This week’s French presidential contest boiled down to a debate between nationalism and globalism — and globalism prevailed in the victory of President Emmanuel Macron, an ally of President Joe Biden. What can the U.S. learn from this as Biden’s party faces elections? VOA’s Anita Powell reports. …
Leave a commentThe U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation Wednesday calling on the State Department to submit a plan to help Taiwan regain its observer status at the World Health Organization, seeking to boost the island as it faces pressure from China. The House passed the bill 425-0, sending it to the White House because it passed the Senate in August. Congressional aides said they expected President Joe Biden to sign the measure into law. Taiwan is excluded from most global organizations such as the WHO, the U.N. health agency, because of the objections of China, which considers the island onemore
Leave a commentThe House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol is redoubling its efforts to have GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy appear for an interview amid new revelations concerning his private conversations about the deadly attack, the chairman said Tuesday. Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the panel expects to decide this week about issuing a second request to McCarthy, who has declined to voluntarily appear before the panel. The committee is also looking at summoning a widening group of House Republicans for interviews, Thompson said, as more information emerges about their conversations with the Trump White House in themore
Leave a commentHarvard University is vowing to spend $100 million to research and atone for its extensive ties with slavery, the school’s president announced Tuesday, with plans to identify and support direct descendants of dozens of enslaved people who labored at the Ivy League campus. President Lawrence Bacow announced the funding as Harvard released a new report detailing many ways the college benefited from slavery and perpetrated racial inequality. The report, commissioned by Bacow, found that Harvard’s faculty, staff and leaders enslaved more than 70 Black and Native American people from the school’s founding in 1636 to 1783. For decades after, itmore
Leave a commentPresident Joe Biden will eulogize former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at her funeral Wednesday at the Washington National Cathedral. The invitation-only service will be livestreamed beginning at 11 a.m. Eastern time. “When I think of Madeleine, I will always remember her fervent faith that ‘America is the indispensable nation,’” Biden wrote in a statement after Albright’s death last month. Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also will give speeches, along with Albright’s three daughters. Musicians Chris Botti, Judy Collins, and Herbie Hancock will perform. Albright, who died last month at age 84, was appointedmore
Leave a commentMarymount California University, a half-century-old private Catholic institution, will close this summer, its board of trustees announced. The liberal arts school located on the Palos Verdes Peninsula south of Los Angeles has been struggling in recent years due to declining enrollment, rising costs and the coronavirus pandemic, the university said in a statement Friday. “This decision was not made lightly. But we felt the most compassionate thing to do was to give everyone time to make plans. Our focus now will be to help our students, faculty and staff,” said Brian Marcotte, the university’s president. Marymount California has 500 full-timemore
Leave a commentU.S. President Joe Biden is returning to in-person political fundraising with the easing of coronavirus precautions that limited his exposure to large crowds. The president’s ability to draw political donations is especially important for Democrats as the face serious challenges to sustain their majorities in the House and Senate. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya has the story from Seattle. …
Leave a commentOrrin G. Hatch, who became the longest-serving Republican senator in history as he represented Utah for more than four decades, died Saturday at age 88. His death was announced in a statement from his foundation, which did not specify a cause. He launched the Hatch Foundation as he retired in 2019 and was replaced by Mitt Romney. A conservative on most economic and social issues, he nonetheless teamed with Democrats several times during his long career on issues ranging from stem cell research to rights for people with disabilities to expanding children’s health insurance. He also formed friendships across themore
Leave a commentThe final weeks of the college school year have been disrupted yet again by COVID-19 as universities bring back mask mandates, switch to online classes and scale back large gatherings in response to upticks in coronavirus infections. Colleges in Washington, D.C., New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Texas have reimposed a range of virus measures, with Howard University moving to remote learning amid a surge in cases in the nation’s capital. This is the third straight academic year that has been upended by COVID-19, meaning soon-to-be seniors have yet to experience a normal college year. “I feel like last summermore
Leave a commentPresident Joe Biden opened a two-day visit to the Pacific Northwest by focusing on improvements planned for the runway and roof of the airport where he landed Thursday, rather than any of the region’s traditional, natural attractions. Portland International Airport lies on a tectonic plate fault line, but crews are working on a series of modernizations, including a new, earthquake-resistant runway capable of accommodating jets coming and going even after a major natural disaster. The design is modeled after the runway of the Sendai airport in Japan, which Biden said he’d visited and which survived the 2011 earthquake and tsunamimore
Leave a commentClosing the economic divide in the hard-hit industrial Midwestern United States could dampen the fervor of anti-democratic populism, a new working paper suggests. Populism is ascribed to political movements that embrace an us-versus-them mentality. Battles are often fought along socioeconomic, ethnic or communal lines. “When communities are in decline, when residents are anxious about their own futures and the futures of their children, when the younger generation has left, there is a great feeling of frustration, of anxiety, of ill ease about losing status and a changing world,” says John Austin, principal author of the report. “And the populists, ofmore
Leave a commentA 20-year-old Azerbaijani university student is describing near-daily beatings during his time as a prisoner of Russian forces near Mariupol, Ukraine last month. Huseyn Abdullayev, who was studying at Mariupol State University when Russia invaded Ukraine, tells VOA Azerbaijani he was held from March 17 until April 12 after Russian military personnel kidnapped him at a military post west of Mariupol in Berdyansk. Abdullayev said that after he was taken, “They tied my hands and covered my head with my jacket so that I could not see anything. Then they threw me in a truck and took me to prison.more
Leave a commentDavid Satterfield to leave post amid political and economic turmoil in Ethiopia and Sudan …
Leave a commentSpace is being increasingly militarized, says the ‘Challenges in Security in Space Report – 2022’ …
Leave a commentBiden decries Russia’s war as ‘genocide’ as Russian President Vladimir Putin vows to fight on to achieve his country’s ‘noble’ goals …
Leave a commentEven after failing a test that set her back a semester, Maribel Rodriguez will be heading back to nursing school this fall with a generous new state scholarship that abandons eligibility criteria to help more working adults get a college degree. New Mexico is expanding its “Opportunity Scholarship,” which has already paid for Rodriguez’s tuition and allowed her to apply for federal grants toward living expenses like gas and groceries. She’s reapplying to the nursing program and hopes to finish her degree without racking up debt that could hurt her husband and three children. “I didn’t think a whole lotmore
Leave a commentFor President Joe Biden, the pain Americans are feeling in their pocketbooks comes down to an increasingly repeated slogan: “Putin’s price hike.” For more than a month now, his administration has tried to blame rising prices on the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine. But the truth is a little more complicated, analysts say. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington. …
Leave a commentOklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill into law on Tuesday that makes it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as part of an aggressive push in Republican-led states across the country to scale back abortion rights. The bill, which takes effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns next month, makes an exception only for an abortion performed to save the life of the mother. Abortion rights advocates say the bill signed by the GOP governor is certain to face a legal challenge. Its passage comes as the conservative U.S. Supreme Courtmore
Leave a commentMandatory evacuation comes as authorities in Chinese financial hub gradually eases strict lockdown orders in some neighborhoods …
Leave a commentUS first lady appearing at event hosted by Clintons …
Leave a commentU.S. President Joe Biden announced his administration’s efforts to regulate so-called ghost guns on Monday, including banning the manufacturing of kits that consumers can assemble themselves to make a gun that lacks a serial number, making it untraceable. Gun rights groups pledged to fight the rule. “Law enforcement is sounding the alarm,” Biden said at a White House event as he held a ghost gun. “Our communities are paying the price.” “A year ago this week, standing here with many of you, I instructed the attorney general to write a regulation that would rein in the proliferation of ghost guns,more
Leave a commentSteps meant to address use of guns lacking serial numbers …
Leave a commentWhen Daylight Saving Time starts in most U.S. states every spring, clocks are set ahead one hour to make daylight last later each day through fall. Now, the U.S. Congress wants to make the shift permanent. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks into the so-called Sunshine Protection Act. …
Leave a commentA federal appeals court on Thursday upheld President Joe Biden’s requirement that all federal employees be vaccinated against COVID-19. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reversed a lower court and ordered dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the mandate. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of Texas by President Donald Trump, had issued a nationwide injunction against the requirement in January. When the case was argued at the 5th Circuit last month, administration lawyers noted that district judges in amore
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