Newsletter Archive

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Lebanon’s first-ever Pride Week filled Beirut’s streets, bars and cafes. The country is considered socially liberal compared to its Arab neighbors, but conservative values are still deeply embedded in the culture. While there are hopes Pride Week’s push into the public spotlight will help drive change, the LGBTQI community also lives with the all-too-familiar danger of retribution.

Security experts say the explosive used in Manchester was designed to inflict the most damage possible. The nail bomb attack at a concert by American pop star Ariana Grande killed 22 and injured dozens more Monday night, many of them teenagers and children. British police say the bomber set out to kill and maim as many of the music fans as possible.

VIDEO: The situation is grim for hundreds of malnourished, weak and hungry Nigerian children at a refugee camp in Niger. The country is plagued by food shortages, caused in part by the Boko Haram insurgency. No famine has been declared, but VOA visited the camp outside Diffa where many of the children are just skin and bones.

Africa is missing out on billions by outsourcing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics jobs. VOA checked out a robotics competition in Dakar that’s out to change that. Young people spent a week building robots that could help steer Africa toward a more prosperous economic future.

A desire for change will likely motivate many Cambodians who go to the polls next month to elect more than 12,000 district officials. Even though the voting is local in nature, the election is seen as an important litmus test of the popularity of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). The commune elections give ordinary people a chance to participate in the decision-making processes that affect their everyday lives, but the CPP doesn’t appear to be all in when it comes to the push for local autonomy.

The ice could be thawing between China and South Korea now that a new president is in charge in Seoul. South Korea’s decision to deploy a US-made missile defense system angered Beijing, which enacted harsh economic sanctions against South Korea. But China looks like it’s had a change of heart. The shift started with signals from the top late last week.