Newsletter Archive

Immigrants and their U.S.-born children make up about 25 percent of the American population. Language barriers, confusion about the system and a lack of transportation can hinder their ability to vote on election day. In Oakland, California, the Cambodian-American population is learning to overcome some of these obstacles by voting by mail.

While using snail-mail might be an old-fashioned approach to voting, one Silicon Valley startup has a high-tech way to get out the vote. Brigade allows users to debate the issues, try to sway other users’ positions and see which candidates’ views align with their own. The app’s founder thinks it might be the way back to traditional political discourse.

The ‘nuclear triad’ — basically how America defends itself against nuclear attack — is out of date. U.S. nuclear modernization efforts are 20 years behind the Chinese and Russian programs, according to a former U.S. official, who blames the delay on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How reliable and safe will the United States’ most dangerous weapons be if action isn’t taken soon?

The new front in the fight to protect Africa’s elephants begins with Americans’ wallets and not in Kenya or South Africa. U.S. officials are launching a campaign to convince U.S. travelers not to purchase exotic wildlife products — like shoes, bags, and garments made of rare animals — when they venture overseas.

Send them back? As war tears their country apart, about 1.5 million Syrians have taken refuge in neighboring Lebanon. But official talk of returning the refugees to Syria is intensifying. In Beirut, VOA talks with refugees who — through no fault of their own — have no place to call home.

VIDEO: Don’t mess with me. One-in-5 girls under the age of 18 in Malawi has been sexually assaulted. VOA visits a school in the African nation where girls receive a very loud and physical hands-on lesson on how to fight back against would-be attackers.

As the South Pole’s months-long night finally turns into day, VOA blogger Refael Klein tells us what it’s like to see the sun again after living in darkness for more than 12 weeks. And, as the end of his year-long stint at the bottom of the world nears, he realizes there’s lots of work to do before he can catch his flight back to civilization.

American college students are expected to graduate in four years, but a vast majority of them fail to do so. In a recent study, just 60 percent of U.S. university students had earned a degree six years after starting college. Some U.S. universities are looking to boost graduation rates with new ‘meta-majors.’