washington — President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida discussed diplomacy with China and their shared concerns over “coercive and destabilizing activities” in the South China Sea during a meeting on Saturday at the Quad Leaders Summit in Wilmington, Delaware, the White House said. Biden and Kishida also reiterated their resolve to maintain peace…
read morewashington — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday will visit the U.S. ammunition factory that is producing one of the most critically needed munitions for Ukraine’s fight to fend off Russian ground forces. Zelenskyy is expected to go to the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in the state of Pennsylvania to kick off a busy week in…
read moreSACRAMENTO, California — California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Governor Gavin Newsom signed Friday. California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from getting social media…
read morePORTLAND, Maine — Fall is back, and bringing with it jack-o’-lanterns, football, pumpkin spice everything and — in some parts of the country — especially vibrant foliage. Leaves around the northern United States are starting to turn orange, yellow and red, inspiring legions of leaf lovers to hop in their cars and travel to the countryside…
read moreNEW YORK — Six years after a teenage Greta Thunberg walked out of school in a solitary climate protest outside of the Swedish parliament, people around a warming globe marched in youth-led protest, saying their voices are being heard but not sufficiently acted upon. Emissions of heat-trapping gases and temperatures have been rising and oil and…
read moreU.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have focused their campaigns mainly on hot-button issues such as immigration, abortion and the economy. But the culture clash over how to handle gender identity matters in elementary and secondary schools is also a campaign issue, with loud voices on all sides. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports. Videographer:…
read moreNEW YORK — They may be Tigrinya speakers fleeing the authoritarian Eritrean government’s indefinite military service policy. Or Rohingya people escaping ethnic violence in Myanmar. But refugees navigating resettlement often face a shared hurdle: poor machine translations and a short supply of interpreters knowledgeable in their less-serviced languages. Tarjimly, a Google-backed nonprofit described as “Uber for…
read moreKAVUMU, Congo — Health authorities have struggled to contain outbreaks of mpox in Congo, a huge central African country where a myriad of existing problems makes stemming the spread particularly hard. Last month, the World Health Organization declared the outbreaks in Congo and about a dozen other African countries a global health emergency. And in Congo,…
read moreWashington — A U.S. soldier who crossed into North Korea last year pleaded guilty to desertion on Friday as part of a plea agreement and was sentenced to 12 months of confinement, his lawyer said. Because of good behavior and time served, the soldier was released, according to the lawyer. Travis King was facing 14 charges…
read moreWilmington, Delaware — President Joe Biden hosted Australia’s prime minister at his Delaware home Friday at the start of a weekend summit with the “Quad” group he has pushed as a counterweight to China. Biden chose Wilmington for a summit of leaders from Australia, India and Japan — the last of his presidency after he dropped…
read moreUNITED NATIONS — World leaders are set to descend on the United Nations in the coming days to talk about a lengthy list of global challenges. But will they spur significant action on any of them? “We see out-of-control geopolitical divisions and runaway conflicts — not least in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and beyond,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio…
read morewashington — The ability of a lone gunman to fire eight shots at Donald Trump during a campaign rally in rural western Pennsylvania was partially the result of multiple failures by the agents charged with protecting the former president, according to a new report. The Secret Service’s internal investigation into the attempted assassination of the one-time…
read moreHarare, Zimbabwe — A new report released by the main United Nations agency for action on AIDS and HIV says growing public debt is choking sub-Saharan African countries, leaving them with little fiscal room to finance critical HIV services. In the report, launched ahead of the 79th session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York,…
read moreGENEVA — The United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, warned Friday that children in Burundi are bearing the brunt of the mpox outbreak, with cases of this deadly, infectious disease spreading at an alarming rate among a young population. “Of the nearly 600 reported cases, two-thirds are in children under 19. The situation has escalated rapidly,…
read moreIn the U.S. presidential election, Republican candidates have spread false claims that migrants in the Midwest state of Ohio are eating residents’ pet cats and dogs. That has led to security threats and more divisions in an election where immigration is a central campaign theme. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns has our story. Videographer: Obed Lamy …
read moreFRANKFORT, Ky. — A judge in a rural Kentucky county was fatally shot in his courthouse chambers Thursday, and the local sheriff was charged with murder in the killing, police said. The preliminary investigation indicates Letcher County Sheriff Shawn M. Stines shot District Judge Kevin Mullins multiple times following an argument inside the courthouse, according to…
read moreRALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA — North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson vowed on Thursday to remain in the race despite a CNN report that he posted strongly worded racial and sexual comments on an online message board, saying he won’t be forced out by “salacious tabloid lies.” Robinson, the sitting lieutenant governor who decisively won his…
read morePentagon — The U.S. is returning Special Forces troops to Chad after leaving at the country’s request nearly five months ago. “We have reached an agreement on the return of a limited number of Special Forces personnel,” Maj. General Kenneth Ekman, who oversaw the recent U.S. withdrawal from Niger at the request of U.S. Africa Command…
read morePENTAGON — On Sunday, U.S. Africa Command’s Major General Kenneth Ekman was one of the last two U.S. service members to leave Niger as part of America’s military withdrawal, following the country’s July 2023 coup. Per an agreement reached by the U.S. and Niger in May, the only American service members that remain in the country…
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