Newsletter Archive

North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are expected to take center stage as world leaders gather in New York this week for their annual UN meetings, amid increased nuclear and ballistic missile activity from North Korea. The meeting is also President Trump’s first appearance on the UN world stage. Today, he spoke at a meeting on the sidelines of the annual assembly. The president, who has made disparaging comments about the UN in the past, will address the General Assembly tomorrow, and it’s difficult to predict what the president will say, or how he will be received.

American farmers are on track to plant the fewest acres of wheat since the US Agriculture  Department started keeping records in 1919. One major reason for that is global competition. Then there are the eating habits and diet fads of consumers.

Never before have so many arrived in so short a time. The growing humanitarian crisis in Myanmar is high on the agenda at the UN General Assembly session, and as the number of Rohingya refugees fleeing persecution in Myanmar reaches historic proportions, aid agencies in Bangladesh are ramping up their response to cope with the influx. About 400,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar, and the sheer size of the problem leaves agencies unable to fully meet the growing demand, raising fears of disease outbreaks.

The tech world is stepping up to help refugees in crisis, but many of the tech products on offer are designed with little awareness of the audience they target. That’s where Techfugees comes in. Instead of assuming what refugees need, the tech network calls on users to consolidate their efforts and engage more with the refugees themselves. And some of the tech solutions that work are being created by the refugees themselves.

End of mission — completed. The end of the Cassini spacecraft’s 20-year mission to Saturn is an emotional time for scientists and engineers. NASA decided to destroy Cassini as it ran out of fuel, rather than risk contaminating Saturn’s moons with bacteria from Earth. At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles, VOA learns the end of Cassini marks the beginning of a new chapter in planetary exploration.