Antigovernment protests and unrest in Hong Kong continues after nearly four months. Among those affected by the turmoil are about 400,000 foreign domestic workers, mostly women from Indonesia and the Philippines. VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara brings this report from Hong Kong. …
Month: October 2019
Sudan’s ruling council has appointed the country’s first woman chief justice. The appointment is seen as another step forward for female representation in the new transitional government. The Sovereign Council has officially confirmed the pick of Neemat Abdullah as chief …
The Swedish Academy’s decision to bestow the 2018 Nobel Prize in literature on Polish author Olga Tokarczuk has given a rare morale boost to liberal Poles only three days before a national election that is likely to be won by …
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has denied that his American counterpart, Donald Trump, tried to blackmail him. Claims that Trump requested a corruption investigation into Hunter Biden, son of Democrat Joe Biden – in return for military aid – are the …
U.S. President Donald Trump says he’s planning to get involved in the case of an American diplomat’s wife who left the U.K. after she was involved in a fatal wrong-way crash. Trump on Wednesday called what happened “a terrible …
Two-thirds of the votes cast for incumbent Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in last month’s presidential election were cast without proper biometric verification and fraudulent, a leading rival candidate, former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said Oct. 7, joining a chorus of candidates …
Californians are playing a waiting game – waiting for the power to go out. The region’s power company is cutting off electricity to reduce the risk of forest wildfires. Residents are being told to prepare. Michelle Quinn went to one …
A woman who worked at NBC News claimed that Matt Lauer raped her at a hotel while on assignment for the Sochi Olympics, an encounter the former “Today” show host claimed was consensual. The claim outlined by Brooke Nevils in …
The United States has taken custody of two Islamic State prisoners accused of taking part in beheading American journalists in 2014, The Washington Post reports. The two men were taken from a Kurdish-run prison in northern Syria, where Kurdish forces …
Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi on Wednesday announced a cabinet reshuffle, declared three days of national mourning and said those who shot protesters would be punished as he sought to quell anti-government unrest that has roiled Iraq for days. …
Russian authorities say they intend to add an opposition-run anti-corruption foundation to a list of so-called “foreign agents” operating in the country — potentially curtailing the operations of one of the Kremlin’s fiercest critics. In a statement released Wednesday, Russia’s …
Women from across Africa are meeting at the annual Women in Tech Africa Week, hoping to bring more women into the tech industry and combat inequalities in technology use and access, especially for economic empowerment. Francesca Opoku remembers having to physically …
A U.S. Secret Service dog that prevented a potential attack on President Barack Obama in the White House in 2014 has been given the rare honor of an Order of Merit from a British charity, the first foreign animal to …
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has condemned deadly violence during protests in Iraq and called on the country’s government to “exercise maximum restraint,” the State Department said Tuesday. In a call with Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi, Pompeo …
A Philadelphia jury on Tuesday awarded $8 billion in punitive damages against Johnson & Johnson and one if its subsidiaries over a drug the companies made that the plaintiff’s attorneys say is linked to the abnormal growth of female breast …
Officials are working urgently to retrieve the bodies of 11 elephants that died after trying to save each other from a waterfall in a national park in central Thailand. Park rangers had initially thought six adult elephants had died Saturday …
More than one-third of new mothers in four poor countries are abused during childbirth, a study published Wednesday in the medical journal The Lancet. The study, carried out in Ghana, Guinea, Myanmar and Nigeria by the World Health Organization, found …
President Donald Trump on Tuesday awarded one of the nation’s highest civilian honors to Edwin Meese, best known for serving as President Ronald Reagan’s attorney general. Meese, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, had a longstanding connection to Reagan …
The White House announced Sunday that U.S. troops will pull out of northern Syria as Turkey moves forward with a military offensive. The decision has led to condemnations from Congress, clarification from the Pentagon and fear from local allies. VOA …
The Sengwer, an indigenous hunter-gatherer community in western Kenya, presented a petition Monday morning to the government in Nairobi demanding the return and protection of what they call their ancestral lands. The community says it faces threats of eviction as …
It was by Vladimir Putin’s swashbuckling standards all rather low-key. There was no riding horses bare-chested or allegedly saving a television crew by shooting a tranquilizer dart at a wild tiger which obligingly appeared from out of nowhere in the …
Three U.S. House of Representatives committees are set to question Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, on Tuesday to find out more about the interactions between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian officials. The closed-door deposition is part …
Iraqi President Barham Salih has condemned attacks on anti-government protesters and media after a week of demonstrations and related clashes left more than 100 people dead and 6,000 wounded. He called those committing the violence criminals and enemies, and used …
This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Published reports say a Chinese state energy company that appears to have pulled out of a natural gas project in Iran had been under pressure to do so because of U.S. sanctions against …