WASHINGTON — An executive at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike apologized in testimony to Congress for sparking a global technology outage over the summer. “We let our customers down,” said Adam Meyers, who leads CrowdStrike’s threat intelligence division, in a hearing before a U.S. House cybersecurity subcommittee Tuesday. Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in an update…
read moreWashington — On Wednesday, China’s commerce ministry said it “firmly opposes” the United States’ proposed ban on the sale of connected vehicles that use Chinese or Russian software and hardware technology. Most new vehicles are considered to be “connected” because they can share data with other vehicles and infrastructure with the help of onboard software, hardware…
read moreWashington — Multiple Secret Service failures ahead of the July rally for former President Donald Trump where a gunman opened fire were “foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day,” according to a bipartisan Senate investigation released Wednesday. Similar to the agency’s own internal investigation and an ongoing bipartisan…
read moreWASHINGTON — Fifty Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to President Joe Biden in late August requesting more humanitarian assistance for Sudan and calling on the U.S. to do more to help end the conflict. Leading the effort is U.S. Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California, who told VOA in a recent interview that she is…
read moreSAVANNAH, Ga. — Donald Trump on Tuesday pledged to stop U.S. businesses from shipping jobs overseas and to take other countries’ jobs and factories by relying heavily on sweeping tariffs to boost auto manufacturing — despite warnings that domestic consumers would pay more and a lack of specifics about how his plans would work. “I want…
read morenew york — Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman-Fried’s fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after she apologized repeatedly to everyone hurt by a fraud that stole billions of dollars from investors, lenders and customers. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said Ellison’s cooperation was “very,…
read moreA U.S. House of Representatives panel held Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt Tuesday for failing to answer lawmakers’ questions about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. VOA’s congressional correspondent, Katherine Gypson, has more from Washington, with Amadullah Archiwal contributing. …
read morenew york — The Gulf nation of Qatar on Tuesday became just the second Muslim-majority country to be admitted into a program that allows its citizens to travel to the United States without first obtaining a U.S. visa. The departments of State and Homeland Security jointly announced that Qatar had met stringent eligibility requirements to join…
read moreNEW YORK — The U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa on Tuesday, alleging that the financial services behemoth uses its size and dominance to stifle competition in the debit card market, costing consumers and businesses billions of dollars. The complaint says Visa penalizes merchants and banks who don’t use Visa’s own payment processing…
read moreGENEVA — Police in northern Switzerland said Tuesday that several people have been detained and a criminal case opened in connection with the suspected death of a person in a “suicide capsule.” The “Sarco” capsule is presumably designed to allow a person sitting in a reclining seat inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas…
read moreEgypt’s second-largest city, Alexandria, lies in the Eastern Mediterranean, a top climate change hotspot that has dealt with record global air and ocean temperatures this year. Egypt-based photojournalist Hamada Elrasam presents scenes of everyday life that have been impacted by the changing climate phenomenon in the low-lying metropolis that has survived over two millennia, only…
read moreDUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A U.S. Navy replenishment ship operating in the Middle East sustained damage in an incident which is under investigation, officials said Tuesday. The damage to the USNS Big Horn comes after the oiler had supplied the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group and remained in the region amid heightened tensions over the…
read moreNEW YORK — Attention, Kmart shoppers, the end is near! The erstwhile retail giant renowned for its Blue Light Specials — featuring a flashing blue orb affixed to a pole enticing shoppers to a flash sale — is shuttering its last full-scale store in mainland United States. The store, located in swank Bridgehampton, New York, on…
read moreLONDON — A goal to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030 and cut fossil fuel use is within reach, the International Energy Agency said in a report on Tuesday, but will require a huge push to unlock bottlenecks such as permitting and grid connections. The report comes as leaders from government and business come together…
read morewyoming, iowa — Taking a late-summer country drive in the Midwest means venturing into the corn zone, snaking between 12-foot-tall green, leafy walls that seem to block out nearly everything other than the sun and an occasional water tower. The skyscraper-like corn is a part of rural America as much as cavernous red barns and placid…
read morestate department — The United States has pledged to continue providing Taiwan with equipment and services essential for maintaining a self-defense capability in line with the threats it faces. This statement came as an annual U.S.-Taiwan defense industry conference kicked off Sunday in Philadelphia. In the lead-up to the event, the conference organizer — the U.S.-Taiwan…
read morePentagon — The U.S. military is expected to announce a new military aid package for Ukraine this week valued at up to $375 million, the largest aid sent to Kyiv since May. According to several U.S. officials, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity to discuss the package ahead of the announcement, the aid for…
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