Category: World

Kurdish security forces have captured dozens of cellphones the so-called Islamic State (IS) rigged with explosives for terrorist attacks in northern Iraq. …

Serbs in Kosovo’s ethnically divided city of Mitrovica Sunday tore down a controversial wall that ethnic Albanians say aggravated an already tense situation. Bulldozers quietly knocked down the 2-meter concrete barrier after talks between the ethnic Albanians and the city’s Serb minority, mediated by the European Union and U.S. diplomats. EU foreign policy chief Federica …

Read more “Serbs in Mitrovica Tear Down Controversial Wall”

Local Kosovar Serb authorities in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica have demolished a concrete wall they had built near the Ibar River in December 2016 that they called a landslide barrier. However, the Kosovar government saw it as a provocation, and parliament voted to knock it down. The demolition was carried out on February …

Read more “Controversial Wall Torn Down in Kosovo’s Mitrovica”

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has warned Iran “not to test the resolve” of the Donald Trump administration days after the U.S. imposed new sanctions on the Islamic republic over a ballistic-missile test. …

A century ago, Faberge produced its last legendary Easter egg. The following year, in 1918, in the early days of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, the legendary Russian jewelry firm was nationalized and destroyed. The Faberge family and many of the firm’s masterpieces found refuge in the West, where the firm’s legacy is being preserved today. …

Nearly three years ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a sweeping national election victory with promises to develop the economy and root out corruption. But with a series of key state elections beginning this weekend, Modi’s popularity — and his surprise currency decree that sparked months of financial uproar — is now being tested. …

Read more “State Elections Test the Popularity of India’s Modi”

Women are underrepresented in high tech industries, and at American universities, they make up only 1 in 6 students of computer science. That’s changing on some campuses, as Mike O’Sullivan reports from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, near Los Angeles, where more than half of last year’s graduates in computer science were women. …

Quantum computers, once they become available, are likely to help us solve problems too complex for the fastest computers today. So far, several laboratories around the world say they have created small quantum chips as the proof of concept. Scientists in Britain now say they have created the first blueprint for a large-scale quantum computer. …

Read more “A Step Toward a Large-scale Quantum Computer”

A group of professors has urged Iranian President Hassan Rohani to respond to a recent order by U.S. President Donald Trump temporarily barring travel by Iranians to the United States by easing travel restrictions for U.S. citizens visiting their country. …

The White House says President Donald Trump told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko the United States will work to restore peace along the country’s tense border with Russia. …

They are some of the most exquisite objects ever created and, a century after the last Faberge Egg was created, in 1917, the tiny treasures continue to fascinate for both their beauty and the tragic story that entangled them. …

Opposition groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) under the umbrella group Rassemblement are expecting talks with the government will begin next week, despite the death of the group’s leader, Etienne Tshisekedi. Opposition supporters and civil society organizations expressed concern that Tshisekedi’s demise could imperil the transition agreement recently signed with the government. The …

Read more “Suspended DRC Talks to Resume Next Week”

Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine say one of their top commanders was killed when his car exploded early on February 4. …

But if he looks like President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the person who’s been hitting the campaign trail in the last week or so doesn’t much act like Berdymukhammedov.(The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL.) …

Iran is holding a military exercise Saturday to test its missile and radar systems, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on Tehran for a recent ballistic missile test. The United States sanctioned 13 individuals and 12 entities related to Iran’s missile program, and Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn said the …

Read more “Iran to Test Missile Systems in Military Exercises”

Many U.S. presidents have placed their financial holdings in a blind trust that is managed by a trustee without any input from the president. This arrangement is believed to help the president avoid any conflicts of interest between his finances and issues that come across his desk. U.S. President Donald Trump, however, has avoided calls …

Read more “Report: Trump Assets in Revocable, Not Blind, Trust”

As Ukraine’s relationship with Moscow continues to suffer as Kyiv battles Russia-backed separatists in its east, theaters are preparing to screen a new film focusing on the Holodomor, the Stalin-era famine that left millions dead in Soviet Ukraine. …

A top aide to President Donald Trump said Friday she misspoke when she cited a 2011 “massacre” in Kentucky that never happened. A day earlier, during an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Kellyanne Conway defended Trump’s temporary ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations by saying that former President Barack Obama instituted a similar policy …

Read more “AP Fact Check: Conway Says She Misspoke on ‘Massacre’”

Moldova’s pro-Russia President Igor Dodon has proposed a new flag for his country that would eliminate similarities the current banner has with the flag and coat of arms of neighboring Romania. …

Wracked by civil war and Islamic State occupation, Syrians living in areas under Kurdish or rebel control are suffering from a major shortage of heating fuel in an unusually harsh winter. People in the Kurdish region of northern Syria say they have been running low on heating supplies for more than a week. Many households …

Read more “Rebel, Kurdish Areas in Syria Hit by Heating Fuel Shortages”

The Correspondents is VOA’s weekly discussion of the world’s top stories, as seen through the eyes of our dedicated reporters in the US and around the globe. Hosted by Mil Arcega, our panel of journalists goes beyond the headlines to give listeners and viewer real context and understanding of what’s driving the story. …

Norway’s security service says civil-servant e-mail accounts have been targeted by hackers believed to be associated with Russian intelligence. …

The group monitoring the conflict in eastern Ukraine has made an urgent appeal to both sides to stop shelling and honor the ceasefire agreed in 2015, after this week’s sharp escalation in the conflict. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service) …

The Supreme Court picked its newest member Thursday to take over the investigations of politicians implicated in Brazil’s biggest-ever graft scandal, expected to shake the country’s establishment and government because of important new testimony. Court officials said Justice Edson Fachin was chosen by random electronic selection from among a group of five of the court’s …

Read more “Newest Member of Brazil’s Top Court to Head Corruption Probes”