India reported nearly 11,000 new cases of COVID-19 in a 24-hour period Friday. The surge of 10,956 new coronavirus infections puts the massive South Asian nation in fourth place, surpassed only by the U.S., Brazil and Russia in the number of cases. India’s has 297,535 of the world’s total 7.5 million COVID-19 cases, according to Johns Hopkins…
read moreU.S. lawmakers this week remembered the life of George Floyd, the black man who died while in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25. Continuing nationwide protests over Floyd’s death have kept the pressure on the U.S. Congress to address racial discrimination in American policing. VOA Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports on the possibilities of…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump will deliver his nomination speech in Jacksonville, Florida, in August, the Republican National Committee announced Thursday.The Republican National Convention had been scheduled for Charlotte, North Carolina, but the national committee said Thursday that some convention activities, including Trump’s acceptance speech, will be moved to Florida.Trump has said that he wants his…
read moreFormer Vice President Joe Biden, five months ahead of the national election in November, accused President Donald Trump on Thursday of failing to offer a comprehensive plan to jump-start the faltering U.S. economy in the face of the renewed threat of the coronavirus pandemic. “Trump may have forgotten about coronavirus, but we have 20 million unemployed,”…
read moreAfter weeks of civil unrest in America, President Donald Trump is promising that his administration will aggressively pursue economic development in minority communities and confront health care disparities in those areas. The White House, without releasing details, said this is part of a four-point plan “to build safety, opportunity and dignity.” Speaking Thursday at an event on…
read moreA popular podcasting platform, Pocket Casts, has been removed from Apple’s app store in China at Beijing’s request, according to the company’s Twitter thread. Pocket Casts confirmed Wednesday on Twitter that the request was made by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), Beijing’s top internet watchdog agency that controls which apps can be accessed on iOS…
read moreNASA continues marking milestones more than a week after the first manned launch from U.S. soil in nearly a decade. An astronaut made a historic visit to the depths of the ocean floor, while the space agency unveiled this year’s roster of Hall of Fame inductees. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us This Week in Space.…
read moreMicrosoft has become the third big tech company this week to say it won’t sell its facial recognition software to police, following similar moves by Amazon and IBM.Microsoft’s president and chief counsel, Brad Smith, announced the decision and called on Congress to regulate the technology during a Washington Post video event on Thursday.”We’ve decided we…
read moreThe U.S. space agency, NASA, has announced it has awarded a $199 million contract to a city of Pittsburgh company to launch its robot lunar rover to the moon in 2023. The agency made the announcement in an online release Thursday.In a statement posted on its website, Astrobotic Technology, a space robotics company, says it…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump imposed new travel and property sanctions Thursday on International Criminal Court officials, attempting to penalize them for investigating alleged wrongdoing by U.S. military personnel and intelligence operatives fighting against terrorism in Afghanistan over the past 18 years. Trump declared a national emergency, calling the ICC investigation at The Hague “an…
read moreVideoconferencing company Zoom temporarily shut down the account of a U.S.-based activist group days after it held an event commemorating the 31st anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square protests. Humanitarian China, an organization focused on providing relief for political prisoners and activists, held the Zoom conference on May 31. A week later June 7, the account used…
read moreNeil Sullivan was angry, frustrated and crushed with guilt. His brother Joe had been rushed by ambulance from his home for the developmentally disabled to the emergency room with a possible case of the coronavirus. Neil had known the people at the Elisabeth Ludeman Developmental Center near Chicago were at risk. Regulators had flagged the…
read moreThe United States has officially gone over the 2 million mark in total cases of novel coronavirus infections.According to figures published Thursday on the website of Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus resource center, the U.S. now has 2,000,464 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 112,924 deaths, maintaining its position as the leading country with the total number…
read moreArmy Gen. Mark Milley, the nation’s top military officer, said Thursday he was wrong to accompany President Donald Trump on a walk through Lafayette Square that ended in a photo op at a church. He said his presence “created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.””I should not have been there,” the Joint…
read moreThe GOP is looking for an answer on how to respond to national outrage over the police killing of George Floyd. And they are looking to Sen. Tim Scott to provide it. The question is whether Scott, the lone black GOP senator, will be able to pull Republicans behind legislation in the roiling aftermath of…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump is set to meet with faith leaders, law enforcement officers and small business owners Thursday in Dallas, Texas, as he considers potential responses to nationwide protests that followed the death in police custody of African American man George Floyd.The White House said the roundtable discussion would cover “solutions to historic economic,…
read moreAmazon on Wednesday banned police use of its face-recognition technology for a year, making it the latest tech giant to step back from law-enforcement use of systems that have faced criticism for incorrectly identifying people with darker skin. The Seattle-based company did not say why it took action now. Ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd have…
read moreNorth Korea is urging the United States to “keep its mouth shut” about worsening inter-Korean relations, saying such silence will be beneficial if the U.S. wants to hold a successful presidential election in November. The statement published Thursday in the state-run Korean Central News Agency was issued by a relatively low-level official in North Korea’s foreign…
read morePresident Donald Trump is aiming to resume campaign rallies in the coming weeks, though the locations and coronavirus precautions still are being worked out. Trump’s rallies stopped three months ago when the COVID-19 pandemic largely shuttered the nation, but the president has been eager to get back on the campaign trail and resume them. The president’s…
read moreUtah Sen. Mitt Romney declined again Monday to endorse President Donald Trump’s reelection, saying he would “stay quiet” about whom he’ll be supporting in November. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, told reporters on Capitol Hill, “I’m not going to be describing who I’ll be voting for.” His open acknowledgment that he would not support Trump…
read moreThe White House on Wednesday said President Donald Trump was raising “questions that need to be asked” when he shared an unfounded conspiracy theory suggesting that an older protester police pushed to the ground last week in Buffalo, New York, could have been an anti-fascist “provocateur” trying to disrupt police communications.“In every case we can’t…
read moreA U.S. State Department inspector general fired by President Donald Trump told lawmakers the department discouraged him from investigating arms sales to Saudi Arabia before he was dismissed last month, according to a transcript released Wednesday.The inspector general, Steve Linick, was fired on May 15, the latest in a series of government watchdogs dismissed by…
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