Rough estimates say about 2 of every 100 people around the world have or need replacement joints. Now, some Polish doctors are using stem cell technology to rebuild worn out cartilage, instead of replacing it with metal. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …
After traversing several countries en route to the rich West, Najibullah, a former policeman from the Afghan town of Kholm, his pregnant wife and four children, got stuck in Serbia. Now they spend days of relative normalcy in a drab refugee camp in Krnjaca, an industrial area on the outskirts of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, hoping they will ultimately move to Germany where Najibullah, 30, has relatives. If they get their wish, they would join more than a million other migrants who have arrived in Germany since 2015, when Chancellor Angela Merkel offered sanctuary to those fleeing war and poverty. …
Turkish warplanes have launched airstrikes against a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia in the Syrian enclave of Afrin. Turkey says the offensive, which was expected, struck more than 100 targets, including the city of Afrin itself. The city has several hundred thousand residents. The airstrikes were aimed at positions occupied by the YPG Kurdish militia. Ankara accuses the militia of ties to the Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the offensive before it began. He said it would “clear our land up to the Iraqi border” of what he called “terror filth that is trying to besiege our …
If there is one single word that has dogged and defined Donald Trump’s presidency, it is Russia. Several congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating Trump campaign contacts with Moscow, focusing this week on former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. VOA White House correspondent Peter Heinlein has a look at how Trump’s relationship with Russia, and the Kremlin’s role in his election, has hung over every moment of his first year in office. …
U.S. President Donald Trump will be entering something of a lion’s den when he visits the elitist enclave of Davos next week, rubbing shoulders with the same “globalists” that he campaigned against in winning the 2016 election. Aides said some of Trump’s advisers had argued against him attending the World Economic Forum in order to steer clear of the event, which brings together political leaders, CEOs and top bankers. But in the end, they said, Trump, the first sitting U.S. president to attend the forum since Bill Clinton in 2000, wanted to go to call attention to growth in the …
Britain wants to have a comprehensive trade deal with the European Union as well as a defense pact in place once it leaves the bloc, Prime Minister Theresa May said in remarks published in a German newspaper Saturday. May added that her government was not seeking to “cherry pick” in the negotiations and that it wanted a trade deal that goes further than the one that the EU has with Norway or Canada, simply because Britain is negotiating from a different position that those two countries. “It is not about cherry picking,” May told the Bild newspaper. “We want to negotiate for a comprehensive free-trade deal and security pact. We …
While the United States supports Turkey’s concern about a safe and secure Turkish-Syrian border, military operations by Turkey into northeast Syria will not advance regional stability, the State Department said Friday. Turkey was reportedly intensifying the shelling into Syria’s Kurdish-controlled Afrin region. “We do not believe that a military operation, whether in Afrin or directly against the self-defense Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in the north or northeast of Syria, serves the cause of regional stability, Syrian stability or indeed Turkish concerns about the security of their border,” a State Department official said, adding that he could not comment further without …
Orthodox Christians commemorate Epiphany by traditionally submerging into incredibly cold water. Ricardo Marquina Montañana braved the cold in Moscow and sends this video. …
Thousands of Hungarian schoolchildren and university students protested outside parliament on Friday to demand reform of an education system they say fails to prepare them for life in the 21st century. The students say the system is too rigidly focused on rote-learning and blind memorization of facts and does not encourage critical thinking or creativity. In freezing rain, they held banners emblazoned with angry emoticons and messages such as “I can feel I am getting dumber” and “My brain is shrinking.” “This is fundamentally a reform protest, but we can also call it a protest against the government as it …
Britain’s most prominent campaigner for leaving the European Union, Boris Johnson, has suggested building a giant bridge across the English Channel to France after Brexit, The Daily Telegraph reported. Foreign Secretary Johnson, who led the campaign to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum, told French President Emmanuel Macron that he felt it was ridiculous that the two countries were linked by just a single railway. The leading Brexiteer then suggested building a second crossing, to which Macron said: “I agree. Let’s do it,” the newspaper reported. “Our economic success depends on good infrastructure and good connections. Should the Channel …
Swiss luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet said it would launch a second-hand business this year, becoming the first big brand to announce plans to tap into a fast-growing market for pre-owned premium watches. The company told Reuters it would launch the business at its outlets in Switzerland this year. If this proved successful, it would roll out the operation in the United States and Japan. “Second-hand is the next big thing in the watch industry,” Chief Executive Francois-Henry Bennahmias told Reuters in an interview at the SIHH watch fair in Geneva this week. Going to the ‘dark side’ Luxury watchmakers have hitherto eschewed the …
After lengthy treks through the muddy Amazon, indigenous men, women and children will greet Pope Francis on Friday in a visit to the world’s largest rainforest that native leaders hope will mark a turning point for the increasingly threatened ecosystem. Francis is expected to meet with several thousand indigenous people gathering in a coliseum in Puerto Maldonado, the scorching city considered a gateway to the Amazon, in the first full day of the pontiff’s visit to Peru. Indigenous leaders, many sporting headdresses with brightly colored feathers and intricate beaded jewelry, said they are optimistic the pope can serve as a …
Ukraine’s parliament has passed a bill governing state policy on areas in the east that are held by Russia-backed separatists. …
Social media companies Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube have greatly accelerated their removals of online hate speech, reviewing over two thirds of complaints within 24 hours, new EU figures show. The European Union has piled pressure on social media firms to increase their efforts to fight the proliferation of extremist content and hate speech on their platforms, even threatening them with legislation. Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube signed a code of conduct with the EU in May 2016 to review most complaints within a 24-hour timeframe. The companies managed to meet that target in 81 percent of cases, EU figures …
Turkey’s main business lobby on Thursday called on the government to end the state of emergency as parliament extended it for a sixth time since it was imposed after an attempted coup in 2016. Emergency rule allows President Tayyip Erdogan and the government to bypass parliament in passing new laws and allows them to suspend rights and freedoms. More than 50,000 people have been arrested since its introduction and 150,000 have been sacked or suspended from their jobs. The Turkish parliament on Thursday voted to extend the state of emergency, with the ruling AK Party and the nationalist opposition voting …
Italy ordered the arrest of 33 people on Thursday on suspicion of running a Chinese mafia group involved in gambling, prostitution, and drugs and which dominated the transport of Chinese goods across Europe. The group’s base was in Prato, near Florence, a hub for the textile industry where many factories are owned and run by Chinese, police said in a statement. But the network had members in other parts of Italy and across Europe, with arrests sought in Rome, Milan, Padua, Paris, Madrid and Neuss, Germany, the statement said. Police did not say how many had been arrested so far. …
Turkey’s parliament voted Thursday in favor of extending a state of emergency in place since a failed coup in the summer 2016, Turkish media reported. The sixth extension will become effective from Friday at 1.00 a.m., Turkey’s Anadolu news agency reported. According to Turkey’s constitution, a state of emergency can be declared for a maximum of six months. Turkey will have spent a year and a half under emergency rule after the latest extension, during which time the president and government are allowed to bypass parliament in passing new laws and suspend rights and freedoms. Roughly 50,000 people have been …
Francis says he will speak when there is proof Bishop Juan Barros concealed abuse of minors …
Russia announced Thursday the creation of a state-owned bank to finance its defense industry which has encountered difficulties in obtaining financing due to US sanctions. In a statement the Russian Finance Ministry said the bank would specialize in “conducting operations related to state defense orders and large state contracts.” Russian media have presented the opening of such a bank as a means to protect the country’s other lenders from Western sanctions on Russia’s military-industrial complex over the conflict in eastern Ukraine, including recently tightened U.S. measures. At the end of December, one of Russia’s leading private banks, Alfa, said it …
Britain has appointed a minister of loneliness to combat social isolation experienced by one in 10 Britons. Sports Minister Tracey Crouch will add the job to her existing portfolio to advance the work of slain lawmaker Jo Cox, who set up the Commission on Loneliness in 2016. “For far too many people, loneliness is the sad reality of modern life,” Prime Minister Theresa May said Wednesday. “I want to confront this challenge for our society and for all of us to take action to address the loneliness endured by the elderly, by carers, by those who have lost loved ones …