Newsletter Archive

There’s a new barrier along the southern border of Afghanistan. VOA tours the robust fence that Pakistan’s military is installing along the entire 2,600-kilometer length of its border with Afghanistan to prevent militants from entering the country. Afghanistan isn’t happy about the project, in part because Kabul doesn’t accept the colonial-era demarcation drawn up by the British more than a century ago.

New legislation in Turkey could lead to more underage marriages, according to women’s groups that have strongly condemned the change. Since Turkey is a secular state, only state officials were previously allowed to perform weddings but the new law lets imams to marry couples. Rights groups argue imams are already carrying out marriages involving underage girls in unofficial religious ceremonies. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is seeking to consolidate his religious voting base ahead of presidential elections, has strongly backed the marriage move.

Unaccompanied minors. A majority of the nearly 600,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims who have fled persecution in Myanmar since late August, are children, and many may have lost their parents in Myanmar or along the way. Camps and makeshift settlements in southern Bangladesh are teeming with children, not all of them attended by adults, in a chaotic situation that makes them vulnerable to abuse.

QUICK TIME VIDEO: Syrian soldiers dance in celebration now that Raqqa is free of Islamic State, but the ruins of the city behind them show the heavy price that came with victory. US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab troops, say they’ve captured the terror group’s former de facto capital, but with most of the city  reduced to rubble and tens of thousands of residents displaced, the path ahead will not be an easy one.

Country music singer Caleb Keeter was against gun control until 58 were killed and more than 500 injured at a Las Vegas music festival where Keeter performed. He’s not alone. From guns to Obamacare and gay marriage, other people often change their minds about an issue when it affects them personally.