U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she would form a bipartisan select committee on the coronavirus crisis to oversee the spending of $2.3 trillion that Congress has approved to respond to the pandemic.In a conference call with reporters, the California Democrat also said she believed the administration of Republican President Donald Trump was…
read moreThe U.S. Democratic Party postponed its national presidential nominating convention from July to August on Thursday because of the uncertainty created by the ravaging coronavirus pandemic. The quadrennial event, where Democratic activists are likely to nominate former Vice President Joe Biden to face Republican President Donald Trump in the November national election, had been scheduled for mid-July in Milwaukee, in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin, but now…
read moreTwitter said Thursday it has removed thousands of accounts in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia and Serbia that allegedly took direction from governments or pushed pro-government content.A network of accounts associated with Saudi Arabia and operating out of multiple countries including KSA, Egypt and UAE, were amplifying content praising Saudi leadership, and critical of Qatar…
read moreAlong with the global coronavirus virus pandemic, Nigeria is also battling a deadly Lassa fever outbreak that so far this year has killed at least 176 people in the country. Doctors say the illness is an annual problem in Africa that deserves more attention. Ifiok Ettang reports from Jos, Nigeria. …
read moreIndia will pull out of a three-week lockdown in phases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday, as officials battle to contain the country’s biggest cluster of coronavirus infections in the capital, New Delhi. The shutdown, which has brought Asia’s third-largest economy to a shuddering halt, is due to end on April 14. …
read moreGoogle on Thursday said it is pumping $6.5 million into fact-checkers and nonprofits as it ramps up its the battle against coronavirus misinformation. Fact-checking organizations, which often operate on relatively small budgets, are seeing a surge in demand for their work as mistaken or maliciously false information about the pandemic spreads, according to Alexios Mantzarlis of…
read moreA California hydrogen fuel cell company is now repairing and updating old ventilators, answering a challenge by the state to address a shortage of the life-saving equipment needed to help coronavirus patients breathe. Bloom Energy manufacturing director Joe Tavi told the Associated Press news agency state officials reached out to the Silicon Valley firm asking for…
read moreNASA may have just found the next man to walk on the moon — or the first woman to land on Mars — or someone who can float above the Earth and make repairs to the International Space Station.Wednesday was the deadline for submitting an application to join the next class of astronauts.NASA says more…
read moreAstronomers using the U.S. space agency NASA’s orbiting Hubble telescope, as well as two orbiting x-ray observatories, say they have gathered the best evidence yet of a so-called “intermediate mass” black hole.A report published Tuesday in the Astrophysical Journal, and reported by NASA, explains that the so-called intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are about 50,000 times…
read moreChina’s National Health Commission (NHC) announced Wednesday it has more than 1,300 asymptomatic coronavirus cases, the first time it has acknowledged cases of people testing positive for the virus but not showing symptoms.At a news briefing in Beijing, commission spokesman Mi Feng said the 1,367 asymptomatic cases were under quarantine and medical observation.The commission had…
read moreWith the coronavirus death toll mounting in the U.S., the presidential election in November 2020 is now shaping up potentially as a referendum on how President Donald Trump is handling the COVID-19 pandemic. The president has not shied away from being political during this time of national crisis, and his campaign is seeking to capitalize…
read moreFormer U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, the likely Democratic candidate in November’s national presidential election, says the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the country is likely to force significant alterations or postponement of the party’s national nominating convention scheduled for July. The Democratic and Republican national conventions are a quadrennial showpiece of American democracy, but Biden told MSNBC…
read moreSocial distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19 is changing the tactics for political campaigns, especially for candidates running for president of the United States. VOA’s Steve Redisch examines the changing strategies and endangered traditions. …
read moreBusinesses and research facilities have joined a global effort to defeat the coronavirus. With respirators in short supply in many countries, a German university is developing rudimentary, no-frills devices to aid COVID-19 sufferers who are on the path to recovery, freeing fancier models for those whose lives are still in danger. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.…
read morePresident Donald Trump’s allies are trying to contain a politically risky election year fight with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as he struggles to balance presidential politics with a global pandemic in one of the nation’s most important swing states.Both sides have tried to de-escalate the feud this week, although Trump’s supporters in particular sought to…
read moreFacing intense surges in the need for hospital ICU beds, European nations are on a building and hiring spree, throwing together makeshift hospitals and shipping coronavirus patients out of overwhelmed cities via high-speed trains and military jets. The key question is whether they will be able to find enough healthy medical staff to make it…
read moreThe Trump administration is prepared to lift crippling sanctions on Venezuela in support of a new proposal to form a transitional government requiring both Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaidó to step aside in favor of a five-person governing council, U.S. officials said. The one-page “Democratic Transition Framework for Venezuela” was presented Tuesday by Secretary of State…
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