Новости за 08.06.2017

A Frank Lloyd Wright house in Phoenix that the famous architect designed for his son and was saved from demolition by its current owner was donated Thursday to the architecture school that Wright founded. Owner Zach Rawling announced that he is giving the David and Gladys Wright House to the School of Architecture at Taliesin, formerly known as the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. The announcement came on the iconic architect's 150th birthday. Nestled at the base of Camelback Mountain... Читать дальше...

U.S. President Donald Trump has uncharacteristically refrained from making comments about Thursday's congressional testimony by the FBI director he fired a month ago. The president, in a speech a few kilometers from the White House and on his favorite social media platform, made no reference to James Comey, who accused Trump of removing him from his job to undermine the FBI's investigation into suspected collusion between Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign team and Russia. The president... Читать дальше...

Benin is hiring scores of extra park rangers and bringing in conservation scientists to rehabilitate a part of West Africa's largest wildlife reserve, which contains big cats and thousands of elephants that have largely died out elsewhere in the region. The W-Arli-Pendjari (WAP) complex is the region's biggest remaining expanse of savannah, covering more than 30,000 sq km of Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso. The tiny nation has partnered with NGO African Parks for the 10-year project centred on the 4,800 sq km Pendjari National Park... Читать дальше...

Criticized globally for its treatment of migrant workers, the United Arab Emirates is on track to improve conditions for domestic staff with a proposed new law praised by human rights organizations on Thursday. A new bill, passed by the Federal National Council on May 31 and now awaiting presidential approval, will give domestic workers 30 days paid vacation a year, one day off a week, medical insurance, and a contract before starting work. The UAE relies heavily on migrant labor with an estimated... Читать дальше...

U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces gained ground Thursday against Islamic State in Raqqa neighborhoods — two days after their monthslong march broke through into the city limits of IS's self-proclaimed capital. VOA's Mahmoud Bali reports.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker urged the Czech Republic on Thursday to reconsider its decision to stop accepting migrants under an EU plan to share asylum seekers who arrived in Greece and Italy. The central European country only took in 12 people out of its quota of 2,691 under the scheme to relocate 160,000 migrants from the EU's southern fringe. The government, which faces an election in October with the majority of the electorate opposed to accepting migrants, agreed on Monday to suspend the program entirely. Читать дальше...

The biggest wind farm in sub-Saharan Africa is ready for launch but will remain idle until next year as Kenya's government has not yet installed the transmission lines needed to get the clean power to customers, the provider of the turbines said. Danish wind turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems installed 365 turbines at Lake Turkana in the hot desert north of the east African country in March, completing construction two months ahead of schedule. The project, which the government says will produce around 300 megawatts (MW) of power... Читать дальше...

Losing the 2016 presidential election was “pretty devastating, especially considering who I lost to,” Hillary Clinton told graduates of Medgar Evers College on Thursday.   But Clinton said that setback “pales in comparison” to the heartbreak endured by Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of the slain black civil rights leader for whom the Brooklyn college is named.   Clinton urged the graduates to follow the example of Evers, who was assassinated in 1963, and of Evers-Williams, who has continued... Читать дальше...

Brazil's top electoral court on Thursday excluded testimony of engineering company executives from an illegal campaign funding trial against President Michel Temer, a move that suggested it would throw out a case that had threatened to unseat him. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal voted 4-3 to exclude plea-bargain testimony of Odebrecht SA executives after chief judge Gilmar Mendes said any ruling had to consider the stability of the country and Temer should not be compelled to step down for a minor reason. Читать дальше...

Hungary will modify proposed legislation on nongovernmental organizations that get foreign funding to address objections by the Council of Europe, the government said Thursday, backtracking on some elements of the controversial bill. Under a bill drafted by right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government, NGOs with foreign donations of at least 7.2 million forints ($26,207.55) would have to register with the authorities and declare themselves as foreign-funded. The government said the aim was to ensure greater transparency. Читать дальше...

Qatar-based Al Jazeera News Network reported repeated cyberattacks on all of their media platforms Thursday. "Al Jazeera media platforms under cyberattack. Entire Doha-based network undergoing 'continual hacking attempts'," the network tweeted. Sources at the network also confirmed the attacks to reporters, and viewers in the region said they could no longer view Al Jazeera television. The alleged cyberattacks come at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions in the region. On Monday, Saudi Arabia... Читать дальше...

Islamic State claimed Thursday that it had killed two captive Chinese nationals in southwestern Pakistan. The Chinese language instructors, a man and a woman, were kidnapped at gunpoint two weeks ago from Quetta, the capital of violence-hit Baluchistan province. A second Chinese woman accompanying them escaped the abduction while the gunmen were trying to force them in a vehicle. There had been no claims of responsibility until Thursday, when the Syria-based terrorist group's global media outlet... Читать дальше...

Computer games such as Minecraft teach Syrian children new language and coding skills and boost morale in refugee camps, according to new research. "Play is a universal way of learning," said Bruce Homer, an associate professor of educational psychology at the City University of New York. "In taking a game-based and playful approach to learning, we created an intervention that was not only effective, but also one in which the children were engaged and wanted [to] continue doing," he said in a statement. Читать дальше...

A northern Nigerian state's governor on Wednesday ordered the arrest of activists for demanding the eviction of eastern Igbo people, amid rising tensions between ethnic groups that hark back to the country's Biafra civil war. Secessionist feeling has simmered in Nigeria's east since the Biafra separatist rebellion, a mainly Christian Igbo movement, tipped the country into a civil war from 1967 to 1970 that killed an estimated 1 million people. Since 2015, those sentiments have heightened, spurred... Читать дальше...

Children evacuated from the Philippines town of Marawi, where fighting has raged since Islamist militants seized it two weeks ago, are drawing pictures of their harrowing experiences as a form of therapy. Some 300 children were taken to the village of Pantar, just to the north of Marawi where government forces have used ground assaults and airstrikes against the fighters linked to Islamic State. Teachers at Pantar's elementary school said they were providing counseling to the Marawi children... Читать дальше...

A United Nations watchdog committee has found the United States in violation of treaty obligations aimed at protecting children in armed conflict, and preventing the sale and trafficking of children. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, which monitors implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, completed a three-week examination of the United States and seven other countries. The U.S. is the only country in the world that is not party to the convention. However, it has ratified... Читать дальше...

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

Indonesia, the world’s biggest archipelago has called for the United Nations to establish illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, known under its acronym of IUUF, as a transnational crime. The proposal has the support of the president of the U.N. General Assembly but there’s still a long way to go before member countries adopt it. Patsy Widakuswara reports from the U.N. headquarters in New York.

Poaching and wildlife trafficking have endangered some of Africa’s most iconic species and the loss of the animals has cost African countries critical tourism revenue. But at least one national park is getting a second chance. Liwonde National Park in southern Malawi has just welcomed some new inhabitants – four cheetahs relocated there from South Africa courtesy of the nonprofit African Parks group. Park rangers lured the first cheetah out into its new home with a fresh carcass. It's the first... Читать дальше...

The U.S. job market is getting stronger, according to Labor Department data published Thursday. The number of Americans signing up for unemployment assistance fell by 10,000, to a nationwide total of 245,000. Experts say readings below 300,000 indicate a healthy job market, where layoffs are scarce and employers are trying to hang on to workers. Layoffs have been below this key level now for 118 weeks, the longest such stretch since the early 1970s. The U.S. unemployment rate is reported separately... Читать дальше...

Fired FBI Director James Comey says President Donald Trump expected him to pledge his loyalty and urged him to drop the investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn. Comey's nearly three-hour appearance Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee marked his first public comments about the nine conversations he said he had with the president in the months before he was fired. WATCH: Comey on president's request for loyalty Trump ousted Comey last month, saying... Читать дальше...

On this day in 1949, a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation named well-known Hollywood figures as members of the Communist Party, setting off a period of paranoia known as the “Red Scare Two.”  Among those on the report’s list were Frederic March, John Garfield, Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Robeson, and the writer Dorothy Parker. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was cooperating with the House Un-American Activities Committee to find and out so-called Hollywood subversives. In 1947... Читать дальше...

Someday, your immune system may be pressed into service to fight heart disease.  Researchers have discovered that a simple sugar can stimulate immune system “clean up” cells to reduce disease-causing plaque in arteries.   Marcophages are the garbage men of the body.  These immune system cells mop up cellular toxins and debris that are produced through cells' normal functioning. But scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis wondered, what if macrophages could be pressed... Читать дальше...

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the warlord who entered a peace deal with President Ashraf Ghani’s administration, said he would not allow anyone to overthrow the government illegally because efforts to do so would result in Kabul being overrun by Taliban.   “Without an alternative, can we have a result other than the fall of Kabul to the armed insurgents,” he said.     The Hizb-e-Islami leader was responding to the warnings by Salahuddin Rabbani, the country’s foreign minister, that if the government did... Читать дальше...

NATO member nations are united in their stance toward Russia in a way they have not been for many years, says General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg. In an interview with VOA's Jela de Franceschi, Stoltenberg also said NATO is committed to stepping up its defense while at the same time continuing dialogue with Russia.