Новости за 07.07.2023

Just one day after its launch, Threads, the latest social media network, was blocked by the Islamic Republic, denying access to the Iranian population. This action occurred even though an account had been created for Iran President Ebrahim Raisi on the platform. On Thursday afternoon, Raisi's user account, under the address raisi.ir, was established on Threads. Within a few hours, by Friday noon, he had garnered 27,000 followers. He has yet to make any posts, apparently because the Presidential... Читать дальше...

Kenyan police have used tear gas on opposition-led protesters, who were demonstrating Friday against tax hikes, including the doubling of a tax on fuel. Thousands of protesters marched through streets in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, and other towns, demanding the state abolish recently hiked taxes. They carried placards that read “Tumechoka,” which means “We are tired” in Swahili. Gacheke Gachihi, the coordinator of the Mathare Social Justice center that co-organized the protest, said the bill had a huge impact on people. Читать дальше...

JUBA, SOUTH SUDAN - As fighting in Sudan enters its third month, the Sudanese military leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has reiterated his call for young people to take up arms against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. Some citizens see the call as a national duty.    “People have the right to take up arms, so they are able to defend themselves and their country," said Abdulazeem Ishaaq, a Sudanese citizen in Khartoum. Ishaaq told VOA he had encouraged his son Mohammed, 32, to join... Читать дальше...

WASHINGTON - When President Macky Sall announced in a televised address Monday that he would not seek a third term, democracy advocates and opposition supporters in the country celebrated. Senegal’s 61-year-old president said the country “is bigger than” he is and is “full of leaders equally capable of pushing the country toward emergence.” Sall’s supporters, like Saidibou Sy, a Dakar resident, said the president made the right call. “If he [Sall] had decided to serve a third term, it would have... Читать дальше...

VOA Connect Episode 286 - The progression of electric vehicles and the growing presence of women in the automotive industry.

The Tesla Roadster, known as the car that sparked the electric automobile revolution, is now a collector’s item with an extremely passionate fan base. Learn more about the history and evolution of the vehicle recounted by one collector. Reporter | Camera | Editor: Jeff Swicord

Virginia Tire & Auto (VTA), a company with a rich history spanning 46 years, stands as one of the largest women-owned businesses in the DC area. Find out how Co-CEO, Julia Homes is leading the company’s efforts to attract more women to join their ranks. Reporter: Faiza Elmasry, Camera | Producer | Editor: June Soh

This week we look at the beauty of an urban forest nestled in Washington D.C. Camera | Editor: Linus Manchester

Washington hopes to rally Southeast Asian nations to take tougher action against Myanmar's military junta and to push back on China's actions in the South China Sea as top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken heads to the region for meetings next week, a State Department official said on Friday. Secretary of State Blinken will travel to Indonesia to participate in a meeting of foreign ministers from the ASEAN regional bloc after he joins President Joe Biden in the United Kingdom and in Lithuania for NATO meetings from Sunday to Wednesday. Читать дальше...

India’s federal crime agency Friday said it has arrested three railway officials in connection with one of the country’s deadliest train accidents that killed more than 290 people last month. The arrested men have been charged with culpable homicide without murder and destruction of evidence, a statement from the Central Bureau of Investigation said. The statement identified them as two signal engineers and one technician, and said the investigation is ongoing. June’s train crash in eastern Odisha... Читать дальше...

Security officials in Kenya said at least 23 al-Shabab fighters were killed by Kenyan Special forces during the ambush in Orgene village, in Mandera County in northeast Kenya. Six Kenyan soldiers were killed during the encounter that left eight others injured. The incident comes just a day after the country’s security minister Kithure Kindiki vowed to flush militants from Kenyan territories while on a security tour of the country’s northeast. “There is an increasing tendency of terrorists to... Читать дальше...

While diplomatic efforts to resolve the border dispute that prompted a deadly 2020 clash between China and India make little progress, China and to a lesser extent India are moving ahead with the construction of military infrastructure to reinforce their respective claims. Satellite imagery spanning a six-month period which ended in April shows a well-established presence on the Chinese side of the loosely defined Line of Actual Control that serves as a de facto border between the countries in the disputed Himalayan region of Aksai Chin. Читать дальше...

The Russian authorities proved incapable of preventing Wagner from capturing two large cities and marching 800 km toward Moscow.

Students can pay tuition, build their resumes and pursue their passions with “passive income” generated without a formal job. (Work requirements vary by country, so double-check before you start.) Ashreena Kaur of Study International lays out several options, from freelance translation to stock photography. (June 2023)

Female leaders of the Fulani, an ethnic group of mostly nomadic herders across West Africa and the Sahel, say women can play a vital role in reducing long-running friction with farming communities. In this report from Lake Chad, reporter Henry Wilkins meets women making digital maps to establish boundaries between the two communities.

Officials in Cameroon say vaccine hesitancy is preventing them from inoculating millions of children for childhood diseases in the first major campaign since the COVID-19 pandemic began.  The country has an outbreak of measles and rubella that has killed 18 children and sickened more than 4,000 this year. The public health ministry said several thousand vaccinators have been dispatched to over 200 hospitals in Cameroon to inoculate more than 5.5 million children against measles and rubella.  ... Читать дальше...

Threads, a text-based app built by Meta to rival Twitter, is live. The app, billed as the text version of Meta's photo-sharing platform Instagram, became available Wednesday night to users in more than 100 countries — including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. Despite some early glitches, 30 million people had signed up before noon on Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads. New arrivals to the platform include celebrities like Oprah, pop star Shakira and chef Gordon Ramsay ... Читать дальше...

Israeli security forces killed two Palestinians Friday in Nablus, the West Bank's commercial capital.  Two militant groups claimed both men as members of their organizations.  Israel’s defense minister praised the operation.  Yoav Gallant said, “There will be no loop that isn't closed and there won't be a terrorist who doesn't pay the heaviest price.” Israel’s operation comes days after Israel carried out a two-day offensive on the Jenin refugee camp, causing extensive damage and killing 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier. Читать дальше...

Six Rohingya refugees were killed in Bangladesh relief camp clashes that broke out hours after an International Criminal Court prosecutor visited the settlements to gather testimony, police said Friday. Bangladesh is home to around a million members of the stateless minority, most of whom fled a 2017 military crackdown in neighboring Myanmar that is now subject to a genocide probe at the UN court. This week's violence was the latest in a series of deadly clashes between the Arakan Rohingya Salvation... Читать дальше...

An overnight fire in a retirement home in Milan killed six people and injured around 80, including three who are in a critical condition, Italian authorities said on Friday. The fire started in a first-floor room of the facility. It was put out quickly and did not spread to the rest of the building, yet produced a vast quantity of toxic fumes. Two residents burned to death in their room, while four others died from intoxication, Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala said, speaking to reporters on the scene. Читать дальше...

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Thursday seized a tanker in the Persian Gulf that is claimed to have been carrying smuggled fuel. Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said Friday a vessel carrying 900 tons of smuggled fuel and a 12-man crew was seized by Revolutionary Guard’s navy patrol under a court order. The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet said in a statement, “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forcibly seized a commercial vessel possibly engaged in smuggling activity.” No further details were immediately available. Читать дальше...

SYDNEY - A Kurdish-Iranian refugee is considering an appeal after unsuccessfully challenging his detention by Australia in hotel rooms for more than a year without access to sunshine and fresh air. The Federal Court of Australia has ruled that while it may not have been humane to detain Mostafa Azimitabar in such conditions, it was legal. Azimitabar sought asylum after sailing by boat to Christmas Island, a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean in 2013. He was held in an Australian-sponsored... Читать дальше...

TAIPEI - It has been eight years since China launched a sweeping crackdown on more than 300 lawyers and human rights defenders on July 9, 2015. For some, the persecution that began with the “709 Crackdown” persists to this day. Over the past couple of months, Wang Quanzhang and his family have been forcefully evicted more than a dozen times from apartments they were trying to rent or from hotels in the Chinese capital, Beijing. In mid-April, police in Beijing arrested and detained prominent human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife... Читать дальше...

HONG KONG — Hong Kong lawmakers on Thursday passed an amendment to a law to eliminate most directly elected seats on local district councils, the last major political representative bodies chosen by the public, shutting down further democratic challenges in the city. The changes include slashing the proportion of directly elected seats in the municipal-level organization being from some 90% currently to just about 20% — even lower than the level when these bodies were first set up in the 1980s, when Hong Kong was ruled by Britain. Читать дальше...

An apparent push by India’s government to consider implementation of the Uniform Civil Code, essentially a common set of personal laws for all Indian citizens, has raised concerns that the ruling party is trying to split society along communal lines. After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last week that the country could not run on the dual system of “separate laws for separate communities” and several media reports suggested the government could soon move for consideration of the implementation of the UCC in Parliament... Читать дальше...