The U.S. Justice Department sued the southwestern state of Texas on Monday, alleging that Republican state lawmakers discriminated against Latinos and other minorities by redrawing new congressional and state legislative districts to increase the voting power of white Texans. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the lawsuit, the Justice Department’s first major legal action since states…
read moreSenator Bob Dole’s body will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday as congressional leaders honor the former Republican presidential candidate and World War II veteran who served in Congress for 36 years. Dole died Sunday at the age of 98. He was a leader known for his caustic wit, which he often…
read moreThe Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the U.S. space agency, NASA, says it has new software that will allow its Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) to better assess potential threats posed by asteroids that can come close to Earth. In a press release on Monday, NASA astronomers said they have upgraded their impact…
read moreRick Levin is trying to keep the waters of Chesapeake Bay clean by building oyster reefs. VOA’s Zdenko Novacki visits him in Pasadena, Maryland, to learn how oysters filter water and about the benefits of oyster reefs for the environment and other marine life. Camera: Philip Alexiou, Zdenko Novacki Produced by: Zdenko Novacki …
read moreSenate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer laid out a tight timetable Monday for his Democratic colleagues to vote on and approve a roughly $2 trillion package to revamp U.S. health care, education, climate, immigration and tax laws before Christmas. The House of Representatives has already narrowly approved a version of the measure, but Senate Democrats are…
read moreIn the shadows of the coronavirus pandemic, violence against women has been on the rise around the world, including in South Africa, where half of the country’s women report at least one incident of violence in their lifetime. Now, a local tech company has developed an alarm system to help stop the abuse. A click…
read moreFormer U.S. Sen. David Perdue will challenge Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for governor, he announced Monday, setting up a bitter 2022 Republican primary fight while Democrat Stacey Abrams is likely to await the winner. Perdue had been flirting with the bid for months, encouraged publicly by former President Donald Trump. The 71-year-old former senator said…
read moreIn the shadows of the coronavirus pandemic, violence against women has been on the rise around the world, including in South Africa, where half of the country’s women report at least one incident of violence in their lifetime. Now, a local tech company has developed an alarm system to help stop the abuse. For VOA,…
read moreIn early 2020, a team of scientists from the University of Vermont, Tufts University and Harvard University took stem cells from African clawed frog embryos and turned them into tiny living robots. As if that isn’t amazing enough, then something unexpected happened. Maxim Moskalkov has the story. …
read moreThe World Health Organization reports a significant rise in malaria cases and deaths in 2020 due to COVID-19 disruptions in malaria services. Over the past two decades, global malaria death rates have been cut in half, saving the lives of 10.6 million people. New data gathered by the WHO show COVID-19 has stopped and even…
read moreU.S. dignitaries and military veterans are mourning former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, a World War II veteran and former Republican presidential candidate who served in Congress for 36 years. Dole, who had stage 4 lung cancer, died Sunday at age 98, according to his wife, Elizabeth Dole. “Bob was an American statesman like few…
read moreBob Dole, a severely wounded U.S. soldier left for dead on a World War II battlefield and who later became a fixture for decades on the American political scene, died Sunday at the age of 98. Dole was the plain-spoken son of the Midwestern prairie state of Kansas, which he represented in the U.S. Senate…
read moreWhen John Carlin started his job at the head of the U.S. National Archives back in June of 1995, he was shocked to learn that government emails were not being preserved. “They, at that time, did not consider email as a record, and I said, ‘Folks, I may not be an archivist, but those are records,’” says…
read moreAmerica’s winter wonderland is starting out this season as anything but traditional. The calendar says December, but for much of the country, temperatures beckon for sandals. Umbrellas, if not arks, are needed in the Pacific Northwest, while snow shovels are gathering cobwebs in the Rockies. Meteorologists attribute the latest batch of record-shattering weather extremes to…
read moreCameroon has begun a measles vaccination drive on its northern border with Nigeria after several dozen children were found with the infection at a demobilization center. Cameroon says most of those infected are children of former fighters fleeing Boko Haram terrorism. A mother comforts her 13-month-old baby in Kanuri, a language spoken in Meri, a…
read moreAs the world races to vaccinate billions more people against COVID-19 while the virus’ new omicron variant spreads, India is testing using drones to deliver vaccines to people in mountainous Jammu and Kashmir, where more than 70% of the population lives in rural areas. It typically takes a couple hours by road to deliver vaccines…
read moreApple Inc. iPhones of at least nine U.S. State Department employees were hacked by an unknown assailant using sophisticated spyware developed by the Israel-based NSO Group, according to four people familiar with the matter. The hacks, which took place in the last several months, hit U.S. officials either based in Uganda or focused on matters…
read moreFirst lady’s theme is ‘gifts from the heart’ …
read more“Gifts from the heart” is the theme of Jill Biden’s first Christmas as first lady, and she has filled the historic home with tributes to those who have inspired her over the past year: front-line workers who soldiered through the pandemic, service members who gave their lives, and members of her family and those of…
read moreWhite House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci said Friday it should be about two weeks before scientists fully understand how transmissible and severe the omicron variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 truly is, and until then, people need to get vaccinations and booster shots. During a briefing by the White House COVID-19 Response Team,…
read moreThe World Health Organization has recognized Botswana for its efforts to prevent the transmission of HIV from expectant mothers to unborn children. Officials say no children born to HIV-positive mothers this year had the virus. WHO awarded Botswana the ‘silver tier’ status this week; The silver tier certification is given to countries that have lowered the mother-to-child HIV transmission rate to under five percent and provided prenatal care and anti-retroviral treatment…
read moreNew Zealand will adopt what is being called a “traffic light” system to curb the spread of COVID-19 and limit the use of lockdowns. New Zealand’s planned traffic light system has red, amber and green categories, and gives more freedoms to the fully vaccinated. The biggest city, Auckland, is a red zone, mainly because of…
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