Wednesday, June 5, 2019
The Social Democrats emerged as Denmark's biggest party in elections Wednesday, with preliminary results indicating gains for left-leaning parties and a big loss for populists. If confirmed in final returns, the outcome pointed to the Social Democrats returning to power after four years as the country's leading opposition party. The Social Democrats got about 25.9% of the votes after a campaign in which party leaders vowed a tough stance against...
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Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Ghana could end child labor on cocoa farms by increasing the prices it pays impoverished farmers by about 50%, a U.S. study said on Wednesday, as global efforts to end child labor stall. Paying just 3% more at the farm gate could stop children in Ghana doing the most hazardous tasks, like using machetes, or working more than 42 hours a week, researchers said, as the illegal practice is driven by poverty and rarely prosecuted. "We figured there has to be some kind of incentive, on...
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Wednesday, June 5, 2019
VOA's Nike Ching contributed to this report. WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says progress was made Wednesday in migrant talks between the United States and Mexico, but "not nearly enough." Trump tweeted late Wednesday from Portsmouth, England, that "Mexico and the Democrats in Congress (are) refusing to budge on immigration reform." He again said he would follow through with his promise to impose a 5% tariff on Mexican imports on Monday if no...
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Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Kenyan farmer Abel Mutie Mathoka thought it must be a joke when he was told he could irrigate his drought-hit crops more cheaply, cleanly and efficiently using a pump fueled by cotton waste. “Who could believe it’s possible to make a fuel better than diesel from cotton seeds? I didn’t!” laughed Mathoka, crouching down to inspect the watermelons on his 10-acre (four-hectare) shared plot in Ituri village in Kenya’s southeast Kitui county. “But it works,” he said, walking over to a nearby...
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Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Avicii was so invested and excited about his new album that even on his flight to Oman, where he later died, he was communicating with his producers about different sounds and melodies he wanted to include, and guest artists they should reach out to about collaborating. The Swedish DJ-producer died on April 20, 2018, and months after his family asked Avicii's musical team to complete the unfinished album. For production duo Vargas & Lagola, that wasn't so...
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Wednesday, June 5, 2019
A deep-sea fish can hide its enormous, jutting teeth from prey because its chompers are virtually invisible - until it's too late. What's the dragonfish's secret? The teeth are transparent, and now scientists have discovered how the fish accomplished that trick. Findings were published Wednesday in the journal Matter. The dragonfish is a small predator with jagged, needle-like teeth protruding from a jaw that can extend to bite into prey up to half its body...
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Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday criticized U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to impose tariffs on Mexico as "random dart throwing" that lacks a coherent strategy. Trump unexpectedly told Mexico last week to take a harder line on curbing illegal immigration or face 5% tariffs on all its exports to the United States, rising to as much as 25% later in the year. On Tuesday, Trump said he expected to impose the tariffs as of...
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Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Lazaro Hernandez, who has made a good living showing U.S. cruise ship passengers around Havana in his pink 1950s Chevrolet, says the new U.S. ban on cruises to Cuba will wipe out 90% of his business overnight. Hernandez is one of thousands of Cubans who benefited from the boom in American visitors to the Caribbean’s largest island following the loosening of travel restrictions under former U.S. President Barack Obama during the short-lived 2014-2016 detente between the Cold War...
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Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Two American women accused of joining with the Islamic State terror group, along with their children, are heading back to the United States. Kamal Akif, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria, told VOA the women and six children were turned over U.S. custody Wednesday in the city of Ain Issa. “U.S. government representatives were present today when the transfer of those women and children took place,” he told VOA in a phone interview, adding the...
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Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Joe Biden is under fire from his Democratic presidential rivals and women's rights advocates for his defense of a decades-old prohibition on federal money paying for abortions. Most Democratic White House hopefuls reflect their party's latest platform calling for the outright repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which traces back to a compromise made when Biden was a young Delaware senator in the years after the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling legalized abortion...
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