Hotels offer congee and other Chinese staples for room service. Casinos train staff members on Chinese etiquette. Restaurants, tourist sights and shopping malls translate signs, menus and information booklets into Mandarin. The American hospitality industry is stepping up efforts to make Chinese visitors feel more welcome, since they are projected …
Friday marked the end of the week, the month and the first fiscal quarter of 2017. The first-quarter statistics were pretty impressive with the NASDAQ Composite delivering the best return of the three main indices of nearly 10 percent as the index broke through another record high on Friday, led …
Snap Inc. said Friday that its Snapchat messaging app would add an option for users to search through photos and videos that users have posted to the public. The move came days after larger rival Facebook Inc. stepped up efforts to encourage users to take more photos and edit them …
The White House says it will share financial information about some top staff members on its website late Friday. President Donald Trump, a billionaire New York businessman, has hired some of the wealthiest people to ever serve in government. Their financial assets must be detailed in documents accessible to the …
Boris Kiknadze, chief executive of Pawwwn, took a deep breath as he looked out to the crowd of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and began his pitch. With just 10 minutes to speak, Kiknadze rapidly described his business idea — Pawwwn, an online payment and management system to make transactions easier …
Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Facebook’s Oculus virtual-reality business, is leaving the company. Facebook didn’t give a reason for Luckey’s departure. His last day is Friday. Luckey, who is 24, is leaving Facebook in the heels of controversies. Earlier this year, a federal jury found that Oculus, Luckey and co-founder …
Researchers in a pilot clinical trial have made it possible for a paralyzed man to move his arm. As Bronwyn Benito reports, it is a critical step toward restoring mobility to people with paralysis. …
Hundreds of ships are switching off their tracking devices and taking unexplained routes, raising concern the trafficking of arms, migrants and drugs is going undetected. Ninety percent of the world’s trade is carried by sea. Every vessel has an identification number administered by the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization or …
Hundreds of ships are switching off their tracking devices and taking unexplained routes, raising concern that the trafficking of arms, migrants and drugs is going undetected. New technology enables authorities to follow the routes of suspect vessels, but security experts say taking on the smugglers will require greater coordination. Henry …
Zambia is attempting to convert the nation to energy-saving light emitting diode (LED) lightbulbs to help plug crippling power shortages that have hit mining and agriculture and imposed daily rationing on parts of the country. If all homes and industries switch to the longer-lasting bulbs, the country could save up …
The White House on Thursday defended a bill recently passed by Congress to repeal Obama-era internet privacy protections, saying the move was meant to create a fair playing field for telecommunication companies. White House spokesman Sean Spicer, during a Thursday news briefing, reiterated President Donald Trump’s support for the plan …
In a cave in a mountain in western Texas, the Long Now Foundation is building a clock – a big clock, 150 meters tall. The clock will tick only once each year, go bong once a century, and once a millennium, it will send out a cuckoo. Its creators plan …
Twitter has found more creative ways to ease its 140-character limit without officially raising it. Now, the company says that when you reply to someone – or to a group – usernames will no longer count toward those 140 characters. This will be especially helpful with group conversations, where …
A Native American tribe in Montana filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration Wednesday, challenging its decision to lift a moratorium on coal leases on public land without first consulting with tribal leaders. The Northern Cheyenne Tribe, located in southern Montana, said the administration lifted the moratorium without hearing the …
Beijing’s reported economic retaliation against South Korea for deploying the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system continues to target certain sectors, like imports of Korean cosmetics, canceling K-pop concerts, and a ban on Chinese tour groups to South Korea. At Seoul’s Namsam Tower, smaller than usual crowds …
Workplaces have become less civil spaces than they once were. People don’t say please and thank you. Employees send e-mails and texts during meetings, ignoring the speaker and tuning out of the discussion. Others take too much credit for collaborative work. The nasty looks and belittling comments reached a point …
While President Trump’s latest executive order gives renewed life to power plants that burn coal, energy companies continue to seek and find alternative, less expensive and cleaner sources of fuel. One possibility is turning trash into fuel in an environmentally responsible way. VOA’s George Putic reports that authorities in Tel …
Imagine a vaccine vial with a temperature-sensitive label that changes colors when exposed to excessive heat. That’s the sort of technology that can make a huge difference for doctors working in challenging conditions, allowing them to determine at-a-glance whether heat-sensitive vaccines are viable. The vaccine vial monitor is one of …
When he was growing up in Hyderabad, India, Ravindra Sunku, 52, could see and smell the burning kerosene and wood his neighbors used to cook. It stuck in his memory people he knew might have suffered from lung disease caused from what they inhaled by doing something as simple as …
Britain has formally notified Brussels of its intention to leave the European Union, triggering a two-year period of negotiations over its departure and future relations. London financiers are concerned that Britain’s withdrawal from the European Single Market will put the city’s pre-eminence as the continent’s financial hub at risk. As …
South Korean economic reforms, made in part to minimize the impact of a potential international financial crisis, make it a likely target for charges of unfair currency manipulation by the United States. There is growing concern in South Korea and in other emerging markets that the administration of U.S. President …
Westinghouse Electric Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Wednesday, saying it needed to restructure because of “certain financial and construction challenges” from its nuclear power plant projects. The company has struggled with cost overruns and delays with the plants. Parent company Toshiba warned in February it would need to …
The vote by the U.S. Congress to repeal rules that limit how internet service providers can use customer data has generated renewed interest in an old internet technology: virtual private networks, or VPNs. VPNs cloak a customer’s web-surfing history by making an encrypted connection to a private server, which then …
Brazil’s federal police on Tuesday raided a brokerage in Rio de Janeiro which they allege helped launder money for corrupt former executives of state-run oil firm Petrobras, as part of their sprawling “Car Wash” anti-graft probe. Police said they searched the offices of the Advalor Distribuidora de Titulos e Valores …
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is announcing a new venture called Neuralink focused on linking brains to computers. The company plans to develop brain implants that can treat neural disorders — and that may one day be powerful enough to put humanity on a more even footing with possible future superintelligent …
U.S. consumer confidence, home prices, and the trade deficit all improved, according to economic reports published Tuesday. Consumer confidence hit a 16-year high, as consumers said they were more confident about getting or keeping jobs and the economic outlook in general. The Conference Board said its index jumped more than …