Newsletter Archive

VIDEO: Portland, Oregon, is considered one of the friendliest and most laid-back cities in the U.S. But it hasn’t always been this way. About a hundred years ago, Portland was home to a number of criminal gangs that used a sprawling network of underground tunnels and secret passages to kidnap locals and trade in opium.

President Donald Trump’s planned trip Monday to the border city of El Paso, Texas comes days before U.S. government funding is due to lapse once again and as suspense builds over Trump’s vague but persistent threat to declare a national emergency if Congress declines to pay for wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Some 6,000 languages are spoken in the world, and nearly half of them are endangered, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. Wikitongues, a nonprofit in New York City that helps people from around the world preserve native languages that have been disappearing.

VIDEO: Many of the Venezuelans who cross the Simon Bolivar bridge each day between the city of Cucuta in Colombia and the state of Tachira in Venezuela ask, “What’s next?” VOA reports from the Venezuela – Colombia border that more than 50 tons of humanitarian aid has been delivered with no clear path on how to get the food and medicine into Venezuela.

Indonesia’s landmark sexual violence bill, which advocates say would be the first legal basis for cases of sexual abuse in the country, is facing opposition from conservative groups, putting its passage in doubt.