Новости за 26.04.2017

The Archdiocese of Chicago will pay $4.45 million to settle separate lawsuits brought by three men who allege they were sexually abused over a decade ago by a former Roman Catholic priest and convicted sex offender. Mark Brown, the attorney for the men, told the Chicago Tribune this week that two brothers had reached settlements in late January. They accused Daniel McCormack of sexually abusing them more than once during an after-school program at Our Lady of the Westside Catholic School in the mid-2000s. Читать дальше...

Musician David Byrne, known for his work with the 1980s pop band Talking Heads, wrote an urgent blog post this month. "I just got back from a rally at City Hall," he said, referring to a New York City rally to support arts funding. "I spoke very briefly, making the economic and social argument that arts funding benefits the economy and creates jobs way in excess of the amount invested." Byrne and others at the rally were protesting a budget request by the White House for Congress to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts... Читать дальше...

American universities have long allowed controversial public figures to speak publicly as part of a philosophy that encourages open debate as a means of education. But a series of recent protests appears to indicate shifting attitudes about free speech among today's students. Since February, protests on college campuses like the University of California-Berkeley, Middlebury College, the Claremont colleges and California State University, Los Angeles, have erupted ahead of speeches scheduled by conservative political pundits. Читать дальше...

The president's desire to cut refugees is also costing U.S. jobs. A reduction in refugee resettlement that began after an executive order by President Donald Trump in late January has led to at least 300 layoffs in the U.S. nonprofit sector and nearly 500 positions abroad, according to data collected by VOA. In some cases, the jobs slashed were held by resettled refugees. A review of news releases, media reports, and information obtained from a survey sent by VOA to the nine primary resettlement... Читать дальше...

Scientists have developed a compound that both cured and prevented malaria in animals.  They say the experimental drug even is effective against resistant strains of the mosquito-borne parasite.   If the experimental treatment pans out in humans, it could be a huge breakthrough in the treatment and prevention of malaria, a disease that strikes an estimated 200 million people each year.   The parasitic illness is responsible for about 425,000 deaths annually, most of them children in sub-Saharan Africa. Читать дальше...

Dee Young remembers April 29, 1992, the way most Americans of a certain age recall Sept. 11 — it's indelibly etched in his memory as the day his world and that of thousands of others changed forever. The 27-year-old tow-truck driver had stopped for a hamburger at a popular South Los Angeles fast-food joint that afternoon when he saw hordes of shouting, angry people carrying armloads of booze from a liquor store next door. He soon learned he was witnessing the beginning of one of the worst race riots in American history... Читать дальше...

Hawaii's attorney general has a little civics lesson for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions: Even the president isn't infallible. Sessions made headlines recently when he mocked a Hawaii judge's decision that struck down the revised travel ban to the U.S. for citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries. "I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power," Sessions said. Читать дальше...

Japanese Chefs learning French cuisine

The World Bank is distancing itself from reports that it has given a grant to the government of South Sudan worth tens of millions of dollars. A World Bank spokesperson in Ethiopia told VOA's South Sudan in Focus on Wednesday that the bank had proposed to donate $50 million  to U.N. aid agencies combating famine and food insecurity, but that those funds were still pending approval from the board. Finance Minister Stephen Dhieu Dau told Reuters on Monday that the government had signed a deal with... Читать дальше...

Just weeks after a public relations nightmare for United Airlines, there could be another headache for the company. The airline is investigating the death of a giant rabbit that appears to have died in the cargo hold on a trans-Atlantic flight from England to the United States. The owner of the rabbit, breeder Annette Edwards of England, told the Associated Press that the rabbit had been checked by a veterinarian prior to the flight from London's Heathrow to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The... Читать дальше...

A new study says a low-cost and widely available drug could save the lives of one in three mothers who would otherwise bleed to death after childbirth. The global trial of more than 20,000 women also found the drug reduced the need for urgent surgery to control bleeding, such as a hysterectomy, by more than one-third. VOA's Henry Ridgwell reports from London.

Shaka Ssali discusses Zimbabwe’s 37th anniversary and politics with Blessing Zulu, a VOA Zimbabwe Service Reporter, Mooya Lynn Nyaundi, Zimbabwe Human Rights Attorney, Gadzira Chirumanzu, Zanu-PF Director for Technology, and Nick Mangwana, Zanu-PF UK Chairperson.

A look at the best news photos from around the world.

Flying High Over Water

The tribal region in northwest Pakistan has experienced an escalation in militant activities in the first quarter of 2017, a report by a Pakistani research center says. FATA Research Center, a non-governmental group in Islamabad, reported a spike of 72 percent in activities by militants and Pakistani security forces in the semiautonomous tribal region, also called the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) during the past three months.   According to the report, 119 violent attacks were documented... Читать дальше...

Up to this day in 1954 in American history, even a president of the United States, later President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, could be struck down by the debilitating effects of paralysis that is the signature of poliovirus.  The irony is that very few Americans perceived Roosevelt as “handicapped,” according to presidential historians. On April 26, 1954, hopes were high at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia, where an ambitious effort to test a polio vaccine was taking place. Читать дальше...

Donald Trump was sworn-in as president of the United States three months ago — on January 20, 2017. On Saturday, April 29, reporters, the general public, and Trump himself will mark his first 100 days in office. But many Americans and people overseas may be wondering: what is so special about a president’s first 100 days? The short answer is that nothing is very special about it. A president’s term is four years, or 1,461 days. So 100 days is just a small percentage of that time. In fact... Читать дальше...

Lawmakers from both the Senate and the House of Representatives received separate extraordinary classified briefings by the administration of President Donald Trump Wednesday. Those attending were able to ask questions of the president's national security team and learn about the "broad range of options to remove this threat" from North Korea, which a senior administration official also described as "very grave" posed by the brutal and unpredictable Kim Jong Un regime. All 100 senators gathered... Читать дальше...

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Rod Rosenstein, a 52-year-old career prosecutor, as the next deputy attorney general, effectively putting him in charge of the Russia hacking investigations. Rosenstein’s nomination was confirmed with a vote of 94-6 on Tuesday. The six Senators voting against Rosenstein were all Democrats. As the No. 2 Justice Department official, Rosenstein will be in charge of the department's day-to-day operations and oversee the investigations of Russian meddling in U.S. elections. Читать дальше...

India’s plans to invest in a strategic port in Sri Lanka as a counterbalance to China’s massive infrastructure investments in the Indian Ocean island country got a push Wednesday as Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe visited New Delhi. China’s development of the key Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, which is a gateway to crucial shipping lanes, has raised concerns in New Delhi about Beijing’s widening naval influence in its neighborhood. In New Delhi, India and Sri Lanka signed a memorandum... Читать дальше...

Israel and the White House are in preliminary discussions about a visit to Israel by U.S. President Donald Trump as early as next month, an Israeli government official said on Wednesday. A Trump visit would mark an early personal engagement by the new Republican president in efforts to resolve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Trump in the White House in February, one of the first foreign leaders to do so after the wealthy businessman took office in January... Читать дальше...

A South African pact with Russia's Rosatom to build nuclear reactors was deemed unlawful by a High Court on Wednesday, casting fresh doubt over the country's energy plans. Operator of Africa's only nuclear power station, Eskom wants to add 9,600 megawatts (MW) of nuclear capacity — equivalent to up to 10 nuclear reactors — to help wean the economy off of polluting coal in what could one of the world's biggest nuclear contracts in decades. South Africa and Russia signed an Intergovernmental Agreement... Читать дальше...

Researchers at U.S. antivirus firm McAfee say the cyberattacks that have hit Saudi Arabia over the past few months are continuing, revealing new details about an unusually disruptive campaign. Speaking ahead of the blog post 's publication Wednesday, McAfee chief scientists Raj Samani said the latest intrusions were very similar, albeit even worse, to the malicious software that wrecked computers at Saudi Arabia's state-run oil company in 2012. "This campaign was a lot bigger," Samani said. "Way... Читать дальше...

Ten trucks carrying much-needed food for Burundi are back in Rwanda's capital after authorities denied entry at the border, citing security concerns. The World Food Program in Burundi says the trucks, carrying 300 tons of beans to feed Congolese refugees and other WFP recipients, were stopped at the border last Friday and returned Tuesday to the Rwandan capital, Kigali. Police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye defended the decision to deny entry, saying Rwanda has been the source of crime and "insecurity" for Burundi since 2015. Читать дальше...

Turkish warplanes hit Kurdish militant targets in northern Iraq on Wednesday and killed six militants, the military said, in a second day of cross-border raids. A military statement said the air strikes targeted the Zap region, the Turkish name for a river which flows across the Turkish-Iraqi border and is known as Zab in Iraq. The air strikes hit "two hiding places and one shelter, and killed six separatist terrorist organization militants who were understood to be preparing an attack," the statement said. Читать дальше...