Newsletter Archive

Along with helping to elect a president, Maine residents will also vote on whether to raise the state’s minimum wage up to $12 an hour by 2020. Critics argue that increasing the minimum wage could lead to higher prices and lost jobs. However, one Maine restaurant owner is already paying his workers three times more than he’s required to, and here’s why he thinks it’s good business.

Outside of California, the state of Texas is home to the largest Vietnamese community in the United States. In a part of town crowded with Vietnamese restaurants, tea shops, bakeries and health food stores, where even the streets signs are in Vietnamese, is a tiny radio station that’s giving Houston’s Vietnamese community a chance to be heard nationwide.

Turkey hasn’t turned out to be the safe haven many Yazidis had hoped for. The persecuted minority group fled the Islamic State in Iraq only to find a difficult and uncertain life in camps where they lack official refugee status, leaving them in legal limbo with no rights.

A woman’s place is behind the wheel. Twenty-one years ago, Fabienne Lanz swapped ballet for motorsport, an unlikely choice for a woman in Africa. Now the 29 year old is the first woman to win the African Open Karting Championship, making her the best on the continent. VOA meets up with Lanz in Pretoria as she prepares to take on the world.

It’s back to school for Syrian students who’ve spent years hiding out from Islamic State. Fearing their children would be radicalized, parents kept them at home after IS fighters took over their town. But Manbij was liberated in August, and VOA was there when the children were finally free to return to the classroom after an almost 3-year absence.

Spoils of war: The Kurdish Peshmerga military is showing off more than 500 items confiscated in battles with the Islamic State. IS fighters are leaving behind a massive trove of equipment and paraphernalia as they retreat from U.S. coalition bombings and Kurdish offensives.​ VOA visited the collection in Duhok, Iraq, a place locals call the IS Museum.

A Bollywood film about sexual violence against women has added fuel to the debate over the treatment of women in India. Playing to packed halls, ‘Pink’ underscores India’s struggle with patriarchal attitudes at a time when more women are entering the workforce and challenging traditional restrictions. Some see this struggle as a clash of the old and new India.