Новости за 18.05.2017

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the nation's economic growth can rise to 3 percent annually if taxes and regulations are cut. The Treasury secretary spoke Thursday to a Senate committee in his first congressional testimony since he was confirmed in the new job. Mnuchin's boss, Donald Trump, says tax and regulatory reform will boost the economy, and he made the promise of such changes a key part of his campaign for president. Recently, annual economic growth has been at 2 percent or lower... Читать дальше...

The United Nations said Thursday that up to 200,000 more people might flee Mosul as Iraqi forces push into the last districts held by Islamic State militants. Iraqi authorities and aid agencies are already struggling to cope with a surge in displacement since security forces opened a new front against the militants in Mosul this month. Backed by a U.S.-led coalition, Iraqi forces have dislodged IS from all but about 12 square kilometers (five square miles) of the city and are seeking to claim... Читать дальше...

Two-thirds of those caught up in the past week's global ransomware attack were running Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system without the latest security updates, a survey for Reuters by security ratings firm BitSight found. Researchers are struggling to try to find early traces of WannaCry, which remains an active threat in hardest-hit China and Russia, believing that identifying "patient zero" could help catch its criminal authors. They are having more luck dissecting flaws that limited its spread. Читать дальше...

Scientists have discovered a possible cure for all five known Ebola viruses, one of which ravaged West Africa in recent years. The so-called broadly neutralizing antibodies were discovered in the blood of a survivor of the West African epidemic, which ran from late 2013 to mid-2016. The deadly virus killed more than 11,000 people of the nearly 29,000 who became infected in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Ebola got its name from the first documented outbreak, which occurred along the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo... Читать дальше...

With the United States accusing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government of mass killings of prisoners and use of a crematorium to burn the bodies, human rights advocates said the negotiations in Geneva this week on the Syria crisis should make detainee conditions a priority. United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has been meeting separately with Syrian government and opposition delegations this week during the latest round of talks, hoping to bridge gaps between the rival sides... Читать дальше...

Assailants attacked gay and transgender rights activists and torched a rainbow flag at a small rally in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Law enforcement officials said on May 18 that two police officers were hospitalized after police tried to disperse a group of about 30 assailants in the center of the eastern city. Video footage from the May 17 violence showed young men dressed in black attacking activists and fighting with police officers, one of whom holds his hand to his bloodied head and says he was hit with a rock or a brick. Читать дальше...

Police in Uganda have come under fire for allegedly torturing suspects, with both the president and interior minister publicly recognizing the problem this week and calling for it to end. On March 17, Uganda's assistant inspector general of police was gunned down in Kampala. Five days later, police said they were holding 17 suspects; however, it was a month before those individuals appeared in court. While media was blocked from the proceedings, leaked photos of the inmates appeared to show clear signs of abuse. Читать дальше...

Heavy rain shaped the Martian landscape billions of years ago, according to a new study. According to researchers at the Smithsonian Institution and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, rain on Mars once carved river beds and created valleys much like rain on Earth has, and does. It no longer rains on the Red Planet, and the water that remains is mostly in the form of ice. The rain appears to have slowly changed over time, researchers said, noting that changes in the Martian atmosphere influenced how heavy the rain was... Читать дальше...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday pledged to treat "very seriously" any business dealings President Donald Trump or his family might have with foreign companies flagged by officials as national security risks. Mnuchin did not say any such cases existed. A senior Democrat pressed Mnuchin, in an appearance before senators, to produce a list of the Trump family's business relationships with foreign companies. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee... Читать дальше...

In 1892, Homer Plessy refused to sit in the black section of a passenger train - a violation of Louisiana law. Four years later, Plessy was a plaintiff in a case — Plessy v. Ferguson — that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which on this day, May 18, in 1896, upheld the constitutionality of segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the high court ruled that a state law that “implies... Читать дальше...

President Donald Trump's criticism of a stepped-up Russia probe as a "witch hunt" prompted a sharp reaction from Democrats on Capitol Hill. The president took to Twitter to disparage the appointment of a special counsel with enhanced powers to investigate Russia's meddling in last year's presidential election and any collusion by the Trump campaign, writing, "This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!" The comment did not sit well with Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal. Читать дальше...

Mobs looted shops and fought security forces overnight in Venezuela's restive western region, where three soldiers were being charged on Thursday with the shooting death of a man who was buying diapers for his baby, witnesses said. Six weeks of anti-government unrest have resulted in at least 44 deaths, as well as hundreds of injuries and arrests in the worst turmoil of President Nicolas Maduro's four-year rule of the South American OPEC nation. Protesters are demanding elections to kick out... Читать дальше...

A look at the best news photos from around the world, including Time Square crash, Singapore art installation and Britain Queen's gallery.

The U.S.-led coalition has conducted airstrikes against pro-Syrian government forces near an area where Syria, Jordan and Iraq intersect. A U.S. defense official told VOA Thursday pro-Syrian government forces were operating in an “established deconfliction zone” near al-Tanf border crossing when a coalition commander on the ground deemed the force a threat to his troops. The coalition-backed troops used “shows of force and warning shots” to try to get the pro-Syrian government force to move out of the area, according to the official. Читать дальше...

Colon cancer patients who adopt a healthy lifestyle after treatment could potentially reduce their risk of death from a recurrence by more than 40 percent, according to new research. The findings were released ahead of a conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the world's largest organization of clinical cancer professionals. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco analyzed data gathered in a prospective study of 1,000 advanced, stage III colon cancer patients... Читать дальше...

Kaveh Rastegari's desire for more freedoms and Ghorban Norouzi's worries about money illustrate the fault lines in Iranian society expected to sway a tightly fought presidential election on Friday. After an unexpectedly close race between President Hassan Rouhani, the pragmatic incumbent, and hardline challenger Ebrahim Raisi, ordinary Iranians on the eve of the vote appeared united only in their weariness with a cheerless status quo. Many voters preoccupied by bread-and-butter issues said they would probably vote for Shi'ite cleric Raisi... Читать дальше...

Retired Army General Michael Flynn, a staunch political surrogate for Donald Trump's election as president and for 24 days his first national security adviser, now is certain to be at the center of a new special prosecutor's investigation of Trump campaign links to Russian interests. The 59-year-old Flynn has already been at the heart of several controversies in Trump's four-month presidency and now will face new scrutiny with the appointment Wednesday of special counsel Robert Mueller, a former... Читать дальше...

Interracial marriages in the United States have jumped more than fivefold in the half-century since the Supreme Court ruled they were legal, making up 17 percent of newlywed couples in 2015, according to a Pew Research Center report on Thursday. The trend has been marked by growing acceptance, with 39 percent of adults in a Pew poll this spring saying that it is good for society, a 15-point increase in seven years, the report said. Among all married Americans, about 10 percent, or 11 million people... Читать дальше...

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration says it has notified Congress it intends to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In a letter sent Thursday to congressional leaders, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the administration plans 90 days of consultations with lawmakers over how to rewrite the agreement followed by negotiations with Canada and Mexico that could begin after August 16. Renegotiation of NAFTA was a key promise of Trump's during his presidential campaign... Читать дальше...

An ongoing measles outbreak in Minnesota has shined a light on the fact many Somali immigrants choose not to vaccinate their children.    According to the Minnesota Department of Health, 63 measles cases have been reported statewide as of May 16, and 53 of those cases were Minnesotans of Somali origin.  Sixty of the reported cases involve individuals confirmed to not be vaccinated. Public health officials blame false rumors that vaccines are linked to autism and other health problems for the... Читать дальше...

After his Oscar-nominated film "Leviathan" was deemed "anti-Russian" by Russia's Minister of Culture, director Andrey Zvyagintsev returned to the Cannes Film Festival with an equally bleak critique of Russian society. Zvyagintsev was to premiere his fourth film, "Loveless," on Thursday in Cannes, where "Leviathan" won best screenplay three years ago. That film, which also won a Golden Globe, was made with Russian state funding and prompted Russia's culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, to refuse... Читать дальше...

Call them the unrecovered — a handful of states where job markets, nine years later, are still struggling back to where they were before the recession. That's true in Mississippi, where job numbers and the overall size of the economy remain below 2008 levels. Unlike states that have long since sprinted ahead, Mississippi is struggling with slow economic growth and slipping population in a place that's rarely at peak economic health. Miguel Brown, despite family ties to his hometown near the Alabama border... Читать дальше...

U.S. officials say they are closely following Ukraine’s order blocking access to a number of Russian websites in the latest round of sanctions over Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea.   The U.S. State Department has not taken an official position on the matter. However a U.S. official on background told VOA that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's recent decision to cut access to several popular Russian websites, such as search engine Yandex, for three years, undermines Kyiv's constitutionally enshrined right to free expression. Читать дальше...

Cuba said on Thursday 1,847 residents had so far contracted the mosquito-borne Zika virus, warning that certain provinces on the Caribbean island still had high rates of infestation despite a series of measures to stave off the epidemic. At the start of the global Zika outbreak, Cuba managed for months to fend off the virus that can cause microcephaly in babies as well as Guillain-Barre syndrome, even as neighboring territories like Puerto Rico were hard hit. The Communist-run country called out the military to help fumigate... Читать дальше...

China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to a framework for a code of conduct in the South China Sea, a development that could ease tensions in the disputed waters. China's foreign ministry said senior officials from ASEAN and China agreed to the framework that establishes guidelines for a final agreement.  The terms were reached at a meeting in the southwestern province of Guizhou.   China claims ownership of nearly all of the South China Sea, believed to be the source of vast oil and gas deposits... Читать дальше...