Newsletter Archive

Discrimination drove America’s earliest Mormons across the Plains. That painful past is something many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are mindful of when they hear Donald Trump talk about banning Muslim immigration. Add a leaked 2005 video in which the Republican presidential nominee made disparaging comments about women, causing his poll numbers to tumble, and you’ll see why Trump is struggling to win the state of Utah, which has voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election since 1964.

VIDEO EXPLAINER: America is a democracy, which means the people elect their leaders in free and fair elections. Sounds simple, right? Except that it’s not. For example, although Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, George W. Bush moved into the White House on Inauguration Day. Here’s why the person who gets the most votes doesn’t necessary win the job.

Everybody’s got an opinion about the U.S. presidential race, including people in the Arab world. A survey of eight leading Arab nations finds that 66 percent of Arabs want Democrat Hillary Clinton to win the election, while 11 percent prefer Republican Donald Trump. They also have a firm message for whoever the next U.S. president turns out to be: Leave us alone.

A remorseless killer. That’s how the federal law enforcement community views Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who is serving consecutive life terms for the murders of two FBI agents during a 1975 standoff on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. But Peltier’s supporters say he was framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and they want President Barack Obama to free the Native American before leaving the White House.

VIDEO: Many Americans shop at giant grocery stores that sell produce grown thousands of miles away. However, more Americans than ever are buying locally-grown produce, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We headed out to Howard County, Maryland, about an hour outside of Washington, D.C., to visit a farm that’s benefiting from the latest trend to eat local.

Not far from the front lines in the battle to retake Mosul, peshmerga soldiers took a tour of an area recently recaptured from Islamic State militants. VOA accompanied the troops to Tarjala, Iraq, as they examined the ruins of what were once bustling villages. From sandbags stacked up inside a mosque, to the shop that was turned into a bomb factory, the Kurdish fighters are getting a firsthand lesson in how the terror group works.

VIDEO: It turns out those private messages you send via social media aren’t so private after all. Skype and Snapchat are among the big names criticized for failing to provide enough encryption. The Human Rights group Amnesty International says this lack of privacy and security threatens to undermine democracy.