Category: World

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has reimposed a ban on all Indian content on TV channels, overturning an earlier ruling by a lower court. …

A group of Chilean youths with Down syndrome are gaining important life skills as they learn to plant, grow and sell their own fresh vegetables, and create delicious marmalades and preserves, which they sell for profit. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. …

It may surprise you that cement is responsible for 7 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. That’s because it takes a lot of heat to produce the basic powdery base of cement that eventually becomes concrete. But it turns out that simple fibers from carrots could not only reduce that carbon footprint but also make …

Read more “Plant Fibers Make Stronger Concrete”

A little more than 20 years after he was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, the remains of Matthew Shepard were laid to rest Friday at Washington’s National Cathedral. Shepard was openly gay, and the aftermath of his brutal killing helped drive change in the United States to include sexual orientation when prosecutors press hate crime charges. …

Read more “20 Years After His Murder, Matthew Shepard Laid to Rest in National Cathedral”

UN and Western diplomats are urging Russia to help overcome Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s opposition to giving the UN a role in forming a committee to draft a new constitution for the war-torn country. …

Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar votes in parliamentary elections on October 27, a week after 32 of the country’s 34 provinces went to the polls. …

Russia has failed in a bid at the United Nations to schedule debate on a resolution to preserve a 1987 nuclear arms treaty that U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to abandon. …

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Saudi Arabia Friday to disclose the whereabouts of the body of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and identify the “local cooperator” who allegedly disposed of his body after he was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul October 2.     Speaking to provincial members of his AK Party in …

Read more “Erdogan to Riyadh: Disclose Whereabouts of Khashoggi’s Body”

The Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU has suffered another hit as determined journalists and Kremlin critics focus on exposing its secrets. A new report published Friday details the misbehavior, sloppiness and bizarre bureaucratic decisions that allowed a Russian crime reporter to identify multiple alleged GRU officers. Journalist Sergei Kanev says he wants …

Read more “New Blow to GRU: More Russian Military Spies Exposed”

Imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who ended his nearly five-month hunger strike in a Russian prison earlier this month, has made his will public. …

French President Emmanuel Macron is due to meet the leaders of Slovakia and the Czech Republic on October 26. …

Americans are expected to spend about $9 billion on Halloween this year as they buy costumes, decorations, greeting cards and candy for the annual Oct. 31 event. The National Retail Federation estimates that more than 175 million Americans are planning to participate in Halloween activities this year, spending about $3.2 billion on costumes, $2.7 billion …

Read more “Most Popular Halloween Candy in Each US State”

U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton says Washington had taken all necessary sanctions against Russia related to the war it fought against Georgia in 2008. …

A deadly Ebola outbreak grows. Rebels kill civilians in the streets. And yet the arrival of voting machines in this troubled corner of Congo has some especially worried as a long-delayed presidential election promises further upheaval.  The machines now arriving by the thousands in this Central African nation are of such concern that the U.N. …

Read more “As Congo Rolls Toward Election, Voting Machines a Flashpoint”

U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has called on the Justice Department on Thursday to launch a criminal investigation into one of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers and her lawyer. The Republican lawmaker wants prosecutors to determine if Julie Swetnick and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, made false statements to Congress last month about …

Read more “US Senator Calls for Probe into Kavanaugh Accuser Swetnick, Her Attorney”

A “chief finance controller” for the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group has been killed in an ambush on a meeting of its fighters in southern Somalia, the African Union peacekeeping mission announced Thursday.   The unnamed commander, the head of tax collection in Lower Shabelle region, was killed Monday in  Bariire, the AU mission said.  The extremist group funds …

Read more “AU Force Says Key Al-Shabab Commander Killed “

Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor has said the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul was premeditated, reversing previous official statements that his death was unintended. …

Russia has successfully launched an unmanned Soyuz rocket, the first such liftoff since an aborted launch of a similar rocket earlier this month. …

U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton says that he extended an invitation from President Donald Trump for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to visit Washington in 2019. …

The head of a U.N. fact-finding mission in Myanmar warned Wednesday that if atrocities committed against minority Muslim Rohingya in that country went unpunished, such crimes would be repeated in other countries on new victims. “Impunity must not be excused and continue to embolden the Tatmadaw in its promotion of Bamar-Buddhist supremacy,” the head of the …

Read more “UN Official Urges Justice for Myanmar’s Rohingya”

The wife of a prominent Iranian teachers union leader said Wednesday that Iranian security forces had detained her husband and hospitalized him for a purported mental illness that she knew nothing about.   Hashem Khastar, a unionist representing teachers in Iran’s northeastern Razavi Khorasan province, was the latest of several education activists to be detained in Iran this year while promoting teachers’ rights to …

Read more “Another Activist Detained in Iran’s Crackdown on Teachers Unions”

The leader of a Southern California white supremacist group and two other members were arrested on charges of inciting a deadly riot in Charlottesville, Va., last year, prosecutors said Wednesday.  Other group members were indicted in Virginia on similar charges weeks ago.  Rise Above Movement leader Robert Rundo was arrested Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport and …

Read more “White Supremacists Arrested on Charlottesville Riot Charges”

The European Union’s top court turned away an appeal by Dmytro Firtash, the latest twist for the Ukrainian oligarch whose extradition from Austria the United States has been fighting for since his 2014 arrest in Vienna. …

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that, if the United States deploys intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Moscow will have to target the countries hosting them. …