Month: June 2018

Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa have been elected to two-year terms on the U.N. Security Council. The five will join the 15-nation body responsible for maintaining international peace and security on Jan. 1, 2019. The vote Friday in the U.N. General Assembly generated little suspense, as all but one regional group ran a clean slate. The only contested seat was in the Asian-Pacific group, where Indonesia overwhelming beat Maldives 144-46. Member states cast secret ballots and candidates must win a two-thirds majority of votes to succeed, even if they are running uncontested. Candidate countries capped off …

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The United Nations is asking the international community to help millions of refugees and displaced people in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin. The Boko Haram insurgency is mainly responsible for a crisis that has left huge numbers vulnerable to hunger, malnutrition and violence. The Lake Chad Basin is into the ninth year of a humanitarian crisis that does not appear to be easing. The United Nations has appealed for $1.5 billion to provide life-saving aid for some 7.8 million people in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Though half of the year has gone by, only one third of this urgently-needed money …

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French President Emmanuel Macron is seeking to take the lead of the European brigade against U.S. President Donald Trump at the summit of the Group of Seven wealthy countries in Canada.   Macron called a meeting Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Theresa May, new Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte and top EU officials just before the G-7 opening.   He told reporters the United States’ attitude must lead other nations to “reforge the European front.”   European leaders criticize the U.S. decision to impose protectionist tariffs on steel and aluminum and to exit the Iran nuclear deal …

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A Russian space capsule carrying three astronauts has docked with the International Space Station two days after it was launched from Kazakhstan. The Soyuz capsule docked with the station at 13:01 GMT Friday some 255 miles (410 kilometers) above the Earth. It is carrying Serena Aunon-Chancellor of the United States, Sergey Prokopyev of Russia, and German Alexander Gerst, flying for the European Space Agency. They will join Americans Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold and Russia’s Oleg Artemyev at the station. The program for their six-month mission includes about 250 experiments in biology, earth sciences, physical sciences and other disciplines. The …

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As summer draws near in the Northern Hemisphere, millions of people will slather on sunscreen to protect themselves from the sun’s harmful rays. But most sunscreens contain chemicals harmful to the oceans. Now researchers in London have developed a compound found in seaweed that could be the basis for a new generation of environmentally friendly sunscreens. As VOA’s Julie Taboh reports, they may not only protect us from damaging rays from the sun but also act as an anti-oxidant. …

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NATO defense ministers on Thursday unveiled plans for expanded military reinforcements by having the ability to deploy 30 troop battalions, 30 squadrons of aircraft and 30 warships within 30 days to any conflict on the European mainland. Details of the U.S.-drafted plan remain unclear, though ministers said they aim to have it logistically operational no later than 2020. The ministers also announced plans to strengthen its new command structure by more than 1,200 personnel spread across a new Atlantic command center based in Norfolk, Virginia, and a mainland Europe conflict logistics headquarters in Ulm, Germany.  Briefly putting aside what NATO’s …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin held his annual televised call-in show with Russians on Thursday in a semi-choreographed event that highlighted the Russian president’s efforts to raise living standards at home while defending Russian interests abroad.  Amid Putin’s 18-year rule, the so-called “Direct Line” has emerged as a key symbol of Russia’s top-down system of government, in which Putin often sits as the sole arbiter of problems befalling citizens of the world’s largest country. State media claimed that Russians submitted over 2.5 million questions to the Russian leader on topics ranging from health care to gas prices, pension payments, mortgage rates …

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A 500-year-old copy of a letter in which Christopher Columbus describes his voyage to the Americas has been returned to Spain after U.S. authorities tracked down the document, which had been stolen and replaced with a forgery years ago. The letter, copied centuries ago from the one Columbus wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain after his first Atlantic crossing, was given to Spain’s Ambassador Pedro Morenes in Washington, law enforcement authorities said on Thursday. The repatriation of the letter follows seven years of sleuthing by U.S. law enforcement agencies after the discovery that it had been replaced …

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NATO defense ministers rallied around their latest plans to contain Russia on Thursday, while keeping a lid on their frustrations over new steel tariffs that U.S. President Donald Trump has justified on national security grounds. Briefly putting aside what NATO’s chief said were “serious differences” within the alliance, defense ministers agreed a plan to protect the North Atlantic against increased Russian naval strength, move troops more quickly across Europe and have more combat-ready battalions, ships and planes. “There are differences related to issues like trade, the Iran nuclear deal and climate change,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters. “We have …

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