Newsletter Archive

Trump trouble in Texas? The Lone Star state loves its Republicans. GOP presidential candidates usually win big in the state, which has 38 electoral votes. Polls show Donald Trump leading Democrat Hillary Clinton, but not by a wide margin. As one longtime political observer tells VOA, ‘If Texas is in play, it is really bad news for Donald Trump.’

The cost of college in the United States can make getting a university education an expensive proposition. Many college graduates emerge with a diploma — and tens of thousands of dollars of debt. But that’s not the case in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where pretty much every public high school graduate can go to college for free.

QUICK TAKE VIDEO: Americans love to use political jargon when discussing the election and campaigns. But what do those words really mean, and how did they enter the vernacular? VOA looks at the somber origins of the term ‘political junkie.’

Silicon Valley is calling. If you’ve heard of the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, it’s probably because of its notorious links to terrorists. That could change with local girl done good, Belgian-Moroccan Khadija Hamouchi, who’s headed to California’s Silicon Valley after developing a professional development app aimed at ‘defending the Middle East, its youth, and its values to a world steeped in negative and uninformed opinions’ about the culture.

France’s battle between its secularist society and its Muslim minority, the largest in Europe, was highlighted by the recent controversy over the full-body swimsuit known as the burkini. Those tensions, exacerbated by terrorist attacks, have both French Muslims and Christians worrying about a backlash led by the right, but quietly supported by secularists on the left.

The Taliban tells VOA that a Western couple being held captive is in good health. The Canadian man and his American wife were abducted in Afghanistan in 2012. In a letter, the woman told her family she’s given birth to two children while in captivity.

Deaths and disappearances of civilians at the hands of police have increased in Kenya, according to a legal expert there who tells VOA that witnesses to these alleged crimes, and families of victims seeking justice, are among those targeted. There are calls for the government to do something about the so-called killer police squads.

VIDEO: Saturday night and it’s off to the horse-and-cart races in Giza, Egypt. VOA is among the hundreds who gather for the spectacle on a recent weekend. The prize is bragging rights — and a higher price for the horse. And if there are some cars and trucks in the way, that’s just part of the charm.