Newsletter Archive

More than half of Malawi girls are married off before completing secondary school, but Memory Mdyetseni was determined not to become one of them. After her parents died, relatives pushed Memory to wed at the age of 15. VOA met Memory in Lilongwe, where she not only found the strength to say no, but also went on to build a school that helps other rural girls avoid early marriage as well.

Formerly illegal drugs could soon be prescribed for two hard-to-treat diseases. A marijuana extract along with an ingredient in the party drug ecstasy are on their way to becoming legal medicines in the US and are expected to be used in the treatment of childhood epilepsy and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

President Donald Trump’s travel ban now goes into effect in its entirety — for the first time since the original order was signed last January. The ban, which has been mired in the courts for almost a year, has been rewritten three times by the Trump administration. The third version is the one the Supreme Court ruled on Monday. Here’s what the travel ban says.

A mixture of Mongolian and Central Asian ancestry makes it easy to pick out an ethnic Hazara in Pakistan. That’s made the Shiite Muslim minority a target of some Sunnis in the country. In the last decade, hundreds of Hazaras have been killed in targeted attacks. On a visit to Quetta, VOA learns that government efforts to protect the group are having unintended negative consequences.

For some Maryland high school students, it’s never to early to start planning for their future. They’re participating in a free program that gives them hands-on experience in the health care field. The training takes place outside of school hours at a retirement community and allows the students to explore the real world of nursing.