A capacity crowd welcomed Croatia’s Ambassador to the United States Pjer Simunovic at a presentation on the value of cultural and educational exchanges for both the United States and partnering nations worldwide. He was joined by a panel of experts gathered for a First Monday Forum event March 2 at the George Washington University School…
Syria’s nine-year-long civil war has largely disappeared from the world’s headlines, but what of the more than estimated 1,000,000 survivors still seeking to flee from Bashar al-Assad’s ruined land? Many of them have been pushed into a narrow strip of land bordering Syria’s sealed northern border with Turkey by Assad’s forces and his Russian and…
After a comprehensive survey, VOA veteran analyst Matthew Baise reports that the nation’s largest publicly-funded network has attracted more than 7.8 million page views on the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus in China and other countries since January 18. According to Baise, the Voice’s coverage “has been diverse, tailored to target audiences, and highly successful.” …
As of February 17 the Coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, had killed 1,868 people in the Peoples Republic, according to the PRC National Health Commission. Chinese state television reported that Liu Zhiming, the director of the Wuhan hospital specifically assigned to deal with Corona, has succumbed to the virus, the seventh health worker there to…
In six days, February 3-8, there have been two successful relief flights for critically injured Yemenis in a devastating civil conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people. These are the first such civilian evacuations since 2016 in the five-year-long war. On February 3, eight seriously wounded patients and their families were airlifted to Egypt…
A capacity crowd attended Dr. Joseph Nye’s Walter Roberts Endowment lecture on January 28 at George Washington University’s School of International Affairs in Washington. He shared the stage with Tara Sonenshine, former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, who asked penetrating questions preceding those from the audience of diplomats and students attracted by the…
That pithy reminder popped out near the conclusion of a January 23 public hearing as the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (ACPD) issued its 70th annual report on the fine art many P.D. specialists spend their lives fostering —effective international dialogues and exchanges here and abroad: genuine two-way communication in many forums. Three members…
After the first dozen days of the New Year, events in the Middle East appeared to be deteriorating daily in a procession of grim setbacks. Can this be reversed in the second dozen days of a new decade? There appears to be no substitute for honest, at times painful dialogue — with other powers informing…
Surveying the world scene as a new year and new decade dawns, many would agree, on the basis of events this past year that there aren’t many rays of hope on the horizon. 2019: —As Middle East Institute President Paul Salem describes the year past: “In the Middle East and North Africa, there were five…
As a 36-year VOA professional who retired at the end of last century, I recall vividly a day when VOA’s then record weekly global audience reached around a hundred million followers. A Voice technician, in a conversation in a Voice corridor, noted an irony in this good news. Referring to the scarce coverage in the U.S.…