Newsletter Archive

Living in limbo. President Donald Trump has issued three executive orders on immigration since taking office, but they don’t address one particular group of foreign-born people — the 750,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children — who are now known as dreamers. Thanks to former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, dreamers are still protected from deportation, but for how long?

Who is Steve Bannon? From Catholic schoolboy to counselor-in-chief, Steve Bannon has had a remarkable rise to power. Born into a blue collar Virginia family, President Donald’s Trump’s chief strategist is a former navy man and Harvard graduate who talks about being part of a right-wing movement of middle-class, working people who say they are tired of being dictated to by a capitalist elite.

Not that kind of hacker. Taking an innovative idea to the next level, and ultimately launching a startup, takes a team of people with unique skills. Forming those teams often occurs at gatherings known as hackathons. An American-born child of Pakistani immigrants has organized hackathons in 92 cities worldwide, where teams of hackers compete to produce the best idea and product.

SPECIAL REPORT: With the partition of India in 1947, Kashmir became part of India, instead of Pakistan, but the violence there never really stopped. More than 40,000 people have died in a conflict that now involves two nuclear-armed nations. The death of a charismatic Kashmiri separatist at the hands of security forces last summer sparked the worse violence in years, making life tough for people who are just trying to get by.

Learning to forget hate. After three years at home, students in Mosul are finally back in the classroom. Placement exams will determine their grade level, but instruction time is the least of what many students have lost. VOA visits a school in Mosul where classroom activities aren’t solely about learning; teachers are also key to helping traumatized children recover from the terror of living under Islamic State.

The Syrian government has created an all-female military unit in a predominantly Kurdish city in northeastern Syria where U.S.-led Kurdish forces are battling Islamic State. At least 150 women have been recruited for the volunteer unit. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the government of President Bashar al-Assad has had a minimal military presence in the Kurdish region. Some believe the arrival of the all-female unit is meant to send a message.

VIDEO: Wrestling is all the rage in northern India…among girls. In a deeply patriarchal society, the sport has not traditionally been open to females, but conservative attitudes started changing after several Indian women wrestlers performed well in international contests. VOA visits the Indian state of Haryana, where young girls train hard to win respect and achieve their dreams of athletic glory.

And finally, a little pat on the back. This week, VOA celebrates 75 years on the air. On February 1, 1942, shortly after the United States entered World War II, the Voice of America launched with a live 15-minute radio broadcast transmitted into Germany from a small New York City studio. Since then, we’ve grown into a multimedia international broadcasting service, with programming and content in 47 languages. And, by law, VOA is required to be ‘accurate, objective and comprehensive.’