Americans who head to the polls on November 5 not only are deciding who will be president, they are voting for thousands of local and state officials. In Texas’ Fort Bend County, outside Houston, two Pakistani Americans are vying for the position of constable. Incumbent Democrat Nabil Shike is being challenged by Republican newcomer Ali Sheikhani. VOA Urdu’s Iram Abbasi’s reports from Houston. …
Leave a commentMoorhead, Minnesota, is home to more than 3,000 Kurds, some of whom have been there since the mid-1970s. They are the town’s largest minority group and hope this election might bring them representation in local government. Dakhil Shammo of VOA’s Kurdish service went to Minnesota and met with two local candidates in this story narrated by Amy Katz. …
Leave a commentEurope is bracing for former President Donald Trump’s potential return to power — even as his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, remains a mostly unknown quantity. Many Europeans believe much is at stake in the nail-biting U.S. elections: from NATO and the transatlantic alliance to Russia’s war on Ukraine, trade relations and the future of their own democracies. Lisa Bryant reports from Paris. …
Leave a commentMoorhead, Minnesota, is home to more than 3,000 Kurds, some of whom have been there since the mid-1970s. They are the town’s largest minority group and hope this election might bring them representation in local government. Dakhil Shammo of VOA’s Kurdish service went to Minnesota and met with two local candidates in this story narrated by Amy Katz. Camera: Kawar Farok …
Leave a commentLily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in. The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements. Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagreesmore
Leave a commentRoughly 6% of eligible U.S. voters this election have served in the military. A recent Pew survey finds that this election year the majority of veterans favor Republican candidate Donald Trump over Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in a 60-40 split. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has more. …
Leave a commentwashington — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump sued CBS News on Thursday over an interview of Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on the network’s “60 Minutes” news program this month. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Northern District of Texas, alleged that the network aired two different responses from Harris responding to a question about the Israel-Hamas war. The version that aired during the “60 Minutes” program on October 6 did not include what the lawsuit referred to as a “word salad” response from Harris about the Biden administration’s influence on Israel’s conduct of the war. The lawsuitmore
Leave a commentWith voting underway in a tightly contested presidential race, election officials in the U.S. are facing additional challenges in the state of North Carolina, where a hurricane ravaged communities, and in the states of Washington and Oregon, where there have been arson attacks on ballot boxes. With Deborah Bloom and Rafael Saakov, Natasha Mozgovaya has the story. Camera: Deborah Bloom and Alexander Bergan. …
Leave a commentThe navigation systems of thousands of passenger aircraft are being disrupted every day as they fly close to conflict zones, according to researchers. They are warning that the blocking or “spoofing” technology behind it could put lives at risk. Henry Ridgwell has more from London. …
Leave a commentADAMA, ETHIOPIA — Residents in Ethiopia’s Oromia region say access to phone communication and internet service has been disrupted for months as government forces fight against two rebel groups. The disruption of mobile phone calls and internet data has been concentrated in conflict-hit Oromia zones, where government forces have engaged in fighting against the Oromo Liberation Army, or the OLA. A resident from South Oromia of Guji Zone Wadera Wereda, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity for safety reasons, said phone and internet data connections have been cut in his area due to the fighting. He said there wasmore
Leave a commentU.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump sparred over how women should be treated in society as they looked for votes Thursday in Arizona and Nevada, two Southwest political battleground states. Polling shows Harris, the Democratic candidate, and Trump, the Republican candidate, are virtually tied in the two states. Arizona and Nevada are among seven closely contested states across the 50-state country that are likely to determine the national outcome in next Tuesday’s election. In the other 43, polling shows Trump or Harris with either decisive or comfortable leads. Appeals to Latino voters are central to themore
Leave a commentIn this episode of “The Candidates,” VOA’s series on the 2024 presidential election, we look at former and perhaps future President Donald Trump. In just over nine years, he has thumbed his nose at the establishment, reshaped the Republican Party in his own image and further polarized an already divided country. VOA’s Tina Trinh explores Trump’s attempt at a historic political comeback. Video editor: Kyra Coffie, Toby Roberts …
Leave a commentIn this episode of “The Candidates,” VOA’s series on the 2024 presidential election, we look at Vice President Kamala Harris. Emerging from one of the most diverse, liberal regions of the U.S., the Democratic nominee for president has navigated a course between tough enforcer of the law and forward-thinking reformer. VOA’s Matt Dibble has this profile from Oakland, California. …
Leave a commentTwo U.S. states have an Electoral College practice that could impact the upcoming election and explain why Democrats and Republicans have focused on campaigning in Maine and Nebraska. VOA explores why. …
Leave a commentPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania — Elon Musk did not show up at a Pennsylvania court hearing on Thursday to consider his $1 million giveaway to voters ahead of the Nov. 5election, which could put him at risk of being held in contempt of court. Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur backing Republican Donald Trump, had been ordered on Wednesday to attend the hearing, where a judge is considering Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s bid to halt the giveaway less than a week before the tightly contested presidential election between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris. But Musk was not in the courtroom as the hearing gotmore
Leave a commentLONDON — The European Union is investigating Chinese online retailer Temu over suspicions it’s failing to prevent the sale of illegal products, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm said on Thursday. The European Commission opened its investigation five months after adding Temu to the list of “very large online platforms” needing the strictest level of scrutiny under the bloc’s Digital Services Act. It’s a wide-ranging rulebook designed to clean up online platforms and keep internet users safe, with the threat of hefty fines. Temu started entering Western markets only in the past two years and has grown in popularity by offering cheapmore
Leave a commentWashington — With domestic hot-button issues dominating the final week of the U.S. presidential campaign, any mention of the U.S.-China competition by candidates Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump has been through the lens of domestic concerns, analysts say. “American voters are more concerned about domestic issues. Polls show that the so-called China threat ranks behind the economy, immigration, abortion, climate, democracy and other issues for voters,” said Liu Yawei, director of the Carter Center’s China Program. According to a survey released by YouGov, a U.S. polling organization, only a minority of voters listed U.S. foreign policy asmore
Leave a commentBERLIN — The United States’ European allies are bracing for an America that’s less interested in them no matter who wins the presidential election — and for old traumas and new problems if Donald Trump returns to the White House. The election comes more than 2 1/2 years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in which Washington has made the single biggest contribution to Kyiv’s defense. There are question marks over whether that would continue under Trump, and how committed he would be to NATO allies in general. A win by Vice President Kamala Harris could be expected to bring amore
Leave a commentThe crowd-sourced fact-checking feature of Elon Musk’s X, Community Notes, is “failing to counter false” claims about the U.S. election, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) said in a report Wednesday. Out of the 283 misleading posts that CCDH has analyzed on the digital social media platform, 209 or 74% of the posts did not show accurate notes to all X users correcting false and misleading claims about the elections, the report said. “The 209 misleading posts in our sample that did not display available Community Notes to all users have amassed 2.2 billion views,” CCDH said, urging themore
Leave a commentTEHRAN, Iran — America’s presidential election next week comes just after Iran marks the 45th anniversary of the 1979 U.S. Embassy hostage crisis — and for many, tensions between Tehran and Washington feel just as high as they did then. Iran remains locked in the Mideast wars roiling the region, with its allies — militant groups and fighters of its self-described “Axis of Resistance” — battered as Israel presses its war in the Gaza Strip targeting Hamas and its invasion of Lebanon amid devastating attacks against Hezbollah. At the same time, Iran still appears to be assessing damage from Israel’s strikesmore
Leave a commentWASHINGTON — Most Americans are feeling a lot of emotions heading into Election Day, but excitement is not one of them. A new poll from The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that about 7 in 10 Americans report feeling anxious or frustrated about the 2024 presidential campaign, and a similar share say they’re interested. Only about one-third say they feel excited. There’s a broad feeling of uncertainty hanging over the 2024 presidential contest during the last week of the campaign. The race is competitive nationally and in key swing states, according to recent polls, with neither Democrat Kamala Harrismore
Leave a commentNaturalized immigrants will make up 1/10th of all Americans eligible to vote in 2024. What impact might they have on the election? …
Leave a commentwashington — As political scholars and pollsters try to predict the winner of the U.S. presidential election, some outsiders believe insight into the results can be found in a less conventional way — by looking at the sales of campaign merchandise. “It’s nine out of the last 11 elections. Our sales of the successful candidates’ [campaign merchandise] outpaced that of the candidates who lost in the elections,” Steve Ferber, co-owner of Lori Ferber Collectibles, told VOA Mandarin. “We found that pretty amazing — that there is a direct correlation between the items that are most popular of campaign items and themore
Leave a commentWith the November presidential election less than a week away, some evidence has emerged that U.S. consumers, who have harbored negative sentiments about the state of the economy since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, are beginning to appreciate its surprisingly robust performance over the past year or more. On Tuesday, the widely watched U.S. Consumer Confidence Index, an indicator that is correlated with economic growth, rose from 99.2 in September to 108.7 in October, the largest upward jump in more than three years. The Conference Board, which releases the index, also said its index tracking expectations about futuremore
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