Newsletter Archive

Las Vegas is the scene of the newest — and now deadliest — US mass shooting. A gunman opened fire on concert-goers in Las Vegas, killing more than 50 and injuring hundreds more in what President Trump describes as an ‘act of pure evil.’ Known as ‘Sin City’ for its gambling and nightlife, Vegas has been trying to diversify by offering more wholesome family entertainment like last night’s country concert.

Having lost his left hand and foot in an accident, Ji Seong-ho escaped North Korea on crutches and almost drowned. A decade later, he’s a human rights activist calling on the international community to keep pressuring North Korea to curtail its nuclear weapons ambitions and push for human rights. In an interview with VOA, Ji describes the North Korean famine of the mid-1990s, and the terrible hunger that drove him to eat grass and tree bark. 

Meanwhile…South Korea wants to take control of its military back from the US in times of war. Right now, South Korean forces would be led by a US command structure if war were to break out. VOA is in Seoul, where President Moon Jae-in and other South Korean liberals have long advocated for the change not only as a sovereignty issue, but also due to anti-American sentiment in the country.

VIDEO: Untangling America’s tax laws isn’t for the meek. Nearly all US taxpayers can agree that US tax law, which runs tens of thousands of pages, is an incredibly complicated, annoying mess. But what lawmakers can’t agree on is how to fix the problem.

Immigrants in Detroit helped revive the state’s economy while also shoring up the city’s declining population after the 2008 recession, according to new research. A nonprofit that looks to attract international investment and business in southeast Michigan says that, in just eight months, the Trump administration’s immigration policies and rhetoric have cost the state big-time.

Until recently, many in Mosul believed tales of surviving Islamic State militants were false. More than two months after government forces re-took Mosul, ordinary people sneak into the Old City to try to recover their belongings, while Iraqi forces continue going house by house searching for bombs. VOA reports from Mosul, where this past weekend, Iraqi forces found Islamic State militants waiting for them.

It’s complicated. Long-simmering tensions between Ethiopia’s Oromia and Somali regions along the border have led to hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of displacements. The border, which holds great symbolic power tied to identity, has been the scene of clashes for more than 25 years, dating back to the formation of Ethiopia’s unique brand of ethnic federalism.

VIDEO: The future looks bleak for Rohingya refugees in India after New Delhi announced plans to deport 40,000 of the Myanmar natives who left their home country to avoid persecution. VOA visits a displacement camp in New Delhi and finds people in despair about having no safe place to call home.