Newsletter Archive

‘One bomb plus one bomb equals two bombs.’ Teachers in Mosul say they were forced to keep working after Islamic State imposed a curriculum that championed violence. In Mosul, Arabic language teacher Nathir Bashir tells VOA he was an unwilling educator at an IS school for two and half years, but he kept his four children at home, away from IS ideology.

Islamic State is trying to imprint a lasting legacy on children in Afghanistan via a growing network of religious seminaries and schools, according to officials in the South-Central Asian nation. VOA reports from the country’s Nangarar region, where authorities say the terror group runs at least 25 seminaries in which children are taught military ideology and how to prepare for suicide attacks. 

Bordeaux, France, is best known as the wine capital of the world. However, what many people don’t know is that Bordeaux was France’s second-largest slave-trading hub for more than 150 years. Ships were dispatched to transport some 130,000 slaves from Africa to the Americas. A man named Karfa Diallo wants people to remember the region’s dark past. With the far-right gaining ground, and rising racism and xenophobia across Europe, he believes his work is more relevant than ever.

The same acting school that trained legends like Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, is now working with inmates at one of New York’s Rikers Island jails. The program’s organizers say acting reinvigorates the humanity that people can lose when they are incarcerated, allowing inmates to reclaim parts of themselves that were left behind when they went to jail.

Last week, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Betsy DeVos to be the secretary of Education in his administration. DeVos is an education activist who supports school choice — a term for policies that let students and their families choose between attending private or public schools. She’s also a leading supporter of charter schools. So just what is a charter school and is it, as some critics argue, a new form of segregation?

QUICK TAKE VIDEO:  In the United States, presidents and other politicians are branded with a fowl term at the end of their time in office, when a successor has already been chosen to succeed them. Here’s what you need to know about lame ducks.