A new rehabilitation center on the Kenyan coast is working to help heroin addicts quit drugs and turn their lives around. The new facility, run by the Kenya Red Cross, opened six months ago in the remote village of Lamu. As Ruud Elmendorp reports from Lamu, the center is renewing hope for addicts, many of whom have easy access to hard drugs and often turn to a life of crime. …
World leaders are heading to the Japanese city of Osaka for this year’s G-20 summit, which starts Friday. The G-20 is aimed at promoting financial stability and sustainable growth, but as Henry Ridgwell reports, many of its members have sharply differing views on issues like trade and climate change. …
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow says that it has officially protested the reported mistreatment of a U.S. national who is kept in jail on spying charges. The U.S. Embassy said in a statement on Wednesday that it has sent a note of protest to the Russian foreign ministry, asking it to investigate the allegations that Paul Whelan has been mistreated while in custody and that his safety is ensured. Whelan, who also holds British, Irish and Canadian citizenship, was arrested in a hotel room in Moscow at the end of December and charged with espionage, which carries up …
VOA’s Capitol Hill correspondent Michael Bowman and VOA Persian’s Afshar Sigarchi contributed to this report. Top U.S. and Iranian officials are continuing to fire verbal warning shots at each other while insisting they want to avoid war. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday called the United States the “world’s most vicious regime” and a “source of wars, conflict and plunder.” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is seen near a “3 Khordad” system which is said to had been used to shoot down a U.S. military drone. Days after being targeted with U.S. sanctions himself, Khamenei said, “Iranians …
U.S. officials are finalizing plans for President Donald Trump’s visit to South Korea later this week. But White House officials are shrugging off speculation that Trump will hold another summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. From Seoul, VOA’s Bill Gallo reports even if another Trump-Kim meeting were to happen, it is not clear how it could move forward stalled nuclear talks. …
President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump says the U.S. Secret Service took an employee of a Chicago cocktail lounge into custody after she spit on him. Eric Trump told Breitbart News in a telephone interview that it was “purely a disgusting act by somebody who clearly has emotional problems.” His comments came after reports of the alleged spitting incident Tuesday night at The Aviary in Chicago’s West Loop area. The Associated Press sent an email Wednesday seeking comment on behalf of the lounge. Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said on Twitter that officers assisted the Secret Service with a “law …
Palestinians are protesting an economic initiative being launched by the White House to generate $50 billion in investments in the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab states. The initiative, unveiled at a conference in Bahrain Tuesday, is part of a U.S. Middle East peace plan heralded by U.S. President Donald Trump as the “Deal of the Century.” But Palestinians insist that an economic vision cannot happen without a political settlement. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report. …
White House senior advisor Jared Kushner said Tuesday an economic plan to promote prosperity for the Palestinians must be approved by them as a necessary precondition for peace. Speaking at Tuesday’s opening of an economic workshop in Bahrain to jumpstart the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, Kushner also said Palestinians cannot achieve prosperity without a fair political solution. “Agreeing on an economic pathway forward is a necessary precondition to resolving the previously unsolvable political issues,” Kushner said. “To be clear, economic growth and prosperity for the Palestinian people are not possible without an enduring and fair political solution …
The acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, John Sanders, is resigning and will leave his post on July 5, the agency said on Tuesday. Sanders’s departure coincides with an outcry over the treatment of detained migrant children. Attorneys said 250 children had been held for weeks in dirty conditions at an overcrowded Texas border patrol station without adequate food and water. The children have since been relocated to children’s shelters. John Sanders has led the agency since April. Before taking over CBP, he was the agency’s chief operating officer and had also been the Transportation Security …
A sizable number of U.S. voters say they’d have some hesitancy about supporting an LGBT candidate for president, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. In fact it’s an issue for many more than a candidate’s race or gender. In the poll, 32% of registered voters said they would be less excited about supporting a presidential candidate who was gay, lesbian or bisexual; 42% said that about a transgender candidate. By contrast, only about 1 in 10 voters expressed such hesitance in regard to a candidate’s gender or race. Yet many LGBT candidates …
Chhengpor Aun of the VOA Cambodian Service contributed to this report. SIHANOUKVILLE, CAMBODIA — Nhor Sreyoun recruited her two younger brothers and sister-in-law to work with her on the construction site of a Chinese-owned building. That was in April. On Tuesday, seven people were charged in the fatal collapse of the building, hours after the three-day rescue operation to find survivors ended on Monday. Nhor Sreyoun told VOA Khmer that she was “full of regret” that her younger brother, Nhor Chanthorn, 18, died six months before his planned wedding. Twenty-seven others died, and her other brother and a sister …
Steve Dunleavy, a reporter and columnist for the New York Post who helped define the tabloid’s modern style, died. He was 81. The Post reported that Dunleavy died at his home on Long Island on Monday night. Steve Dunleavy was one of the greatest reporters of all time,” Post owner Rupert Murdoch said. “His passing is the end of a great era.” Dunleavy was born in Sydney, Australia, and began his journalism career at The Sun, where his father worked as a photographer. He did stints at a variety of newspapers, including the Daily Mirror and The South China Morning …
U.S. consumers will delay or forgo technology upgrades if President Donald Trump imposes a new round of 25% tariffs on Chinese goods, slowing the U.S. innovation engine, technology industry executives said on Monday. Trump’s administration is preparing to levy tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese imports after a public comment period ends on July 2 if the U.S. and Chinese presidents cannot relaunch talks to end their trade war. The two countries have been at odds since July 2018 over a host of U.S. demands that Beijing adopt policy changes that would better protect American intellectual property …
U.S. President Donald Trump’s vision for Mideast peace has hit a raw nerve in Lebanon, reviving fears of any plan that would permanently settle Palestinian refugees in the country and shift its Christian-Muslim sectarian balance. The first part of the White House plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians focuses on encouraging $50 billion of investment in the Palestinian territories and three neighboring Arab states, one of them Lebanon. Lebanese of all sects are objecting to ideas that have surfaced so far, seeing $6 billion for Lebanon as an inducement to accept the settlement of Palestinians who have lived …
Sudan’s military rulers refused to agree on Monday to the Ethiopian proposal for a power-sharing agreement with the country’s pro-democracy movement, a top general said, in comments that could worsen a volatile standoff with the protesters. Ethiopia has led diplomatic efforts to bring the military and protest leaders back to the negotiating table, after a deadly crackdown by security forces killed at least 128 people across the country earlier this month, according to protest organizers. Sudanese authorities offered a lower toll of 61 deaths. Protest leaders, represented by the coalition Forces for Declaration of Freedom and Change, had accepted the …
Thousands of protesters demonstrated in Georgia’s capital for the fifth consecutive day Monday, calling for government reform, a snap election and the resignation of the nation’s interior minister. On Monday, the leader of Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party announced “large-scale political reform.” “We will have a parliament where all the existing political actors will be respected,” Georgian Dream Party Chief Bidzina Ivanishvili said. Ivanishvili announced that next year’s parliamentary elections would be organized in a proportional representation system. But, Ivanishvili’s announcement fell short of satisfying protesters’ demands. Protests began Thursday, in response to a visit by a Russian legislator to …
A U.S. citizen has been sentenced to 12 years in a Vietnamese prison for “attempting to overthrow the state.” Michael Phuong Minh Nguyen, 55, pleaded guilty to wanting to incite protests in Vietnam but denied encouraging people to attack government offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City He will be deported to the U.S. after he finishes his sentence, his lawyer said. Nguyen Van Mieng, told Reuters news service that Nguyen “admitted guilt at the trial and asked the jury to reduce his sentence so that he could soon reunite with his family.” The U.S. Embassy in Hanoi …
VOA’s national security correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report. The United States is set to introduce new sanctions against Iran on Monday, seeking to put additional pressure on the country’s economy in order to extract changes in behavior from its government. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the new measures “significant,” but declined to give specific details to reporters ahead of the official announcement. He spoke just before embarking on a trip to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to continue the Trump administration’s effort to build a coalition of allies to counter Iran. “The world should know …
Best-selling author Judith Krantz — whose novels of sex, scandal, and luxury won her global fame and riches — has died at 91. Her son, television executive Tony Krantz, said his mother died of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles. He describes his mother’s talent as a “rare combination of commercial and creative.” The New York-born Krantz was a women’s magazine writer when she turned 50 years old and discovered she had a talent for fiction about high society. Her first novel, “Scruples,” appeared in 1978 and almost immediately skyrocketed to the top of the best-seller list. It …
Sudan’s protest movement accepted an Ethiopian roadmap for a civilian-led transitional government, a spokesman said on Sunday, after a months-long standoff with the country’s military rulers — who did not immediately commit to the plan. Ethiopia has led diplomatic efforts to bring the protest and military leaders back to the negotiating table, after a crackdown against the pro-democracy movement led to a collapse in talks. According to protest organizers, security forces killed at least 128 people across the country, after they violently dispersed the sit-in demonstration outside the military’s headquarters in the capital, Khartoum, earlier this month. Authorities have offered …