Newsletter Archive

If you experience difficulty accessing any of the stories below, please use this link: https://377477.info

The bare refrigerators of ordinary Venezuelans are evidence of the country’s chronic food shortages and devastated economy. In the once-wealthy South American country, many of its 31 million people now struggle to find enough to eat. One woman tells VOA her refrigerator is ‘an ornament in my kitchen, because filling it costs me too much money.’

Young undocumented immigrants constantly battle the misconception that they don’t pay taxes. In fact, 1.3 million people who are eligible for DACA paid more than $2 billion in taxes in 2015. DACA is the Obama-era initiative that grants temporary protected status to people who were brought to the US as young children. They pay their taxes in the hopes that following the rules will weigh in their favor when they apply for permanent legal status.

New York City can be a daunting place for first-time visitors, and a culture shock for foreigners. But at the heart of one of the most prestigious higher-education scenes in the country, students from more than 100 countries have the opportunity to connect under one roof.

A community founded by freed black slaves after the Civil War thrived for a century near Washington, DC, until developers bulldozed it away. Today, a multimillion-dollar project is on hold while archaeologists determine whether the development is being built on top of the lost community’s historically significant cemetery.

The money might be in Silicon Valley, but ingenuity can be found worldwide. VOA’s Khmer service sits down with a venture firm that’s making a splash in Southeast Asia to talk about how entrepreneurs in developing countries can attract investors.

The NBA is hunting for fresh prospects in Africa. VOA checks out the US National Basketball Association’s newly opened elite training facility in Senegal, the first of its kind on the continent, as it scouts promising young ballers from across the continent.

Farmers in Afghanistan are trying to revive pistachio crops as an alternative to opium poppy crops. The government wants to nurture the pistachio industry in part to help undercut the poppy crops that yield an estimated 90 percent of the world’s heroin. VOA meets farmers in Herat who find that safeguarding the pistachios is a challenge.

President Trump isn’t the only person railing against so-called ‘fake news.’ Governments are using concern about misinformation in the guise of news as an excuse to squelch press freedoms in Southeast Asia. Since the 2016 US election, the term ‘fake news’ has quickly evolved into an all-purpose punching bag, especially for those in power.