Newsletter Archive

Countries battling over the South China Sea are putting those real disputes aside to stage a fake one. It’s an attempt to make it less risky to pass ships through the disputed waterway. Beijing claims about 90 percent of the South China Sea, but Southeast Asian nations such as Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam also lay claim to parts of it. The nations have now agreed to send their best military officers to a first-ever joint military exercise in hopes the military leaders will form bonds that will help them resolve conflict if they encounter one another again during a future real clash at sea.

Native American youth are increasingly using social media to counter harmful stereotypes that persist in the media and popular American culture. They’re trying to take control of their own narrative with #DearNonNatives.

QUICK TAKE VIDEO: An historic church in Mosul survived Islamic State. Although IS destroyed all religious symbols, they left the building standing because they had a use for it. Not only did they take cover in the church, they also used it to store explosives. When VOA visited recently, IS suicide vests were still stocked in the Church of the Virgin Mary.

Refugee families are paying it forward in the US state of Maryland. They want to repay the kindness they received when they first came in the United States. The refugees gathered recently to create a new home for refugees who will soon arrive from Ethiopia.

Is it a music event? Entertainment festival? Tech showcase? Musicians, film promoters and tech companies from around the world are gathering in Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest conference and festival. What originally started as a music festival in the 1980s has evolved into an event that is much bigger and harder to define.

VIDEO: Rural women lag behind their urban sisters on many fronts. About 400 million women around the world work in agriculture. Most of us don’t think about farm-working women and it’s that invisibility that makes them vulnerable to exploitation, discrimination and violence.

Yetnebersh Nigussie had opportunities other girls in rural Ethiopia can only dream of. She wasn’t married off as a young girl or forced to work at home. Instead, she devoted herself to learning and eventually earned a law degree. What makes Nigussie’s accomplishments even more impressive are the challenges she’s overcome. She is blind and like an estimated 15 million people in Ethiopia who live with disabilities, faced the possibility of stigmatization, poverty and social isolation.