Newsletter Archive

VIDEO: People affected by severe drought and potential famine in the countryside are streaming into Somalia’s main cities. Some of the hungry and malnourished families are filling squalid camps outside the Somali capital of Mogadishu. VOA visits a camp where it is common to find mothers whose children starved to death before their eyes.

Spies, secret agents and bad guys. China is offering big money to people who report foreign spies. State media is promoting the campaign on social media and through a playful cartoon video just days ahead of that nation’s National Security Education Day. On the streets of Beijing, VOA finds mixed reactions to the government’s catch-a-spy campaign.

North Korea could conduct another nuclear test Saturday or even sooner, according to US government and other sources. A device appears to have been placed in a tunnel at North Korea’s nuclear test site. One US intelligence official tells VOA, ‘Kim Jong Un wants his country to be validated as a nuclear power and a test would further that goal.’

Authorities in Spain and France have seized millions of dollars’ worth of assets owned by the uncle of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Rifaat al-Assad is believed responsible for a 1982 massacre in Syria that killed thousands. Prosecutors say Rifaat embezzled more than $300 million in Syrian state funds in the 1980s. Now the pressure is on Britain to freeze the Syrian’s properties in London.

There’s a special clinic for refugees and immigrants in Charlottesville, Virginia, that treats more than a patient’s physical symptoms. The staff at the International Family Medicine Clinic also deals with the emotional baggage refugees and immigrants can bring with them, brought on by years of poor or non-existent medical care, and the stress of living in a violent or repressive society.

VIDEO: The marriage of art and technology results in a beautiful union in Baltimore, Maryland. Artistic displays combining lights, music and innovative technology line the waterfront. Organizers say the exhibits are as much feats of engineering as they are of creativity.