President Donald Trump capped 2017 on Sunday with a video self-tribute touching on what he sees as the high points of his achievements and rhetoric from his first year in office. He gave a plug to American exceptionalism, too. In the video running 3½ minutes, scenes of Trump with military personnel, Border Patrol agents and other world leaders are set to a stirring soundtrack as he declares of his country: “We gave birth to the modern world and we will shape tomorrow’s world with the strength and skill of American hands.” Trump cited his success in placing a new justice on the Supreme Court, his efforts to cut regulations and his big win on overhauling taxes, which he falsely described as the “largest tax cut in the history of our country.” Trump offered the video with a New Year’s Eve message, saying “What a year it’s been, and we’re just …

Mexican authorities say five people visiting from the United States were among 10 people killed in a fiery car crash on a coastal highway in southern Mexico. Guerrero state security spokesman Roberto Alvarez Heredia said Sunday that the crash late Friday also left two U.S. residents hospitalized. A van carrying the family from Washington state collided with a motorcycle and another car. All of the vehicles caught fire. Two people riding the motorcycle died as well as the driver of the other car. Seven people inside the van were killed. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City confirmed that “several” U.S. citizens were killed in the accident. The van was rented and carrying the family to Acapulco when the crash occurred in the municipality of Tecpan de Galeana. …

After a two-week holiday recess, U.S. lawmakers get back to work this week with a long to-do list and deadlines looming at the start of 2018. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports from Washington. …

New Zealand, Australia, and surrounding Pacific Islands were among the first places to ring in 2018 with fireworks displays, parties, and other festivities. Nearly 1.5 million people gathered to watch a rainbow fireworks display above Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge and opera house. …

Five sheriff’s deputies and two civilians were shot as police responded to a domestic disturbance call Sunday in the Midwestern U.S. state of Colorado. The Douglas County sheriff’s office said that one of the five deputies had been killed, and the suspect was shot and no longer a threat. “Suspect shot & believed to be dead & no longer a threat,” the sheriff’s department wrote on Twitter.     Earlier in the morning, the sheriff’s office issued a “code red” in the surrounding area, advising residents nearby to stay indoors and avoid windows. …

Two years after a state of emergency was declared in Flint, Michigan because of lead-poisoned water, residents have been assured their water is now safe. But residents are wary even though these assurances come from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan visited Flint and spoke to residents who face a battle for clean water every day. …

Thousands braved a frigid New York night to celebrate the start of 2018 in Times Square, an annual celebration that dates back to 1904. Tarana Burke, a social activist who started the #MeToo movement to draw attention to sexual abuse, pushed the button that started the famed ball drop – a hallmark of the New York celebration for 110 years.2017 saw a sea change in attitudes and awareness of sexual assault and sexual harassment, as millions of people used the hashtag to show how pervasive abuse is in the wake of accusations made against dozens of high profile men, including celebrities, members of Congress and business leaders. “We need to go into the new year as a new beginning, with a new set of commitments to a better world,” Burke told the New York Daily News. As they do each year, the crowd counted down as the crystal ball slid …

The U.S. Library of Congress says it will no longer collect every single tweet published on Twitter as it has been doing for the past 12 years.  The library said this week that it can no longer collect everything across the entire social media platform because of recent changes Twitter has made, including allowing longer tweets, photos and videos.  It said in a blog post this week that its first objective with collecting and archiving tweets was “to document the emergence of online social media for future generations.” The library says it has fulfilled that objective and no longer needs to be a “comprehensive” collector of tweets.  The Library of Congress said it will still collect and archive tweets in the future, but will do so on a more selective basis. It said going forward “the tweets collected and archived will be thematic and event-based, including events such as elections, …

U.S. vice presidents historically have had widely varying influence in the White House, depending on their relationship with the president. As Donald Trump’s administration prepares for its second year, VOA’s Mike O’Sullivan reports on how Vice President Mike Pence’s role continues to broaden. …

Despite suffering what appear to be debilitating defeats on the ground in Iraq and parts of Syria, the Islamic State terror group is far from dead, according to military and intelligence officials from several countries that have long been tracking the threat. Even on the ground in Iraq and parts of Syria, where anti-IS coalition officials believe the terror group’s fighting force, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, is down to less than 1,000 militants, top military officials remain wary. “The war is not over,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon Friday. “The hunting down of these guys is not over.” ​Coalition focus For now, the focus of U.S. and coalition-backed forces is on an area of Syria known as the Middle Euphrates River Valley, an area that extends from the Syrian city of Raqqa to the Iraqi border, where many of the remaining …

South Korean authorities have seized a Panama-flagged vessel suspected of transferring oil products to North Korea in violation of international sanctions, a customs official said Sunday. The ship can carry 5,100 tons of oil and has a crew mostly from China and Myanmar, Yonhap News Agency reported, adding that South Korea’s intelligence and customs officials are conducting a joint probe into the vessel. The official did not say when authorities moved in, but the seizure was the second to be revealed within just a few days. The KOTI is being held in the western port of Pyeongtaek-Dangjin, Gyeonggi Province, Yonhap reported.  South Korea said Friday that in late November it had seized the Hong Kong-flagged Lighthouse Winmore, which is suspected of transferring as much as 600 tons of oil to the North Korea-flagged Sam Jong 2. The U.N. Security Council last month unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea for …

Iran’s interior minister warned that those who “disrupt the order and break the law must be responsible for their behavior and pay the price,” after thousands of anti-government protesters marched for a third day on Saturday. Abdolrahman Rahmani Fazli, in a statement on Iranian state television Sunday, said “fear and terror will definitely be confronted.” At least two demonstrators were killed during clashes with police Saturday in the western town of Dorud. VOA’s Persian service identified the victims as Hamzeh Lashni and Hossein Reshno after a reporter spoke to the victims’ families. The semiofficial Mehr news agency Sunday quoted a regional government official confirming the two deaths. WATCH: Amid Protests Across Iran, Trump Lashes Out at Tehran’s Leaders Video posted to social media purported to show the two victims following the shootings. Other online videos showed thousands of people protesting in several cities throughout Iran, including some attacking government buildings …

U.S. vice presidents historically have held widely varying influence in the White House, depending on their relationship with the president. As Donald Trump’s administration prepares for its second year, Vice President Mike Pence’s role appears likely to broaden. On overseas trips to Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region, and a recent holiday visit to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Pence has embraced the role of presidential envoy. WATCH: Mike O’Sullivan’s Video Report His work on international and domestic policy is more than merely symbolic, says Joel Goldstein of Saint Louis University School of Law, who has written two books on the changing vice presidency. “Vice President Pence seems to be included and involved in decision making in the White House,” Goldstein notes. “And the vice president,” he adds, “has been laudatory, at time adulatory towards the president in his public comments.” ​‘Biggest cheerleader’ Some of Pence’s critics say he has taken …

It’s not an Olympic sport, at least not yet, but pinball has a growing body of top-level athletes, and a growing number of international competitions. Faith Lapidus reports. …

Alarmed by the proliferation of false content online, state lawmakers around the country are pushing schools to put more emphasis on teaching students how to tell fact from fiction. Lawmakers in several states have introduced or passed bills calling on public school systems to do more to teach media literacy skills that they say are critical to democracy. The effort has been bipartisan but has received little attention despite successful legislation in Washington state, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Mexico. Several more states are expected to consider such bills in the coming year, including Arizona, New York and Hawaii. “I don’t think it’s a partisan issue to appreciate the importance of good information and the teaching of tools for navigating the information environment,” said Hans Zeiger, a Republican state senator in Washington who co-sponsored a bill that passed in his state earlier this year. “There is such a thing as …

An Australian diplomat’s tip appears to have helped persuade the FBI to investigate Russian meddling in the U.S. election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign, The New York Times reported Saturday. Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told the diplomat, Alexander Downer, during a meeting in London in May 2016 that Russia had thousands of emails that would embarrass Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the report said. Downer, a former foreign minister, is Australia’s top diplomat in Britain. Australia passed the information on to the FBI after the Democratic emails were leaked, according to the Times, which cited four current and former U.S. and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role. “The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016,” the newspaper said. White House …

The daughter of key Black Lives Matter figure Eric Garner died Saturday after a weeklong hospital stay following a heart attack. “She was a warrior to the end. She stood up for justice for her father,” the Reverend Al Sharpton said in announcing the death of Erica Garner, 27, at a New York hospital. Garner’s official Twitter account, run by her family and friends since she became ill, asked that she be remembered as a mother, daughter, sister and aunt with a heart “bigger than the world.” In 2014, her father, Eric Garner, who was black, was stopped on Staten Island for selling untaxed cigarettes and died after a white police officer subdued him with a chokehold. A grand jury declined to indict the officer; the city agreed to pay a $6 million civil settlement. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a slogan for activists. Erica Garner became a …

The Associated Press reported early Saturday that in the first month of U.S. President Donald Trump’s term in office, he sent “an American scholar” to meet with North Korean officials and to relay a message. The message was that the new administration was appreciative of a nearly four-month freeze of the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests – and thought it “might just offer a ray of hope,” the news agency said in its account. However, the AP reported North Korean officials said the lack of testing wasn’t a sign of conciliation and insisted Kim Jong Un would order tests whenever he wanted.  Two days later, the North launched a new medium-range missile, ushering in a year of escalating tensions. Meanwhile, Reuters reported late Friday that “Russian tankers have supplied fuel to North Korea on at least three occasions in recent months by transferring cargoes at sea.”  Reuters attributed the …

Every attorney general leaves his imprint on the U.S. Justice Department. Jeff Sessions is no exception. Since being sworn in as the nation’s 84th attorney general in February, the former Republican senator and federal prosecutor has moved to radically overhaul the Justice Department and its approach to law enforcement. From scrapping civil rights protections for transgender people to ending leniency in sentencing criminal defendants, Sessions has rolled back a host of policies his two immediate predecessors — Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder, both chosen by former President Barack Obama — enacted to promote civil rights and social justice. The policy reversals have not been without their critics. While Sessions and his supporters say the attorney general is restoring the rule of law and ending Obama-era policies that amounted to executive overreach, critics say he’s returning to criminal justice policies that led to mass incarceration and undermined civil rights. ​Blistering criticism …

Readying for his first television interview, Alex Wang gazes at his reflection in the back window of his yellow cab. Wiping his windswept mane behind the ear, he adjusts his red Shanghai Tang jacket and takes a swig of steaming tea. “Ahh,” he pauses emphatically, “warms your whole body.” Wang opens the front door and reaches deep inside, revealing a glossy 2018 calendar. On the cover is a shirtless male model, sprawled on his belly atop a yellow taxicab trunk, licking a spiral rainbow-colored lollipop the size of his face. “It’s me!” he laughs, self-deprecatingly, pointing to his photo. “So ugly, you are!” The 68-year-old Wang, an 18-year taxicab veteran, self-proclaimed “karaoke king” and “bit of a comedian” from China, flips through the months, each featuring a New York taxi driver. Most are foreign-born, representing seven different countries, and many are middle-aged, reflecting the key demographics of the city’s yellow …

The New York City Taxi Drivers Calendar began as a tongue-in-cheek alternative to the famous chisel-chested firefighter pin-up, while benefiting a nonprofit that serves immigrant and low-income families. Now in its fifth year, the creators of the parody calendar are out with their 2018 edition, and it may be their sauciest one yet. Ramon Taylor reports. …

In the first month of Donald Trump’s presidency, an American scholar quietly met with North Korean officials and relayed a message: The new administration in Washington appreciated an extended halt in the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests. It might just offer a ray of hope. North Korean officials responded defiantly. The nearly four-month period of quiet wasn’t a sign of conciliation, they retorted, insisting supreme leader Kim Jong Un would order tests whenever he wanted. As if to ram the point home, North Korea only two days later launched a new type of medium-range missile that ended Trump’s brief honeymoon.   The February launch heralded a year of escalating tensions that have left the U.S. and North Korea closer to hostilities than at any time since the Korean War ended in 1953. The North is now at the brink of realizing its decades-old goal of being able to strike …