Newsletter Archive

Late last week, U.S. immigration enforcement officials rounded up 680 people in five major cities, saying the action was a routine operation targeting undocumented criminals. In a tweet, President Donald Trump called it a crackdown. Millions of undocumented immigrants living in the shadows, many with American-born children, live in fear of possible mass deportations by the Trump Administration.

When it comes to negotiating Mideast peace, President Trump is expected to rely heavily on a team of advisers. The president met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday in Washington, where they discussed the moribund peace process. The men Trump is likely to turn to for advice on Israeli-Palestinian issues include a real estate developer, bankruptcy lawyer and casino magnate. Here’s a primer.

Collateral damage? The $7 billion U.S. travel and tourism industry could be an unintended casualty of President Trump’s attempt to ban refugees and foreign nationals from seven nations. One travel industry group says the U.S. economy has already lost $185 million in business travel bookings. With the ultimate fate of the travel ban still uncertain, some foreign visitors might view the United States as a no-fly zone.

Gender disparity: The RateMyProfessors website is a place where college students can go to evaluate their professors. As of December 2016, there were about 17 million ratings of more than 1.6 million professors from over 7,000 different schools. But they all had one thing in common. Overall, female professors got much lower rating than male professors, even when test results showed students performed better in classes taught by women.

An internet blackout didn’t stop a Cameroonian teenager from becoming the first African to win a prestigious Google youth coding competition. VOA went to Bamenda to meet Nji Collins Gbah, who had to plead with his uncle for travel money so he could go to a town 30 kilometers away to finish competing.

Depleted on all sides. As Islamic State continues to lose territory in Iraq and Syria, analysts say the terror group’s propaganda has shifted from promises of an Islamic utopia to more of a focus on warfare. As the dream of an Islamic caliphate withers, so does the IS information campaign.

Cambodia hopes for relief from decades-old debt to the United States. The Southeast Asian nation racked-up $278 million in U.S. loans in the 1970s, during efforts to defeat the Khmer Rouge. But the amount has gone up sharply over the years, due to interest. Cambodia now owes the U.S. about $505 million, but there’s more to the story.