who will act as prosecutors presenting the articles of impeachment to the Senators who will serve as the jury.Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will be sworn in for his role in overseeing the process, and then will swear…
read moreHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi transmitted articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump Wednesday to the Senate, following four weeks of debate over the rules of a trial that could remove the president from office. But as VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, the Republican-majority Senate will consider the evidence and determine if Trump should…
read moreThe last 10 years were the hottest decade ever measured on Earth, last year was the second warmest ever and NASA says “you haven’t seen anything yet.”The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday that the average global temperature in the 2010s was 14.7 degrees Celsius, with eight of the 10 hottest years ever recorded.Parts…
read moreIntellectual property theft is a growing concern, and it poses a real risk at large conferences where people from around the world are gathered, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said recently. David Eagleman was one of more than 175,000 people at the Consumer Electronics Show held earlier this month in Las Vegas. He is a Stanford…
read moreSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has signed the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump and delivered them to the Senate so a trial can begin next week.Pelosi used a number of pens to put her name on the documents and handed them out to various Democratic committee chairmen whose efforts have led to…
read moreThe new U.S.-China trade agreement includes provisions that are aimed at curbing forced technology transfers, in which companies hand over technical know-how to foreign partners. For many high-tech businesses, the intellectual property behind their products represents the bulk of their companies’ value. To learn more about the risks of IP theft, Elizabeth Lee recently visited the Consumer Electronics Show in…
read moreThe possibility that a new virus in central China could spread between humans cannot be ruled out, though the risk of transmission at the moment appears to be low, Chinese officials said Wednesday. Forty-one people in the city of Wuhan have received a preliminary diagnosis of a novel coronavirus, a family of viruses…
read moreThe U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to approve the House members who Speaker Nancy Pelosi selected to prosecute the case against President Donald Trump and to send two articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial.The Democratic-led House approved the resolution by a vote that was largely along party lines.House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam…
read moreA legal adviser at the European Union’s highest court said Wednesday that the bloc’s data protection rules should prevent member states from indiscriminately holding personal data seized from Internet and phone companies, even when intelligence agencies claim that national security is at stake. In a non-binding opinion on how the European Court of Justice, or…
read moreRallying in swing-state Wisconsin, President Donald Trump used misleading economic data to claim he’s created a “blue collar boom” while Democrats vying to replace him cut some corners on the facts in their latest presidential debate.Here’s a look at some statements from both stages, in Milwaukee and Des Moines, Iowa.TRUMP: “More than 300,000 people under…
read moreSpeaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday named two House chairmen who led President Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry as prosecutors for Trump’s Senate trial. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who led the probe, and Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose committee approved the impeachment articles, as among the managers of the prosecution. “Today is an important day,”…
read moreA major U.S. web infrastructure and security company will provide free support to federal election campaigns to help thwart any repeats of the 2016 effort by Russian agents to steal and leak sensitive campaign emails and documents.San Francisco-based Cloudflare said Wednesday it will be providing to eligible campaigns free access to several of its security…
read moreAs President Donald Trump rallied supporters Tuesday night by defending his decision to kill a top Iranian general, the Democrats vying to replace him used their final debate before primary voting begins to argue that doing so made the country less safe.With Trump firing up thousands in the battleground state of Wisconsin and the Democratic…
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