U.S. President Joe Biden is headed to the eastern port of Baltimore, Maryland, on Wednesday to trumpet his newly approved $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending package that he hopes will improve the efficiency of U.S. dock operations and end the logjam of container ships that are anchored off the U.S. Pacific coast waiting to be unloaded. …
read moreThe International Space Station will perform a brief maneuver on Wednesday to dodge a fragment of a defunct Chinese satellite, Russian space agency Roscosmos said. The station crewed by seven astronauts will climb 1,240 meters higher to avoid a close encounter with the fragment and will settle in an orbit 470.7 km (292 miles) above…
read moreA coalition of 19 countries including Britain and the United States on Wednesday agreed to create zero emissions shipping trade routes between ports to speed up the decarbonization of the global maritime industry, officials involved said. Shipping, which transports about 90% of world trade, accounts for nearly 3% of the world’s CO2 emissions. U.N. shipping…
read moreU.S.-based drugmaker Pfizer is seeking to make a booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine available to all adult Americans 18 years of age and older. Pfizer filed the request Tuesday with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, citing a new clinical trial involving 10,000 volunteers who received a third injection of the two-dose vaccine, which it…
read moreNASA on Tuesday delayed putting astronauts back on the moon until 2025 at the earliest, missing the deadline set by the Trump administration. The space agency had been aiming for 2024 for the first moon landing by astronauts in a half-century. In announcing the delay, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Congress did not provide enough…
read moreFacebook Inc. said on Tuesday it plans to remove detailed ad-targeting options that refer to “sensitive” topics, such as ads based on interactions with content around race, health, religious practices, political beliefs or sexual orientation. The company, which recently changed its name to Meta and which makes the vast majority of its revenue through digital…
read moreMax Cleland, who lost three limbs to a Vietnam War hand grenade blast yet went on to serve as a U.S. senator from Georgia, died on Tuesday. He was 79. Cleland died at his home in Atlanta from congestive heart failure, his personal assistant Linda Dean told The Associated Press. Cleland, a Democrat, served one…
read moreThousands of people gathered Tuesday outside of New Zealand’s parliament building in the capital, Wellington, to protest the government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates and lockdowns intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus. An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 protesters marched through central Wellington carrying signs displaying various anti-mandate slogans, with many waving campaign flags of former U.S. president Donald Trump. Security personnel closed nearly all entrances to the parliament…
read moreLast week’s passage of a major bipartisan infrastructure spending package in the House of Representatives was broadly seen as a victory for President Joe Biden at a time when he desperately needed one. But unlike some of Biden’s earlier legislative wins, this one is not likely to produce immediate changes in the lives of most…
read moreFour astronauts returned to Earth on Monday, riding home with SpaceX to end a 200-day space station mission that began last spring. Their capsule streaked through the late night sky like a dazzling meteor before parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. Recovery boats quickly moved in with spotlights. “On behalf of…
read moreAsian countries with some of the world’s largest yearly tropical forest losses have either not joined a new global pact to halt forest loss by the end of the decade or sparked doubts about their commitment after signing up. More than 120 countries joined the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use on November…
read moreAustralia’s electric car industry has criticized the government’s new policy to build thousands of charging stations as “far too little, too late.” The Australian government Tuesday pledged $132 million to speed up the rollout of hydrogen refueling and electric charging stations. The Electric Vehicles Council says an Australian government plan to build electric vehicle charging stations and hydrogen-powered vehicle fueling stations doesn’t include subsidies, tax incentives or minimum fuel standards,…
read moreThe World Food Program says it is seeking $65 million to ease food insecurity in Zimbabwe. The U.N. agency says its assessment shows that more than 5 million people in the southern African nation are looking at food shortages in coming months. Belinda Popovska, the WFP Zimbabwe spokeswoman, told VOA on Monday that the U.N. agency had started looking for funds to import food for…
read moreAn original Apple computer, hand-built by company founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak 45 years ago, goes under the hammer in the United States on Tuesday. The functioning Apple-1, the great, great grandfather of today’s sleek chrome-and-glass Macbooks, is expected to fetch up to $600,000 at an auction in California. The so-called “Chaffey College” Apple-1,…
read moreRandal Quarles announced Monday that he will resign from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors at the end of the year after completing a four-year term as its top bank regulator, opening up another vacancy on the Fed’s influential board for President Joe Biden to fill. Quarles has served as the Fed’s first vice chair…
read moreFormer U.S. President Barack Obama told the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on Monday that most nations failed to meet their commitments made in the 2015 Paris Climate Conference agreement and the world is nowhere near where it needs to be in confronting climate change. Speaking during the second full week of the talks…
read moreMore than 100,000 climate-action activists from across the world gathered in Glasgow Saturday to protest the agreements and promises made so far at the COP26 climate talks. According to protesters, the new pledges made during the summit — to cut carbon and methane emissions, end deforestation, phase out coal and provide more financing for poorer…
read moreThe different diaspora groups that make up the United States inevitably have fought for representation through the voting process. VOA is profiling a group of emerging politicians with direct ties to Africa who are changing the face of American politics. One is Omar Fateh, whose parents came from Somalia. …
read moreAt least 89 people, including 17 children, have tested positive for the Zika virus in a surge of cases in the Indian city of Kanpur, its health department said on Monday. First discovered in 1947, the mosquito-borne virus Zika virus reached epidemic proportions in Brazil in 2015, when thousands of babies were born with microcephaly,…
read moreA study by Monash University researchers in Australia has found that moderate drinking of alcohol is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and a lowering of death from all causes — when compared to zero alcohol consumption. More than 18,000 people over the age of 70 in the United States and Australia took part in the research. It is the first…
read moreMedically assisted dying is now legal in New Zealand. The End of Life Choice Act has come into effect one year after almost two-thirds of New Zealanders voted in favor of it. Supporters believe the assisted dying laws will give New Zealanders who are “suffering terribly at the end of their lives” choice, compassion and dignity. To be eligible, a…
read moreWang Yaping has become the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk as part of a six-month mission to the country’s space station. Wang and fellow astronaut Zhai Zhigang left the station’s main module on Sunday evening, spending more than six hours outside installing equipment and carrying out tests alongside the station’s robotic service arm,…
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