Newsletter Archive

Russia’s propaganda machine kicked into high gear after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. The takeover sparked the worst East-West tensions since the Cold War. As Russian authorities shrank the space for independent reporting, one group of Russian journalists moved to Latvia. VOA watches the reporters in action in Riga, as they use humor to point out absurd politics and alleged corruption.

Britain’s security services are in a standoff with WhatsApp, which has refused to allow them access to a message the London attacker sent three minutes before he killed five people and injured 40 injured last week. Islamic State is trying to capitalize on the terror attack by flooding YouTube with hundreds of violent recruitment videos. The online propaganda offensive comes as Britain demands social media companies erase jihadist postings.

An entertainment news website modeled after the American media giant Buzzfeed, is Cambodia’s first local tech startup to attract Silicon Valley investors. As VOA reports from Phnom Penh, the grant from 500 Startups comes at a time when more Cambodians are using the internet and social media.

Counterfeiting and piracy are on the rise and China is expected to be at the heart of the production of fake goods, including everything from clothes to electronics, cosmetics and risky fake medicines. But even as China takes steps to crack down on counterfeit medicines, production is likely to move elsewhere, including to North Korea, Myanmar and Vietnam.

VIDEO: Few American homes have stood the test of time as well architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Designed in 1935, the rural southwestern Pennsylvania home sits on a waterfall, integrating nature into the home’s design. More than 80 years later, Fallingwater is still a modern marvel.

U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revised and retracted statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year’s American presidential election campaign. The shift followed a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.

VIDEO EXPLAINER: President Donald Trump says he wants to make sure the US nuclear  arsenal is the best in the world. Nuclear warhead stockpiles are sharply down since the height of the Cold War, but the pace of reduction has slowed dramatically since the turn of the century. Here’s the tally.