The World Health Organization reports the COVID-19 pandemic and lack of money are hampering efforts to bring a speedy end to the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Equateur Province. Since the outbreak was declared June 1, 56 cases, including 20 deaths have been recorded.Shortly after Ebola was detected in the DRC, World Health…
read moreJohn Robert Lewis, a champion of civil rights for African Americans and longtime U.S. lawmaker, has died. He was 80. The veteran congressman died Friday after a yearlong battle with advanced pancreatic cancer.John Lewis rose to fame as a leader of the modern-day American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. At age 23,…
read morePresumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said Friday he is now getting intelligence briefings and has been told Russia continues to try to meddle in November’s U.S. election.China also was conducting activities “designed for us to lose confidence in the outcome” of the 2020 election, Biden told supporters during an online fundraiser for his campaign.”We…
read moreA U.S. federal court has ruled that the Trump administration must accept new applicants to a program to protect young immigrants from deportation.The U.S. District Court in Maryland said Friday the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program must be fully restored for the first time in three years, following a Supreme Court ruling that…
read moreGoogle, the behemoth technology company that has become a verb for online search, is offering financial aid to students who take their certificate programs in data analysis, project management and user experience.Calling it “a digital jobs program to help America’s economic recovery,” the offering comes during record-high joblessness in the U.S. because of quarantines and…
read moreActor and activist Angelina Jolie urged the U.N. Security Council on Friday to fulfill its promise to hold to account perpetrators of sexual violence against children in conflict settings.“I have met child survivors of sexual violence – and domestic violence and trauma and abuse – everywhere,” Jolie said of her 20 years working with the…
read moreResearchers have discovered one of the blackest materials on Earth – material that reflects less than .5 percent of the light that hits it – on the skin of deep-sea fish that use their blackness as camouflage from predators.The fish’s skin and its possible applications in the above-water world are described in a study published…
read moreA person is in custody in connection with the killing of a 33-year-old tech entrepreneur found dismembered inside his luxury Manhattan condo. A law enforcement official said Friday the person in custody has been working as Fahim Saleh’s personal assistant. Saleh was found at around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday inside his luxury seventh floor apartment on…
read morePresident Donald Trump’s long-in-coming campaign shakeup rearranged some big job titles but isn’t likely to change the identity of the person truly in charge of day-to-day operations: Jared Kushner. Kushner wields his influence quietly and is rarely a presence in the campaign’s suburban Washington headquarters. Fittingly, he was nowhere to be seen Thursday when, in…
read moreHackers broke into the Twitter accounts of world leaders, celebrities and tech moguls on Wednesday in one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years, highlighting a major flaw with the service millions of people have come to rely on as an essential communications tool. The intent of the hack appeared to be to…
read moreThe baseless conspiracy theory took off after an anonymous user posed a bizarre question in an internet chatroom: What if retail giant Wayfair is using pricey storage cabinets to traffic children? Self-proclaimed internet sleuths quickly responded by matching up the names of Wayfair products to those of missing children, producing social media posts that have since…
read moreMore than 1 million people in the United Kingdom have quit smoking since the coronavirus pandemic hit earlier this year, an anti-smoking group said. Action on Smoking and Health said more than 40% of those surveyed say they gave up cigarettes in direct response to the coronavirus. A separate poll by University College London found more…
read moreU.S. presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has vowed to strengthen ties with NATO if elected in November and has warned that the post-World War II transatlantic alliance may not survive if President Donald Trump wins a second term. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine looks at Biden’s record on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, both…
read moreThe U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating Wednesday’s major Twitter hack, in which scammers tapped into high-profile accounts to scam users out of over $100,000 in Bitcoin, the agency confirmed Thursday. “The FBI is investigating the incident involving several Twitter accounts belonging to high profile individuals that occurred on July 15, 2020. At this time, the accounts appear…
read moreThe number of reported Ebola cases in western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has surpassed the African nation’s 2018 outbreak numbers in the same region, World Health Organization officials said Thursday. “There are now 56 cases, and this is of great concern, particularly as it is now surpassing the previous (2018) outbreak in this area, which…
read moreU.S., British and Canadian officials accused the Kremlin Thursday of being behind a massive and ongoing cyber hack aimed at stealing from Western pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions doing research into coronavirus vaccines and treatment therapies. In a joint statement, the governments of all three countries said the hacking operation started in February and…
read moreOfficials from the European Space Agency, ESA, and its U.S. counterpart, NASA Thursday released the first ever pictures from the agencies’ joint Solar Orbiter mission, including the closest pictures ever taken of the sun.The orbiter was about 77 million kilometers from the sun – about halfway between Earth and the star – when it took…
read moreNorth Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis was outraised nearly 3-to-1 by his Democratic challenger in the last quarter, according to campaign reports that signal a more precarious reelection bid for the Republican in the presidential battleground state. Cal Cunningham’s campaign took in a whopping $7.4 million in the second quarter, compared to $2.6 million by Tillis,…
read moreDemocratic challenger Amy McGrath continued her blistering fundraising pace in the spring, outdistancing Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for another quarter in their bruising, free-spending campaign in Kentucky. Despite her prodigious pace, McGrath ended the quarter with slightly less money in the bank after spending heavily at the end of her bumpier-than-expected primary battle against…
read moreNASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Robert Behnken stepped outside the International Space Station (ISS) Thursday to continue efforts to complete a three-and-a-half-year project to upgrade the station’s batteries, the space agency said.Cassidy and Behnken have been working to replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries delivered to the station on a Japanese cargo ship…
read moreThe Republican National Committee is sharply restricting attendance on three of the four nights of its convention in Jacksonville, Florida, next month, as it looks for ways to move forward with the event while coronavirus cases are spiking in the state. RNC chair Ronna McDaniel said in a letter to RNC members that only…
read moreBritain, Canada and the United States have accused Russia of trying to steal COVID-19 information from academic and pharmaceutical institutions.Britain’s National Cyber Security Center announced Thursday in coordination with the U.S. and Canada the attempts to steal vaccine and treatment research is being conducted by the hacking group APT29, which is said to be part…
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