Rastafarian Teen Fights to Keep Dreadlocks

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Tyrone Iras Marhguy had to make a difficult decision after being accepted to the high school of his choice: his faith or his education. An official at the academically elite Achimota School in Ghana told the teen he would have to cut his dreadlocks before enrolling. For Marhguy, who is a Rastafarian, cutting his dreadlocks is non-negotiable, so he and his family asked the courts to intervene.  “I manifest my faith through my hair,” Marguy, 17, told The Associated Press. “I assume it to be like telling a Christian not to read the Bible or go to church.” Hair ismore

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Gallup Surveys Show Rebound in Approval of US Leadership

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Approval for U.S. leadership rebounded during the first six months of President Joe Biden’s administration, according to a Gallup survey of people in nearly 50 countries.  The increase came after median approval of U.S. leadership in 108 countries where Gallup conducted surveys hit a record low of 30% in 2020, the last year of President Donald Trump’s administration. Gallup, a Washington, D.C.-based analytics company, said its 2021 data is not yet complete, but in 46 countries where data was available as of early August, approval for U.S. leadership was up to 49%.  Approval numbers fell in three countries, declining from 18% to 13% inmore

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US House Committee Rejects Bannon ‘Privilege’ Argument in January 6 Inquiry

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The U.S. congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol said Monday that it rejected Steve Bannon’s arguments for failing to cooperate with the inquiry, as the panel pursues a contempt of Congress charge against the longtime adviser to former President Donald Trump.  Trump has claimed that materials and testimony sought by the House of Representatives Select Committee are covered by executive privilege, a legal doctrine that protects the confidentially of some White House communications.  Bannon, through his lawyer, has said he will not cooperate with the committee until Trump’s executive privilege claim is resolved by amore

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Case for COVID Boosters and Vaccine Mandates in US

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Recently, a U.S. advisory panel unanimously endorsed booster shots of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for adults over the age of 18. The move comes as vaccines and public health protocols in the United States remain politically charged issues. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.  Produced by:  Arash Arabasadi …

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‘Democracy Survived’ Capitol Riot Because of Police, Biden Says

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Framed by the Capitol, President Joe Biden paid tribute Saturday to fallen law enforcement officers and honored those who fought off the Jan. 6 insurrection at that very site by declaring “because of you, democracy survived.”  Biden spoke at the 40th Annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service to remember the 491 law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty in 2019 and 2020.  Standing where the violent mob tried to block his own ascension to the presidency, Biden singled out the 150 officers who were injured and the five who died in the attack’s aftermath. “Nine months ago,more

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Biden Touts Child Care Proposal in Stalled Spending Bill

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U.S. President Joe Biden touted his proposal for more government investment in child care during a visit to Connecticut on Friday, part of his push for a broader social spending bill that has been stalled in Congress. “How can we compete in the world if millions of American parents, especially moms, can’t be part of the workforce because they can’t afford the cost of child care or elder care?” he asked at a child development center in the state capital of Hartford. Biden said his plan would allow lower-income families to receive free child care and would limit child caremore

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Biden Hosts Kenyan President at White House

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Kenya is a major African player — as evidenced by U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to meet with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Thursday, Biden’s first in-person talks with an African leader since becoming president.  “The U.S.-Kenya strategic partnership is essential,” Biden said, as the two leaders sat down in the Oval Office. “We both, I think, believe it is essential to addressing key regional and global challenges.” The focus of their closed-door talks is likely to be Kenya’s next-door neighbor Ethiopia, where war has raged in the northern Tigray region for nearly a year. The conflict has killed untoldmore

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January 6 Panel Sets Vote on Contempt Charges Against Bannon

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A congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection has set a vote to recommend criminal contempt charges against former White House aide Steve Bannon after he defied the panel’s subpoena on Thursday.   The chairman of the panel, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the committee will vote next week to recommend the charges. That would send the recommendation to the full House for a vote.   If the House votes to recommend the contempt charges against Bannon, the Justice Department will ultimately decide whether to prosecute. The committee had demanded documents and testimony from Bannon, who was in touchmore

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Lawyer Who Aided Trump Subpoenaed by January 6 Committee

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The House committee investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to a former Justice Department lawyer who positioned himself as an ally of Donald Trump and aided the Republican president’s efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election. The subpoena to Jeffrey Clark, revealed Wednesday, came amid signs of an escalating congressional inquiry. At least three of the officials who were involved in organizing the rally that preceded the riot have handed over documents in response to subpoenas from the committee.   The demands for documents and testimony from Clark reflect the committee’smore

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Law Would Give Afghan Scholars Special Visa to US

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A congressman from California has introduced legislation that would give Afghan Fulbright scholars special immigrant visas.   The legislation would automatically issue a special immigrant visa to any Afghan who lived in the United States as a Fulbright scholar and to their immediate family members to help them “escape persecution by the Taliban and relocate safely to the United States,” according to a statement from the office of U.S. Representative John Garamendi, a Democrat. “Fulbright Scholarships are one of the most vital U.S. cultural exchange programs that help to improve intercultural relations, diplomacy, and coordination between the United States and other countries,” Garamendi’s statement read. “This is the right thing to do for our Afghan allies who stood with the Unitedmore

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As Biden’s Approval Rating Slumps, Disenchantment Grows

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George Barisich isn’t surprised by recent reports that President Joe Biden’s approval rating among Americans has continued to drop. A commercial fisherman outside New Orleans, Barisich has never been a Biden fan.  “I didn’t like him from the start, and it looks like the rest of the country is figuring out what I knew all along,” he told VOA. An aggregate of national polling compiled by the website FiveThirtyEight showed the president’s approval rating reached almost 55% in May. Since then, his popularity has dropped significantly. A Quinnipiac University poll from last week showed only 38% of its respondents approvedmore

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Biden Approval Ratings in Decline

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Americans are voicing their disapproval of President Joe Biden, nearly nine months after he took office.  In a string of national polls in the last week, an aggregate of 49.2% of voters surveyed disapproved of Biden’s handling of the presidency, while 44.5% approved, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling site. Five of the recent polls registered disapproval of the country’s 46th president at the RealClearPolitics site, with three favorable.  Analysts say the drop in Biden’s standing has been particularly precipitous among independent voters who helped him win the White House last year over then-President Donald Trump.  In July, at the six-monthmore

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Infrastructure Successes Have Transformed America, Can Biden’s Plan do the Same?

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Congress appears poised to pass a bipartisan, $1 trillion plan that would be the largest federal investment in infrastructure in more than a decade. History shows that investing in infrastructure can transform the United States, changing how Americans move, bolstering economic prosperity, and significantly improving the health and quality of life for many.    “When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, we changed the way we moved forever, opening up the entire country and from the way humans had moved previously for thousands of years by animal to machine,” Greg DiLoreto, past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), toldmore

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Biden Won’t Block Release of Trump January 6 Documents

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President Joe Biden will not block the release of a tranche of documents sought by a House committee for its investigation into the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, setting up a showdown with former President Donald Trump, who has pledged to try to keep records from his time in the White House from being turned over to investigators. In a letter to the Archivist of the United States, White House counsel Dana Remus writes that Biden has determined that invoking executive privilege “is not in the best interests of the United States.” This came days after Trump lawyersmore

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US Debt Ceiling: What’s Behind the Latest Crisis in Washington?

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Senators in Washington passed a deal Thursday to temporarily raise the country’s debt limit, giving the U.S. Treasury Department the ability to borrow enough money for the country to keep paying its bills through the beginning of December. The lack of agreement on the debt ceiling had been making both the Washington establishment and the financial markets nervous, as the country moved toward a crisis on Oct. 18, the day that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had warned the country might begin to struggle to pay its bills. Debt ceiling crises have become a fairly regular feature of politics in Washington,more

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Winner in Popular Game Show Reads This Encyclopedia Every Night 

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Not many computer science students command a lot of attention, especially from the American public. But Matt Amodio, a student at Yale University, is on a streak. He has persevered (at last count) 36 consecutive times on the wildly popular and geeky game show “Jeopardy!” where the goal is to know more than your fellow contestants and win a lot of money. Amodio is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in computer science at the Ivy League university in New Haven, Connecticut. He ranks second in number of games won (36) on “Jeopardy!” to Ken Jennings, who won 74 consecutive times in 2004,more

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Senate Democrats Give New Details on Trump’s Bid to Overturn Election

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A review by U.S. Senate Democrats of Donald Trump’s attempt to use the Justice Department to overturn his 2020 election defeat provided new details on Thursday about an official’s bid to push out the acting attorney general to advance Trump’s false claims. The report by Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats details how Jeffrey Bossert Clark, then a senior Justice Department official, met with Trump more than once in late 2020. The then-president was growing angry that acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen would not launch a public investigation into Trump’s false claim that his defeat to now-President Joe Biden was the resultmore

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US Lawmakers Reach Deal to Extend Country’s Borrowing Authority

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U.S. Senate leaders reached an agreement Thursday to extend the government’s borrowing authority through early December to avert what could have been the country’s first-ever default on its debts in less than two weeks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the pact on the Senate floor after negotiations with Republican leader Mitch McConnell. He proposed to Democrats on Wednesday an extension of the country’s current long-term $28.4 trillion debt total by an unspecified amount to cover government spending into December, by which time the issue would again have to be addressed. Schumer said he hoped to win congressional approval formore

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US Senate Appears Near Temporary Truce in Debt-Ceiling Standoff

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The U.S. Senate appeared near to a temporary deal to avert a federal debt default in the next two weeks, after Democrats said Wednesday that they might accept a Republican proposal to defuse the partisan standoff that threatens the broader economy. Democrats called off an early-afternoon vote after the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, floated a plan that would buy more time to resolve the issue. McConnell proposed that his party would allow an extension of the federal debt ceiling into December. Without congressional action to raise the $28.4 trillion debt limit, the Treasury Department has forecast that it willmore

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Fulbright Applicants in Afghanistan Seek Help

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Afghan semifinalists for next year’s Fulbright scholars’ program are asking the U.S. government about the status of their candidacies, following the closure of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul as American troops withdrew from Afghanistan in August.  “After the fall of Kabul on August 15, we did not hear back from the U.S. State Department on the Fulbright program regarding the status of our applications,” said Maryam Jami, a law school graduate and applicant from Herat, referring to the Taliban takeover of the Afghan capital on that date.  The Fulbright Foreign Student Program “enables graduate students, young professionals and artists frommore

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Biden Meets with Corporate Executives as Debt Limit Deadline Looms

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U.S. President Joe Biden is meeting Wednesday with some of America’s top business leaders to make the case that Congress must increase the government’s borrowing authority before October 18, when the U.S. expects to run out of money to pay its bills. The White House said before the meeting that the executives “understand firsthand that a default would be economically devastating” for the United States — which has never defaulted on its financial obligations — and the world economy.  A default would risk millions of jobs and throw the U.S. into recession, “causing lasting harm to America’s economic strength by threatening the dollar’s status as the currency the world relies on and downgradingmore

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Troubled Student Loan Forgiveness Program Gets an Overhaul

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The Biden administration is moving to relax the rules for a student loan forgiveness program that has been criticized for its notoriously complex requirements — a change that could offer debt relief to thousands of teachers, social workers, military members and other public servants. The Education Department said Wednesday it will temporarily drop some of the toughest requirements around Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a program that was launched in 2007 to steer more college graduates into public service but, since then, has helped just 5,500 borrowers get their loans erased. Congress created the program as a reward for college studentsmore

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Biden Says Bypassing Filibuster ‘Real Possibility’ to Raise Debt Limit

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U.S. President Joe Biden indicated Tuesday senators from his Democratic Party could bypass a supermajority voting rule in order to increase the nation’s debt limit without Republican votes.  “It’s a real possibility,” Biden told reporters outside the White House.  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the government will likely reach its borrowing limit by October 18 unless Congress acts.  Coming too close to the borrowing limit has its perils. A debt ceiling dispute in 2011 that Congress resolved two days before the borrowing limit was reached caused stock prices to fall and the first-ever credit downgrade for U.S. debt.  Under Senate rules, 60 votes are needed to advance the legislation instead ofmore

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