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President Joe Biden’s decision to not seek reelection has upended the U.S. presidential campaign just days after the opposing Republican Party formally chose Donald Trump as its nominee. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns reports on voters’ reactions to the shifting political landscape. Contributor: Nina Vishneva  Videographer: Michael Eckels

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

The unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S. grew to 11 million in 2022, but remained below the peak of 12.2 million in 2007.

The post What we know about unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. appeared first on Pew Research Center.

In 2022, the number of immigrants living in the U.S. reached a high of 46.1 million, accounting for 13.8% of the population.

The post How the origins of America’s immigrants have changed since 1850 appeared first on Pew Research Center.

In 2022, roughly 10.6 million immigrants living in the U.S. were born in Mexico, making up 23% of all U.S. immigrants.

The post What the data says about immigrants in the U.S. appeared first on Pew Research Center.

Sun Gao started playing table tennis at age five. The four-time Olympian (1992, 2000, 2004, 2008) 1- time Olympic silver medalist is one of the 2024 National Team Coaches for Team USA Table Tennis. Gao is also the Founder of California Table Tennis Club in Rosemead, CA. She continues to excel in table tennis and is Head Coach of US Women’s National Team.

Meet USA Archery Head Coach Kisik Lee. Lee shares his Olympic coaching knowledge across Korea, Australia, and the US. Renowned for innovative techniques, Lee's coaching influences archers worldwide. With the 2024 Paris Olympics approaching, American Olympians, including Brady Ellison, aim for success under Lee's guidance.

In the US, soccer's rise is fueled by renowned global icons of the sport like Beckham and Messi. Now, Belgrade native Marko Mitrović plays a crucial role in cultivating top-tier players and strategic prowess for the U.S. national soccer team. His multilingual skills and attentive leadership, particularly evident during the Phoenix training camp, show his dedication to all players, including those with dual citizenship. Under his guidance, these talents have a unique chance to hone their skills against global elites and vie for Olympic glory.

Misha Itkin, a Ukrainian American fencing coach, is leading Team US Foil Fencing to the 2024 Paris Olympics. From Lviv, Ukraine, Itkin's fencing journey began at age 11, under Soviet training. Now in LA, his International Fencing Center has groomed Olympians like his son Nick Itkin and Miles Chamley-Watson. Witness their path, including the Olympic foil qualifier in Washington D.C.

WASHINGTON — The family of an American doctor who died while being held in Syria filed a lawsuit Monday against the Syrian government, accusing it of wrongful death and false imprisonment.  Majd Kamalmaz, a Syrian-born American psychotherapist, was treating refugees from war-torn Syria during the time of his abduction. U.S. officials said he was last seen in 2017 at a checkpoint manned by forces loyal to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus where he was visiting a family member.   His family received official confirmation of his death from the U.S. government in May.  “Today, on behalf of the Kamalmaz family, we have taken just the first step towards holding the Syrian regime accountable for its crimes against Majd Kamalmaz which culminated in his murder,” Kirby Behre, a lawyer representing the Kamalmaz family, said Monday in a statement.    The lawsuit was filed in a U.S. District Court in Washington, under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act's "state sponsor of terrorism" exception, seeking compensatory damages for wrongful death, assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false imprisonment. The plaintiffs also seek punitive damages, bringing the total claim to at least $70 million, according to the 19-page court complaint.   Maryam Kamalmaz, the daughter of Majd Kamalmaz and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, says she hopes this legal action will help raise awareness about other cases that are like her father’s.  “There are hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have gone through this,” she told VOA in a phone interview. “I’m just hopeful it raises awareness about those people who are being killed at the hands of the Syrian government. Those innocent people never get a trial. They are being tortured and killed for no reason.”  Since the beginning of Syria’s conflict in 2011, more than 350,000 civilians have been killed and more than 13.5 million people have been displaced at home and abroad, according to the United Nations.  The U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic   said in a report in early July that 155,000 Syrians have been detained or forcibly disappeared since 2011. Rights groups blame the Syrian regime for most of the cases.  “We support Majd’s family and the families of all those who are missing or unjustly detained in Syria in their quest for accountability,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement in June.  “Even as we pay tribute to Majd today, we will keep fighting for all Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” he said.  Kamalmaz is one of several Americans who have disappeared in Syria, including journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in 2012 at a checkpoint near Damascus. The Syrian government denies kidnapping or holding Americans in its territories.  “We will not stop at filing a civil case,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington-based advocacy group that has been involved in the case.  “There needs to be a criminal investigation and a criminal case against the Assad regime for the torture and murder of Majd Kamalmaz,” he told VOA.  Moustafa said his group was ready to cooperate with U.S. government agencies to provide documentation, witness statements and evidence to support a criminal case against Syrian government officials.   Lawyer Behre said the Kamalmaz family too “is counting on the U.S. government to initiate criminal charges against Syria.”  Last week, U.S. authorities announced the arrest of a former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where alleged torture and abuse routinely took place. Samir Ousman al-Sheikh was taken into custody at Los Angeles International Airport, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  Moustafa said his organization alerted several federal agencies about al-Sheikh and worked with them to build a case against him.  As a humanitarian worker, Maryam Kamalmaz said her father had dedicated his life to helping those in need. He had worked with survivors of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, victims of the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, and the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s.  “My father had a big heart who cared for everybody and wanted the best for everyone,” she said. “It’s been very hard without him and it’s a big loss to have him gone this way.”

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Bangkok — Relatives of 85 people who died 20 years ago at a protest in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south are in a race against time to take former military and police officers to trial before the statute of limitations for their alleged crimes runs out. A court in southern Thailand is holding hearings that continue this week to decide whether to indict nine former officers for the so-called Tak Bai Massacre of Oct. 25, 2004, which is still the deadliest single event in Thailand since a Muslim insurgency began earlier that same year. On that day two decades ago in Tak Bai district, Narathiwat province, soldiers and police responding to a protest for the release of detained rebel suspects shot seven people dead. The officers forced many more protesters into police trucks destined for a military camp some 140 kilometers away, leaving them packed inside and forced to lie on top of one another for hours. Seventy-eight of them died. A state inquest later determined that they had suffocated. Many others were injured, some for life. No one has ever been charged over the deaths or injuries, let alone convicted. Hoping to change that, 48 survivors and relatives of the dead filed a lawsuit with the Narathiwat provincial court in April against nine officers, all since retired, for unlawful detention, malfeasance and murder. The court began hearings on whether to indict any of the accused last month. It held a third day of hearings last Friday and is due to hold another on July 26. With the statute of limitations due to expire in October, exactly 20 years from the event, it is a race against time for the plaintiffs, including Latipah Mudo, whose 62-year-old father, Sama-ae Mudo, was among those who died in the trucks. “I was very sad when it happened, and the feeling is the same today,” Mudo, who is now 45, told VOA. “I want the perpetrators to be punished for what they did to us. Tak Bai should be an example that this kind of thing will never happen again,” she said. Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, a human rights activist and lawyer representing a survivor of the trucks whose arm and leg were permanently paralyzed, says the plaintiffs want to hear the accused account for their actions on the record. “This incident has been haunting … the communities,” she said. “They want the perpetrators to [stand] up in the court and tell them what happened, why did they do this, why did they do [or act] as a not human.”  The plaintiffs hope their case can help prevent similar alleged abuses in Thailand’s insurgency-racked south from recurring, she added. Once the seat of a Muslim sultanate, the southern provinces of modern-day Thailand were deeded to the then-kingdom of Siam by the British in 1909. Rejecting the transfer, several armed ethnic Malay Muslim groups have waged a guerrilla war against the Thai state to win independence for the provinces. More than 7,000 people have died in related violence since fighting intensified in January 2004. Since the deaths at Tak Bai, locals and rights groups say Thai authorities have repeatedly abused the martial and emergency laws imposed on much of the south in the years that followed in a bid to put the insurgency down. They cite several cases of alleged torture and extrajudicial killings of suspected rebels in custody. Thai courts and prior governments have rejected claims of the state’s responsibility in a number of those cases. “As I learned from the locals since I’ve been working on other documentation of torture, enforced disappearances, the violence still continues, from then until now. And most of the time there [was] no power enough to bring perpetrators to justice,” Pornpen said. “We wanted to bring the [Tak Bai] case … to prove that something like this should not happen again.” In December 2004, a fact-finding committee appointed by the government concluded that security forces used inappropriate measures to disperse the Tak Bai protesters and that commanding officers failed to adequately supervise the transport of the detainees. But authorities did not pursue charges, and the police claimed force majeure, a legal term referring to events beyond the parties’ control. The plaintiffs reject the claim. “It’s not true. It happened because of somebody’s actions; that’s why they died. Their excuse is not reasonable,” said Mudo. According to local media reports, the Narathiwat court said Friday it would announce its decision whether to take any of the accused to trial on August 23. The court could not be reached to confirm or comment on the date. Pornpen said the plaintiffs had not filed a case sooner for many reasons, including the compensation the government paid out to relatives of the dead and fear of reprisal from authorities, especially during the intervening years of military-led and -backed governments. After nearly two decades, though, the events of Oct. 25, 2004, continue to loom large over the country’s deep south, says Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, a lecturer at the Peace Studies Institute of southern Thailand’s Prince of Songkla University. She says the deaths remain a prime recruiting tool for the insurgent groups, and an enduring example of what many Thais believe to be a two-tier justice system. “It is a testament of the culture of impunity that [is] happening in southern Thailand, so people want to see that those responsible are being punished, brought to [the] justice system, and that has never happened in the past nearly 20 years,” she said. Insurgent groups often draw on generations-old grievances to entice and inspire new recruits. “But when they use the Tak Bai incident, this is something that they don’t really have to tell people so much [about] because it’s still vivid in their memory, so it’s easy … to encourage people to join the movement,” Rungrawee said. While bombings, assassinations and shootouts across the south continue to occur alongside police raids and arrests, the pace of the violence has waned over the years. The government has gradually scaled back some of its emergency powers over the region as well and is in talks with some of the rebel groups over the terms of a possible cease-fire. Should the Narathiwat court decide to indict the retired officers and ultimately be seen to have held them accountable, Rungrawee said the Tak Bai case could also help ease tensions and even move the peace talks forward. “It would help to create a better atmosphere,” she said, “to show … that the state does not endure this culture of impunity, [that] the rule of law will be strictly respected.” 

Dozens of rights groups say activists were prosecuted for award-winning environmental work, while authorities denied defendants due process or right to a fair trial.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

The recent assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump should be a "wake-up call" on gun violence, says U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who recently declared firearm violence in America a “public health crisis.” But disagreements on how to resolve the matter prevail. VOA's Veronica Balderas Iglesias has more.