A French naval base in Abu Dhabi will serve as the headquarters for a European-led mission to protect Gulf waters that will be operational soon, France’s defense minister said on Sunday. France is the main proponent of a plan to …
Month: November 2019
Security forces opened fire on protesters in southern Iraq, killing at least five people and wounding dozens others, police and medical sources said, as weeks of unrest in Baghdad and some southern cities continue. Protesters had gathered overnight on three …
Twenty-two people have died from measles in Samoa. All the deaths, except one, were of children younger than five years old, according to Reuters. The South Pacific island has declared a state of emergency, with nearly 2,000 cases of measles …
Iraqi security forces fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse crowds of protesters Saturday, killing two people in a third day of fierce clashes in central Baghdad, security and hospital officials said. Two protesters were struck with rubber …
Hong Kongers are voting Sunday in a local election widely seen as a de facto referendum on pro-democracy protests that have recently taken a more aggressive turn. The territory is on edge following days of intense clashes between police and …
President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser is criticizing what he says is silence from the rest of the world about China’s confinement of more than 1 million Muslims in re-education camps, linking the lack of a global outcry to …
An advocacy group says internet connectivity is rapidly being restored in Iran after a weeklong government-imposed shutdown in response to widespread protests. The group NetBlocks said Saturday that connectivity had suddenly reached 60% Saturday afternoon. It said on Twitter: “Internet …
When he left the house last week, Joseph, a 19-year-old Hong Kong college student, told his parents he was going to hang out with friends. That was only partly true. In reality, Joseph was headed for the Hong Kong Polytechnic …
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, dubbed by critics “Putin on the Nile,” is set to boost his burgeoning relationship with Russia by dispatching his son, Mahmoud, to Moscow as a military attache, independent regional media outlets are reporting. Russian officials …
A Hong Kong university campus under siege for more than a week was a deserted wasteland Saturday, with a handful of protesters holed up in hidden refuges across the trashed grounds, as the city’s focus turned to local elections. The …
U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has been a key witness in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Sondland was appointed to his post after donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. The practice of awarding ambassador …
In late December, it will be one year since Moscow detained U.S. citizen Paul Whelan on espionage charges. During his 11 months in the infamous Lefortovo prison, Whelan has denied the allegations and complained of systematic mistreatment. His family in …
Iran has extended a major shutdown of internet access into a seventh day to suppress domestic opposition to the government, prompting the United States to sanction the Iranian official overseeing the outage. The #Iran internet shutdown is now in its …
About 250 Islamic State fighters have surrendered to Afghan security forces in eastern Nangarhar province, a traditional IS stronghold. Dozens of women and children have surrendered as well. Officials told VOA they would work toward deradicalizing those of Afghan origin and eventually …
China and Pakistan urged the United States on Friday “to sift fact from fiction” before questioning their bilateral infrastructure development program, which Beijing is funding under its global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The reaction came a day after a senior …
Tens of thousands of people in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore are at risk of respiratory disease because of poor air quality related to thick smog hanging over the region, an international rights group said Friday. Amnesty International …
Pope Francis Friday called on bishops in Thailand to keep their doors open for priests and to spread the faith as their missionary predecessors did. “Be close to your priests, listen to them and seek to accompany them in every …
A Hong Kong court on Friday suspended its decision to strike down a government ban on wearing face masks at protests, allowing police to enforce the decree for another week around keenly contested local elections in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. …
Pope Francis paid tribute Friday to Catholics in Thailand who suffered or were killed for their faith in the past and urged today’s Thais not to consider Christianity a “foreign” religion. The pope was on his last full day of …
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is taking on the workhorse heavy pickup truck market with his latest electric vehicle. The “cybertruck,” an electric pickup truck, will be in production in 2021, Musk said at the Los Angeles Auto Show Thursday. The …
The U.S. Army is undertaking a security assessment of China-owned social media platform TikTok after a Democratic lawmaker raised national security concerns over the app’s handling of user data, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Thursday. Speaking to reporters at an …
It wasn’t until she became a high school senior that Kayla Ireland had another black person as a teacher in Waterbury, a former manufacturing hub where the students are mostly minorities and the educators are generally white. The imbalance never …
A major Internet outage in Iran aimed at suppressing anti-government protests has extended into a 5th day, with access levels rising slightly as authorities said they reconnected several regions to the web. Real-time technical data corroborate reports in #Iran news …
Three agencies in charge of resettling refugees in the U.S. are suing the Trump administration over the president’s executive order allowing states and cities to block refugees from being settled in their areas. The lawsuit was filed Thursday …