At least 200 million girls and women have undergone female genital mutilation in 30 countries. And according to UNICEF, 44 million are girls 14 years old and younger. One group of Kenyan teens is standing up to this archaic so called “right of passage” and offering would be victims a …
How does a former stay-at-home mom become an employee of a tech company that could be worth more than $1 billion? For Ellein Cheng, mom to a 5½- and a 2½-year-old, the answer involved a “returnship.” So-called returnships are internships that target men and women who have been out of …
The lack of women and diversity in the tech industry remains a headline issue, but so-called “returnship” programs are giving companies the chance to tap into a new talent pool — former stay-at-home moms and dads. How do their skills translate in the tech world? VOA’s Tina Trinh explains. …
An estimated 1.7 million people in the U.S do not have a limb, according to Rice University in Houston. While existing prosthetics allow amputees to regain some of their abilities, there are very few devices that provide sensory feedback for the users. Researchers from Rice University, the University of Pisa …
A group of Cambodian girls who recently traveled to California to compete in a mobile app competition offered inspiration for other girls worldwide to consider careers in technology. Their pitch in Silicon Valley wasn’t a bid to be the next billion-dollar company. Instead, they want to help their country with …
A group of young Cambodian girls recently took part in a mobile app competition for girl coders in California. Traveling from their home country to participate in the global competition, their story offers inspiration for other girls around the world to consider a career in tech. VOA’s Sophat Soeung reports …
They are being booted off or locked out of their websites. Some can no longer blog. Their electronic payment systems are being canceled. Even their music can’t be heard. For some white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, operating online has become much harder in the wake of last week’s “Unite the …
A U.S. researcher says she has developed automated ways to identify links between online sex trafficking ads and the digital currency Bitcoin, techniques that may help locate children being sold for sex. Law enforcement and anti-trafficking groups could use the methods to investigate Backpage.com, an online classified advertising site where …
From the sky over occupied Europe to an elephants stable in India and to its final resting place in an air museum in England, this was the 100-year journey for one of the world’s first strategic bombers. And the last part was the most astonishing because the planes’ remains, found …
Silicon Valley joined a swelling backlash against neo-Nazi groups in the United States on Wednesday as more technology companies removed white supremacists from their services in response to weekend violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Social media networks Twitter and LinkedIn, music service Spotify and security firm CloudFlare were among the companies …
Thousands upon thousands of cans are filled with beer, capped and washed, wrapped into six-packs, and boxed at dizzying speeds — 1,500 a minute, to be exact — on humming conveyor belts that zip and wind in a sprawling factory near Tokyo. Nary a soul is in sight in this …
Ireland’s finance minister rejected the European Commission’s demand that it retroactively collect 13 billion euros in taxes from Apple, saying this was not Dublin’s job in an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) newspaper. In the interview, extracts from which the FAZ published on Wednesday, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said …
Technology companies, such as Microsoft and Cisco Systems, have ramped up lobbying ahead of talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, looking to avoid any future restrictions on cloud storage and to promote an international pact to eliminate technology goods tariffs. U.S., Mexican and Canadian negotiators are due …
Drones, small flying machines with cameras mounted on them, have become easily accessible to consumers. Scientists, police and businesses have found often lifesaving uses for drones, but these relatively low-cost machines can also be weaponized. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from a recent Chemical Sector Security Summit in Houston on the …
The internet domain registration of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer was revoked twice in less than 24 hours in the wake of the weekend violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, part of a broad move by the tech industry in recent months to take a stronger hand in policing online hate speech …
Synthetic polymers, primarily plastics, are used to make a host of items, from paint to plastic bottles to sunglasses and DVDs. Imagine what could be created with a plastic that can be made to shimmy, and even crawl. Now a new polymer has been developed that actually walks like a …
The web hosting company GoDaddy said on Sunday it had given The Daily Stormer 24 hours to move its domain to another provider after the extremist web site posted an article denigrating the woman who was killed at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. “We informed The Daily Stormer that …
Scientists from U.S. and Britain have found four planets, slightly larger than Earth, orbiting a star visible with a naked eye. Using a technique so sensitive that it can measure tiny changes in the light emitted by stars, scientists at University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Hertfordshire …
Some countries depend heavily on fossil fuels for power, including the Philippines. But now a kind of solar energy “flower” is among the clean power alternatives there. The Smartflower can produce 40 percent more energy than a traditional rooftop solar design. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us more about it. …
Around the world, support is growing for electric cars. Automakers are delivering more electric models with longer range and lower prices, such as the Chevrolet Bolt and the Tesla Model 3. China has set aggressive targets for electric vehicle sales to curb pollution; some European countries aim to be all-electric …
U.S. electric car manufacturer Tesla is close to testing a long-haul self-driving electric truck that could drive in convoys following a lead vehicle. The company is reportedly also in contact with Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles about the possibility of testing the truck on the state’s roads. Earlier this year …
Google’s workforce needs to “represent the world in totality,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, at an international girls coding competition held on the company’s campus here Thursday night. His comments come as the search engine giant grapples with a high profile internal debate over the number and influence of …
Researchers in the United States have unveiled a prototype of a battery-free mobile phone using technology they hope will eventually be integrated into mass-market products. The phone is the work of a group of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and operates by harvesting tiny amounts of power …
Artificial intelligence robots are turbocharging the race to find new drugs for the crippling nerve disorder ALS, commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease. The condition attacks and kills nerve cells controlling muscles, leading to weakness, paralysis and, ultimately, respiratory failure. There are only two drugs approved by the U.S. Food and …
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis kicked off his first official visit to the U.S. technology industry on Thursday with a tour of Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, the first stop on a two-day outreach campaign intended to highlight the Pentagon’s commitment to tech innovation. Mattis was scheduled to visit Mountain View, …
A hundred teenage girls from seven countries are gathered in Malawi for a ‘Women in Science’ camp. Lameck Masina has the story from the Malawi University of Science and Technology in the Thyolo district of southern Malawi. …