Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar is pitching an infrastructure plan she says will provide $1 trillion to fix roads and bridges, protect against flooding and rebuild schools, airports and other projects. The plan announced Thursday is the first policy proposal from the Minnesota senator since she joined the 2020 race with a snowy rally not far from where the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007. Klobuchar speaks often on the campaign trail about the collapse, which killed 13 people, telling voters “a bridge just shouldn’t fall down in the middle of America.” She also talks about how she worked with Republican colleagues to get funding to rebuild the bridge within 13 months. “America needs someone who will deliver on their promises and get things done for this country,” Klobuchar said in a statement Thursday announcing her plan. She said it will be her top budget priority …

A man was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for raping and killing a Muslim teenager in Virginia as she walked back to a mosque with friends for pre-dawn religious services. The life sentence without possibility of parole imposed Thursday on Darwin Martinez-Torres of Sterling was a formality after his guilty plea last year in the June 2017 slaying of 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen of Reston. That plea bargain required a life sentence but eliminated a potential death penalty. Hassanen’s death received widespread attention amid concerns her slaying was motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment. Prosecutors, though, say Martinez-Torres attacked her after he got out of his car to chase Nabra’s group of friends in a road-rage confrontation. Fairfax County prosecutors say the attack began when Martinez-Torres drove by and honked his horn at one of Nabra’s friends who had been riding his bicycle in the road as they walked back to their …

U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s still secret report about Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is more than 300 pages long, officials said Thursday, as Democrats made new demands that Attorney General William Barr release the full document after only writing a four-page summary last weekend. “Show us the report,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, implored the country’s top law enforcement official. “We don’t need you interpreting it. We have to see what the facts are. We do not need an attorney general … to be an interpreter of something that he should just show us.” Barr quoted just 65 words from the Mueller report in the summary, although he described some material the prosecutor had collected. In a letter Sunday to congressional leaders that he also released to the public, Barr said Mueller had concluded that President Donald Trump and his campaign …

A Russian gun-rights activist will be sentenced next month after admitting she was a secret agent for the Kremlin who tried to infiltrate conservative U.S. political groups as Donald Trump rose to power. Maria Butina appeared briefly Thursday in federal court in Washington and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan set Butina’s sentencing for April 26. Butina, who wore a green jail uniform with her hair pulled back in a long ponytail, did not speak during the court hearing. In December, she pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent and agreed to cooperate with investigators as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors. Butina admitted that she and former Russian lawmaker Alexander Torshin used their contacts in the National Rifle Association to pursue back channels to American conservatives during the 2016 campaign, when Trump, a Republican, defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton. The charges …

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts to diplomacy and foreign aid from strong criticism from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in hearings Wednesday. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Elliot Engel told Pompeo the president’s budget was “dead” as soon as it arrived on Capitol Hill. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department. …

The humanitarian crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico has many forms. Families with children, who by law cannot be held indefinitely in detention, are freed into the U.S. to wait for court dates. But now a California county is overrun with migrant families dumped by ICE who are camping at bus stops and on street corners. San Diego County’s board of supervisors voted to sue the Trump administration for relief. Khrystyna Shevchenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. …

Radioactive contamination from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant hit by a tsunami in 2011 has drifted as far north as waters off a remote Alaska island in the Bering Strait, scientists said Wednesday. Analysis of seawater collected last year near St. Lawrence Island revealed a slight elevation in levels of radioactive cesium-137 attributable to the Fukushima disaster, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Sea Grant program said. “This is the northern edge of the plume,” said Gay Sheffield, a Sea Grant marine advisory agent based in the Bering Sea town of Nome, Alaska. Minute amount of cesium-137 The newly detected Fukushima radiation was minute. The level of cesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear fission, in seawater was four-tenths as high as traces of the isotope naturally found in the Pacific Ocean. Those levels are far too low to pose a health concern, an important point for people living on the Bering …

Excluding NATO-member Turkey from the trillion-dollar F-35 fighter jet program would be challenging because of Ankara’s integral role in the stealthy jet’s production process, but not impossible, U.S. sources familiar with the situation said. Last week Reuters reported that the United States could soon freeze preparations for delivering F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, a move that would widen the rift between Ankara and Washington, the latest disagreement in a yearslong standoff. Russian air defense At the heart of the matter lies Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s commitment to buy a Russian air defense system that the United States says would compromise the security of F-35 aircraft, which is built by Lockheed Martin Corp. The United States and other NATO allies who own F-35 fighter jets fear the radar on the Russian S-400 missile system will learn how to spot and track the F-35, making it less able to evade Russian weapons …

One man was fatally shot and another killed in an automobile crash Wednesday afternoon after a gunman opened fire on vehicles in a Seattle neighborhood, authorities said. Two people also were injured, including the driver of a Metro bus who was shot. Deputy Police Chief Marc Garth Green told reporters: “We believe it’s a random, senseless act. We’re outraged at what this suspect did.” The chaotic scene unfolded in north Seattle just after 4 p.m. Police said in a statement that a man approached a female driver in the street and shot her.  He then walked on and fired at a Metro bus, striking the driver, who was able to turn the vehicle around and drive away, authorities said.  The gunman than approached a second motorist and opened fire, killing a man in his 50s. After police arrived, the gunman fled in the victim’s vehicle, police said. He then collided …

Federal regulators Wednesday defended the practice of letting aircraft builders certify the safety of their own planes. The Senate called Wednesday’s hearing following the deadly crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets because of suspected problems with anti-stall software. The head of the Federal Aviation Administration, Daniel Elwell, told the panel the agency would need another $1.8 billion a year and 10,000 new employees to do all the work now farmed out to aircraft workers. He reminded the senators that those employees who certify the safety of the airplanes that they build themselves are specially chosen and supervised by the FAA.  Elwell said the fact that out of millions of commercial flights, there has been just one airline death in the United States in the past 10 years is “part of the fabric of what we have used to become as safe as we are today.” But Democratic Senator …

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has approved six secret authorizations by companies to sell nuclear power technology and assistance to Saudi Arabia, according to a copy of a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday. The Trump administration has quietly pursued a wider deal on sharing U.S. nuclear power technology with Saudi Arabia, which aims to build at least two nuclear power plants. Several countries including the United States, South Korea and Russia are in competition for that deal, and the winners are expected to be announced later this year by Saudi Arabia. Perry’s approvals, known as Part 810 authorizations, allow companies to do preliminary work on nuclear power ahead of any deal but not ship equipment that would go into a plant, a source with knowledge of the agreements said on condition of anonymity. The approvals were first reported by the Daily Beast. The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security …

The United States will redraw government maps consistent with Washington’s decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The move comes days after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a proclamation Monday officially granting U.S. recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory. VOA’s State Department correspondent Nike Ching sat down Wednesday with Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran, to discuss U.S. actions affecting Israel and Iran. The following are excerpts from the interview. ​Ching: How will President Trump’s executive order change the way the U.S. displays the Golan Heights on its official maps of Israel? What is the time frame that we can expect the maps to be updated? Hook: The president did sign an executive order recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. We think that this reflects, it’s a reflection of reality and the facts on the ground, and the need for Israel to …

The Trump administration says it will update U.S. government maps to reflect President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. In a Wednesday email responding to questions from VOA Persian, a State Department spokesperson said the map changes would be “consistent” with a March 25 proclamation signed by Trump, saying the U.S. “recognizes that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel.”  In a separate interview with VOA later Wednesday, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said the State Department would “redraw” its official maps and release them “as soon as they are ready.” The map changes will reflect facts on the ground and a “need for Israel to have secure and defensible borders,” Hook added.  Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and annexed it in 1981 in a move no other nation recognized until the U.S. …

Forty years after the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, John Garver can still recall the smell and the metallic taste in his mouth.    “It’s time to shut it down,” said Garver, who was a 40-year-old salesman when the accident occurred on March 28, 1979, and is now retired and near 80.    “I was against it from the beginning,” said Garver, who works part time at the Middletown boat club on the banks of the Susquehanna River.    “I’m against it now and I was hoping in my lifetime that it will close down,” he added, gazing from beneath a worn red fisherman’s cap at the giant cooling towers spitting out vapor into a cloudless sky.    “Maybe I’ll get my wish.”    He just might. The owner of Three Mile Island, Exelon Generation, has announced plans to shut down the money-losing facility on Sept. 30.    Pennsylvania …

An Eastern man and a Western woman make up one of the most unusual musical groups in Washington, D.C.  Masood Omari and Abigail Adams Greenway both play tabla, an Eastern percussion instrument, every day in Greenway’s basement outside Washington. They call this colorfully decorated studio, Tablasphere. And they call themselves Tabla for Two. Omari introduces the instrument: “This is a goat skin and the middle part, the black here, is burnt steel, coming from the steel powder and pasted with a strong glue and put in the center. It makes a cosmic sound, you can see?” To Greenway, every note that emerges from the tabla is a “prayer.” “It’s mathematically perfect and very meditative,” she adds. What is unusual is that she and Omari both play the tabla together, giving them a modern sound. The duo plays three different kinds of music, much of which can be heard on YouTube. …