Newsletter Archive

Immigration hardliners want President Donald Trump to crack down on so-called ‘dreamers’.  Even though the president has signed three executive orders on immigration, he’s said nothing about the undocumented young people who were brought to the US as children and are protected under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA). During the campaign, the president promised to undo DACA and his most ardent supporters are waiting for him to follow through.

VIDEO: President Trump campaigned on a promise to overhaul the nation’s sagging infrastructure. Local officials say the boost is long overdue in a country that builds out lots of roads, bridges and public works, but has no plan for upkeep once they begin to show their age.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Russia today after accusing Moscow of complicity or incompetence in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians. Russia called the U.S. response, a missile attack on a Syrian air base, an illegal act of aggression with negative consequences. The good news in all of this is that, unlike his British counterparts, Tillerson’s Moscow visit was not canceled — a good sign, some say, for efforts to prevent a US-Russia conflict.

While Western officials welcome the looming collapse of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate, they do worry about a secondary problem: what to do about the thousands of IS foreign fighters who may survive. More than 40,100 foreign fighters, including Americans, have traveled to Syria and Iraq since the conflict began. Where will the foreign fighters go?

Severe drought is decimating Somalia’s animal population. Nearly one-third of the country’s livestock is dead and the remaining animals grow weaker each day. Humanitarian groups are now racing to prevent a repeat of the 2011 famine that killed more than 260,000 people in the Horn of Africa nation. VOA catches up with some veterinarians who’ve fanned out across the dry, cracked landscape in search of surviving livestock.

In Myanmar, the Rohingya are deprived of even the most basic rights, including citizenship and the freedom to move.  It’s has been seven months since a military offensive began against the Muslim minority group, prompting widespread allegations of mass rape and murder. Tens of thousands have fled to neighboring Bangladesh. VOA visits a ramshackle refugee camp on the borderlands, where the Rohingya dread the start of the rainy season and hopes of returning home seem to grow dimmer each day.

A ‘poke in the eye’ for the Americans is how some view Cambodia’s decision to scrap a US aid program. VOA is in Phnom Penh, where the government announced it will end work on schools and hospitals by the US Navy construction battalion known as the Seabees. The decision raises concerns Prime Minister Hun Sen is prepared to sacrifice millions of dollars worth of humanitarian work to appease Russia and China.

Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai has been named as a UN Messenger of Peace. She’ll  focus on girls’ education, a topic close to the Pakistani teenager’s heart and the reason Taliban supporters shot her on a school bus in 2012. Malala’s father shares with VOA why he believes his daughter is able to connect with so many people.