Newsletter Archive

Olympic mettle: A Ghana-born teenager is set to become the first black woman to represent the United States in speedskating at the Olympics. After Maame Biney immigrated to the US at the age of 5, her father signed her up for skating lessons to burn off some energy. Biney proved to be a natural, and at the age of 17, is heading to the 2018 Winter Games as the youngest speedskater on the US team.

Candidate Donald Trump trumpeted an ‘America first’ approach to governing and often railed against US military intervention. But Pentagon data suggests that, as president, Trump has sent more US troops to conflict zones, dropped more bombs on Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, and expanded a global campaign of targeted drone killings. Is Trump’s foreign policy less interventionist than his predecessors, or more hawkish?

Uninvited guests. Chinese authorities are launching a new program that requires local civil servants to spend a week with Uighur families in rural areas. While the home visits are being officially touted as a way to promote ethnic harmony, the move is widely seen as stepped-up surveillance of the Muslim minority in Xinjiang.

Nigerian refugees — mostly women — fleeing Boko Haram are hammering and stitching their way to self-sufficiency. VOA visits the Minawao camp in northern Cameroon, where refugees are training to become carpenters and seamstresses. It’s part of a UN program to uphold the social and economic standing of refugees through education and vocational training. A majority of the carpenters and seamstresses are mothers.

Social media is the latest tool against gender violence in Nigeria. Amadi Onyekachi, who says she was sexually assaulted by a Nigerian police officer, initially believed she’d never get justice. In Lagos, VOA discovers that Onyekachi quickly learned how powerful social media can be after taking to Instagram to express her outrage.