Worldwide news. The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique while others talk of a “plurality of worlds”
He has survived eight years of war and billions of dollars in money and weapons aimed at toppling him. Now Syrian President Bashar Assad is poised to be readmitted to the fold of Arab nations, a feat once deemed unthinkable as he forcefully crushed the uprising against his family’s rule. Gulf Arab nations, once the …
Read more “Arab Nations Inch Toward Rehabilitating Syria’s Assad”
The mayor of the northern Polish city of Gdansk has been stabbed while attending a charity concert and is in serious condition. …
Russia’s space agency says it has again failed to restore communications with an orbiting radio telescope but remains hopeful it will regain control of the satellite soon. …
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says he will use the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act to force a vote on a resolution disapproving a decision by President Donald Trump to relax sanctions on companies connected to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. …
Natural disasters — wildfires, hurricanes, floods — leave destruction and shattered lives in their wake. In August, nearly a year after Hurricane Maria, power was finally restored to most of Puerto Rico’s residents. It’s not known how many of the more than 10,000 homes burned in California’s November wildfires will be rebuilt. Residents of Hawaii …
Read more “Living Near a Volcano: Life After Hawaii’s Kilauea Eruption”
An attack on a police station in western Afghanistan has left five people dead, officials say. …
It is more than three weeks into the partial government shutdown. Among the hundreds of thousands of federal employees affected by the political battle are military veterans. According to the latest government data, veterans make up about a third of the federal government’s civilian workforce. Tyler Holmquist of Fredericksburg, Virginia, is a veteran and an …
Read more “Veterans Feel the Pinch, Weigh the Cost of Government Shutdown”
Shirley Boone, the longtime wife of singer Pat Boone as well as a philanthropist, has died. She was 84. She passed away on Friday surrounded by her four daughters, Cherry, Lindy, Debby and Laury, who sang to her, Milt Suchin, Pat Boone’s manager, said in a statement. Mercy Corps Shirley and Pat Boone had been …
Read more “Shirley Boone, Philanthropist and Wife of Pat Boone, Dies”
Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev has said he expects the Greek parliament to ratify a deal that will change his country’s name to the Republic of North Macedonia. …
Saudi Arabia says it plans to set up a $10 billion oil refinery in Pakistan’s deepwater port of Gwadar, which is being developed with the help of China. …
A 75-year-old grandmother is the sole breadwinner for her family of 10 in northern Afghanistan. She weaves carpets for about $1 a day to ensure the family’s survival. …
Four black men who were wrongly accused of raping a 17-year-old white girl in the southern U.S. state of Florida 70 years ago, received pardons Friday. Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Ernest Thomas became known as the Groveland Four. All of them are dead. Members of their families, however, are still …
Read more “US Black Men Wrongly Accused of Rape, Receive Pardons 70 Years Later”
The film Leto (Summer) by director Kirill Serebrennikov has won the 2018 White Elephant award for best direction from the Russian Cinematographers Union. …
A global watchdog demanded Saturday international donors impose sanctions against Afghanistan’s new defense minister, Asadullah Khalid, saying there is “credible evidence” linking him to serious rights abuses. Khalid’s appointment in December was part of a shake-up President Ashraf Ghani ordered amid sustained countrywide battlefield setbacks inflicted on embattled Afghan government forces by Taliban insurgents. The …
Read more “Afghan President Criticized for Installing Controversial Defense Minister”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has all but given up efforts to negotiate a compromise to end the U.S. government shutdown that would fund a U.S.-Mexico border wall in exchange for extending legal protections for thousands of young undocumented immigrants and others who recently have lost legal status under the Temporary Protected Status program. As late …
Read more “‘No Pathway’ to Grand Bargain Ending US Government Shutdown”
A surveillance drone operated by monitors for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in eastern Ukraine has been shot down near the government-controlled village of Popasna in the Luhansk region. …
The European External Action Service has called on Belarus to abolish capital punishment, two days after Belarusian authorities pronounced their latest death sentence in the country. …
Israeli forces killed a Palestinian woman during mass protests on the Gaza frontier Friday, according to Palestinian medics, and the Israeli military said aircraft struck two Hamas posts in response to the violent demonstrations. The violence at the protests, in which more than two dozen Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were wounded, threatened to complicate …
Read more “Gaza Officials Say Woman Killed by Israeli Fire at Protest”
Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, and why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com. The wall, the shutdown, and the president …
A court in Moscow says it will consider a request by the Russian Investigative Committee to prolong the pretrial detention of 24 Ukrainian sailors detained by Russian forces who attacked three Ukrainian navy vessels in the Black Sea in November. …
An estimated 69,000 to 84,000 Americans were hospitalized due to the flu in the last three months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday. The nation saw one of the worst flu outbreaks in nearly a decade during the 2017-2018 season, with more than 900,000 cases of hospitalizations and over 80,000 …
Read more “Up to 84,000 Americans Hospitalized With Flu in Past 3 months: CDC”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry says Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono plans to visit Moscow next week for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the four Pacific islands that have been disputed since World War II. …
The former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday that what’s happening on the U.S. southern border is no emergency. Craig Fugate, who ran the national disaster agency for nearly eight years under President Barack Obama and was head of Florida’s disaster agency under a Republican governor, said the push of refugees seeking …
Read more “Former FEMA Boss: Border Situation Is Not Emergency”
A community organizer shown in an iconic photograph while challenging racial segregation in Mississippi in the 1960s has died at his home in Pocatello, Idaho. Known by his birth name John Salter Jr. when he worked at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, he later changed his name to Hunter Gray to honor the Native American …
Read more “Gray, Activist From Lunch Counter Protest Photo, Dies at 84 “