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Elections in the United States are some of the most expensive in the world, with campaign spending far outpacing that in most countries. The 2020 U.S. presidential and congressional races cost $16.4 billion and experts say the cost of the 2024 races are likely to be much higher.

Abuja, Nigeria — Nigerian workers' unions launched a nationwide strike protesting the failure to implement a new minimum wage to help workers cope with the high cost of living amid economic reforms. The strike began Monday morning following a notice by the Nigerian Labor Congress and the Trade Union Congress — the NLC and TUC respectively — on Friday. There was widespread compliance as workers across various sectors abstained from duty. Union representatives said the strike was triggered after weeks of failed negotiations to implement a new minimum wage. The unions had proposed $370 as the new monthly minimum wage, citing soaring costs of living caused by government policies. NLC spokesperson Benson Upah said unions have been patient with authorities. "As far as we know, no government has been this lucky," Upah said. "And for our uncommon understanding and patience with this administration, we have been called names. Yet this government does not want to wake up." Nigeria’s government is proposing about $49 dollars as the new minimum wage up from about $24. Authorities have condemned the nationwide strike calling it illegal and unnecessary. On Sunday, a Nigerian senate committee met with the unions in a bid to settle the dispute. But after long negotiations, the NLC and TUC said they failed to reach an agreement. After Sunday's meeting with unions, Senate president Godswill Akpabio told journalists whatever agreement is reached "will be mutually beneficial to all, both the government and the workers." In May 2023, President Bola Tinubu introduced economic reforms including the scrapping of fuel subsidy and currency unification with the aim of boosting the economy. But the policies have been blamed for raising the cost of living, sparking strikes by workers who want policies reversed or a higher minimum wage. Upah said the government is implementing foreign policies without considering Nigeria's needs. "We do not know who the beneficiaries of these policies are, because we the workers are dying. Manufacturers are dying. Other entities are dying," he said. "No reasonable government leaves their national currency to the stumps of the market. They do something behind the scenes quietly. But we took a dictation from the World Bank, IMF, hook, line and sinker."

U.S. citizens elect a president and a Congress to steer the country. But presidents have certain tools enabling them to alter policies on their own. One that’s gotten a lot of recent attention is the executive order.

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.

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.

WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert until leaving the government in 2022, was back before Congress on Monday, calling Republican allegations that he'd tried to cover up origins of the COVID-19 pandemic “simply preposterous.”  A GOP-led subcommittee has spent over a year probing the nation's response to the pandemic and whether U.S.-funded research in China may have played any role in how it started — yet found no evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.  He'd already been grilled behind closed doors, for 14 hours over two days in January. But Monday, Fauci testified voluntarily in public and on camera at a hearing that quickly deteriorated into partisan attacks.  Republicans repeated unproven accusations against the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist while Democrats apologized for Congress besmirching his name and bemoaned a missed opportunity to prepare for the next scary outbreak.  “He is not a comic book super villain,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, adding that the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic had failed to prove a list of damaging allegations.  Fauci was the public face of the government's early COVID-19 response under then-President Donald Trump and later as an adviser to President Joe Biden. A trusted voice to millions, he also was the target of partisan anger and choked up Monday as he recalled death threats and other harassment of himself and his family, the threats he said continue. Police later escorted hecklers out of the hearing room.  The main issue: Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, probably at a wildlife market in Wuhan, the city in China where the outbreak began. There’s no new scientific information supporting that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory. A U.S. intelligence analysis says there’s insufficient evidence to prove either way — and a recent Associated Press investigation found the Chinese government froze critical efforts to trace the source of the virus in the first weeks of the outbreak.  Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins, the way other deadly viruses including coronavirus cousins SARS and MERS jumped into people. It was a position he repeated Monday as Republican lawmakers questioned if he worked behind-the-scenes to squelch the lab-leak theory or even tried to influence intelligence agencies.  “I have repeatedly stated that I have a completely open mind to either possibility and that if definitive evidence becomes available to validate or refute either theory, I will readily accept it,” Fauci said. He later invoked a fictional secret agent, decrying a conspiracy theory that “I was parachuting into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab leak.”  Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying to Congress in denying that his agency funded “gain of function” research — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact — at a lab in Wuhan.  NIH for years gave grants to a New York nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance that used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats. Last month, the government suspended EcoHealth's federal funding, citing its failure to properly monitor some of those experiments.  The definition of “gain of function” covers both general research and especially risky experiments to “enhance” the ability of potentially pandemic pathogens to spread or cause severe disease in humans. Fauci stressed he was using the risky experiment definition, saying "it would be molecularly impossible” for the bat viruses studied with EcoHealth’s funds to be turned into the virus that caused the pandemic.  In an exchange with Rep. H. Morgan Griffith, a Republican from Virginia, Fauci acknowledged that the lab leak is still an open question since it's impossible to know if some other lab, not funded by NIH money, was doing risky research with coronaviruses.  Fauci did face a new set of questions about the credibility of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he led for 38 years. Last month, the House panel revealed emails from an NIAID colleague about ways to evade public records laws, including by not discussing controversial pandemic issues in government email.  Fauci denounced the actions of that colleague and insisted that “to the best of my knowledge I have never conducted official business via my personal email.”  The pandemic's origins weren't the only hot topic. The House panel also blasted some public health measures taken to slow spread of the virus before COVID-19 vaccines, spurred by NIAID research, helped allow a return to normalcy. Ordering people to stay 6 feet apart meant many businesses, schools and churches couldn't stay open, and subcommittee chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a Republican from Ohio, called it a “burdensome” and arbitrary rule, noting that in his prior closed-door testimony Fauci had acknowledged it wasn't scientifically backed.  Fauci responded Monday that the 6-feet distancing wasn't his guideline but one created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before scientists had learned that the new virus was airborne, not spread simply by droplets emitted a certain distance.

Much of stand-up comedy in the United States is rooted in the country’s freedoms of speech. In Southern California, that attracts immigrant comedians eager to express their opinions and make people laugh. Genia Dulot reports.

The debate over ethics in the U.S. Supreme Court renewed this week as congressional Democrats called on conservative Associate Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from two cases relating to the 2020 election. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports.

united nations — The U.N. Security Council will hold a public meeting in mid-June on human rights in North Korea while South Korea holds the council’s rotating presidency. “Some countries have some reservations about human rights issues being discussed in the Security Council,” South Korean Ambassador Hwang Joon-kook said in announcing the session on Monday. “We know their logic.” Countries including Russia and China oppose human rights issues being discussed in the 15-nation council, which is tasked with maintaining international peace and security. They, and other like-minded countries, argue that human rights issues should be handled in designated U.N. fora, such as the Geneva-based Human Rights Council or the General Assembly committee that deals with rights issues. They could call for a procedural vote to try to block the meeting, in which case at least nine of the council’s 15 members would need to support the session. Hwang told reporters at a news conference launching Seoul's June presidency that unlike other countries, North Korea’s human rights situation is part of the council’s official agenda. “This is unique to North Korea, and there are some good reasons for it,” he said. The “DPRK human rights and humanitarian situation is closely interlinked with North Korea’s aggressive weapons — their aggressive WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and nuclear development.” DPRK is the abbreviation for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The council was last publicly briefed on the issue on August 17, 2023, by U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Türk, who said that many of the severe and widespread rights violations in North Korea are directly linked to the regime’s pursuit of nuclear and ballistic missile technology. In 2014, a U.N. Commission of Inquiry found that North Korea’s rights violations had risen to the level of crimes against humanity and included murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape and enforced disappearance, among other crimes. Relations between Seoul and Pyongyang have deteriorated in recent months. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has said he has given up on reunification with the South and designated it a foreign enemy state. He has also enshrined the country’s illicit nuclear program into its constitution. Washington says North Korea is advancing its prohibited weapons program “at an alarming rate” and has launched more than 100 ballistic missiles since the beginning of 2022. And in one of its more bizarre actions, last week Pyongyang sent balloons filled with trash and feces into the skies over South Korea, dropping them on busy streets. Fed up, South Korea said Monday it will fully suspend a 2018 military agreement with the North that is aimed at lowering tensions. Seoul partially suspended the agreement last November to protest the launch of a North Korean spy satellite.

Vienna, Austria — Britain, France and Germany late on Monday submitted a resolution to the U.N. nuclear watchdog's board, censuring Iran over its lack of cooperation with the agency despite U.S. opposition, two diplomats said.  It was the latest of numerous diplomatic maneuvers by Western powers who fear Iran might be seeking to develop a nuclear weapon — a claim the Islamic Republic denies.  "The text has been formally tabled," one diplomatic source told AFP, with a second confirming the information.  The move to submit a motion against Iran was driven by an "urgency to react to the gravity of the situation," diplomats told AFP earlier.  The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Iran is the only non-nuclear weapon state to enrich uranium to the high level of 60%, while it keeps accumulating large uranium stockpiles.  Uranium enriched to 60% is close to the levels of 90% needed for atomic weapons and well above the 3.67% used for nuclear power stations.  The board of governors passed the last such resolution criticizing Iran in November 2022, prompting Tehran to retaliate by stepping up its uranium enrichment activities.  At the opening of the meeting on Monday, IAEA head Rafael Grossi reiterated his concerns, saying: "It's unacceptable to talk about nuclear weapons, as some people do in Iran."  Referring to the limited oversight the agency now has on Tehran's nuclear program, Grossi warned that the current "knowledge gap ... is making it very difficult to go back to diplomacy."  At the last board meeting in March, European powers shelved their plans to confront Iran due to a lack of support from Washington.  The United States denies it is hampering European efforts to hold Tehran accountable but fears a censure could aggravate Middle East tensions ahead of U.S. presidential elections in November, diplomats say.  'Essential and urgent'  Cooperation between Iran and the IAEA has severely deteriorated in recent years, with the U.N. nuclear watchdog struggling for assurances that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful.  Diplomats say maintaining the current policy of inaction amid Iran's escalation is no longer tenable and the U.S. position could change ahead of the IAEA vote scheduled for later this week.  In May, Grossi visited Iran in a bid to improve cooperation, calling for "concrete results ... soon."  In the meantime, the death of Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month has put negotiations on hold, with diplomats suggesting Tehran was using the accident as an excuse to stall.  Grossi, however, rejected that claim Monday, saying the pause was "not part of any delaying tactic" by Iran.  He added he was ready to "sit down with the new authorities" after Iran's presidential election on June 28.  The draft resolution obtained by AFP says it is "essential and urgent" that Tehran provides "technically credible explanations" for the presence of uranium particles found at two undeclared locations in Iran.  Furthermore, Iran has to "reverse its withdrawal of the designations of several experienced Agency inspectors," and "without delay" reconnect the cameras used to monitor nuclear activities.  The draft also notes the "concerns" surrounding "recent public statements made in Iran ... regarding its technical capabilities to produce nuclear weapons and possible changes to Iran's nuclear doctrine."  'Serious and effective response'  Iran has gradually broken away from its commitments under the nuclear deal it struck with world powers in 2015.  The landmark deal provided Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its atomic program.  But it fell apart after the unilateral withdrawal of the United States under then-president Donald Trump in 2018.   Efforts to revive the deal have failed.  "A showdown at the board reflects a wider impasse over Iran, with little diplomatic activity but increasing concern over a program that continues to expand in scale under limited international oversight," Naysan Rafati, an Iran analyst at the Crisis Group, told AFP.  Ali Shamkhani, a political adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, warned Saturday on X that if "some misguided European countries ... adopt a hostile stance towards Iran ... at the board, they will face a serious and effective response from our country."  Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's ambassador to the international organization in Vienna, wrote on X on Sunday that tabling an "anti-Iranian resolution" could risk "seriously deteriorating the situation."

Donald Trump returns to political campaigning this week as the first convicted felon to run for U.S. president as a major-party candidate. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns looks at how voters are reacting to the verdict on the campaign trail.

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.

HARARE, ZIMBABWE — Faced with a broken public transit system, poor road conditions, fuel shortages and low salaries, Zimbabwean authorities are urging citizens to cycle to work, ostensibly for health reasons and to promote a clean environment, as bicycles do not use fossil fuels.  Jacob Mafume, the mayor of Harare, said if Zimbabweans in greater numbers chose to cycle to work, there would be less congestion and fewer road accidents, among other benefits.    “Most of the health problems that we have in society now is that we are sitting all the time. We sit at work. We sit in the car, as we [drive] there. So it does not help as a society to be built on unhealthy practices,” Mafume said. “But also, it is also cheaper on the budget: People can focus on other issues like housing, education and even investment, if they are on bicycles. And also, it is environmentally friendly. It is less impact on our environment. And people would thank us later for this, as they will live to ripe old age in fitness.”  Ngoni Nyamadzawo, a part-time gardener in Harare’s affluent suburbs, cycles daily as a way to reduce costs to save his average salary of $150 a month.  “I see cycling as a saving measure. If I did not cycle, I would use $30 a month for transport,” Nyamadzawo said.  Segio Tarwirei works for a local NGO, Tree Knowers and Growers, which advocates for more trees. He cycles daily and encourages Zimbabweans to join him. “Cycling has so many physical benefits,” he said. “Driving is not good for the environment as cars release dirt into the atmosphere. As an organization — of Tree Knowers and Growers — we encourage people to cycle. If I was using public transport, I would be paying $4 daily, at the end of the month it would be a lot of money, so cycling is good for health and the pocket.”  Tarwirei said he would like the city of Harare to rehabilitate cycling tracks, which have been neglected for years.   Mayor Mafume said he is aware of the dilapidated state of cycling lanes in the capital city.  “We are going to revamp them,” he said. “One of the issues that we have to do is to put a cycle track running across Harare Drive. Once we have a cycle track circling the city, then all the other cycle tracks can fit into Harare Drive.”   Harare Drive is the city’s longest road and circles Harare. 

Beirut, Lebanon — Iran's acting foreign minister Ali Bagheri said Monday his government was engaged in negotiations with arch-foe the United States hosted by the Gulf sultanate of Oman.  Asked about the issue at a news conference during a visit to Beirut, Bagheri said, "we have always continued our negotiations ... and they have never stopped."  Washington and Tehran have not had diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.  The British daily Financial Times reported in March that Bagheri was involved in indirect talks with the United States in Oman in early 2024, against the backdrop of heightened regional tensions over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.  The United States is Israel's close ally and top provider of military assistance, while Iran backs the Palestinian militant group Hamas.  Bagheri arrived Monday in Lebanon, on his first foreign trip since assuming the interim role following the death of Hossein Amirabdollahian in a helicopter crash last month that also killed Iran's president, Ebrahim Raisi.  Bagheri said the choice of destination for his visit was "because Lebanon is the cradle of resistance" against Israel.  Iran supports the powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah financially and militarily.  The Shiite Muslim movement, a Hamas ally, has traded regular cross-border fire with Israel since the start of the Gaza war in early October.  Bagheri, Iran's former top nuclear negotiator, said discussions with Western powers about Tehran's atomic activities were ongoing.  Western governments fear Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear weapon — a claim the Islamic republic denies.  "We advise them not to miss the opportunity any further and compensate for the actions that they must have carried out but didn't," Bagheri said, as a meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog opened in Vienna.  Diplomats told AFP that Britain, France and Germany will seek to censure Tehran over its lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the organization's board meeting.  At the last board meeting in March, European powers shelved their plans to confront Iran because of a lack of support from Washington.  Bagheri is due to travel from Lebanon to Syria on Tuesday.