Voice of America

Carol Castiel along with assistant producer, Emma Wilcox, talk with a reproductive health expert who specializes in epidemiology, demography, and abortion care at the University of California, about the economic, social and health consequences of such a reversal at the federal level.

Carol Castiel adapts an interview conducted by VOA State Department correspondent Nike Ching with the US Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls & Human Rights and talks with Afghan analyst, Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center.

Host Carol Castiel talks with former US Special Forces officer Mike Waltz, now a Republican Congressman from the state of Florida who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Waltz, who has served in the US military for over 24 years, analyzes the Biden Administration’s policy toward Ukraine, Afghanistan and Africa and speaks of the need to do more to prevent malign actions by China against Taiwan. The second half of the show features...

Ambassador András Simonyi, former Hungarian ambassador to the United States and NATO, now senior fellow at the Atlantic council’s Global Energy Center, talks with host Carol Castiel about the significance of Ukrainian resistance to Moscow’s invasion and the need for the western alliance to sustain military and political support to Kyiv. Simonyi also underscores the need for Europe to wean off Russian energy sources and lauds Finland and Sweden’s interest in joining NATO saying they will...

Recent media reports have pointed out deepening environmental and health concerns caused by plastic and microplastic pollution. Robert Hale, a professor in the Department of Aquatic Health at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science joins Rick Pantaleo for the Science Edition of Press Conference USA to talk about these issues.

Guest host Kim Lewis and VOA international broadcaster Carol Van Dam discuss with secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, the complex nature of some of the world's worst humanitarian crises and why the crisis in Ukraine has taken precedence over other regions where human atrocities have been occurring for years. In addition, Egeland offers his perspective and solutions to the dire situations in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Syria and South...

Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine triggered a wave of severe sanctions against Russian banks, businesses, and oligarchs by the western alliance. These sanctions have been far reaching and intended to punish the Kremlin and restrict funding and resources used to support Russian aggression. Host Carol Castiel sits down with Julia Friedlander, a former senior policy advisor for Europe in the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in the Treasury Department, now Senior Fellow and...

Host Carol Castiel talks with Lauren Speranza, Director of the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), about the new security reality in Europe created by the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. She analyses the outcome of a special NATO Summit, meetings among G-7 leaders and the European Council in Brussels aimed at strengthening unity and coordinating greater military support for Ukraine and bolstering NATO’s Baltic states and...

Host Carol Castiel talks with Congresswoman Shontel Brown, a Democrat from the state of Ohio, who serves on the House Agriculture and Oversight and Reform Committees. Brown, who won a contentious special election for the seat vacated by Representative Marcia Fudge, now Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is serving out her first term in Congress. She shares her thoughts on legislative priorities guided by the principles of equity, inclusion and diversity, enthusiasm for the...

Earth is surrounded by a scrapyard of old rockets, satellites, and other types of spacecraft. Space junk expert John Crassidis, SUNY Distinguished Professor with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University at Buffalo (New York) joins Rick Pantaleo on this week’s Science Edition of Press Conference USA to talk about the growing threat of space debris.

Host Carol Castiel talks with Russian born, Anna Borshchevskaya, Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, about the latest developments surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including Moscow’s underestimation of national resistance, the impact of the latest raft of sanctions on Russia, the political and economic implications of the dire humanitarian situation, and how the West’s actions and inactions over the last decade have inadvertently contributed to Russia’s...

In honor of Black History Month, host Carol Castiel and Issues in the News host, Kim Lewis, talk with Kay C. James, currently the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia, previously president of the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank based in Washington. James shares her views about the state and future of the Republican Party, the significance of nominating a Black woman to the US Supreme Court and the twists and turns in her modest upbringing in the segregated south...

In honor of Black History Month, Carol Castiel talks with H.E. Patrick Gaspard, former Ambassador to South Africa, now President and CEO of the Center for American Progress about range of domestic and international issues.

Carol Castiel sits down with Congresswoman Elaine Luria, a Democrat from Virginia. They talk about critical domestic and foreign issues such as preserving democracy, combatting Russian aggression against Ukraine, standing up to Beijing and thwarting international and domestic terrorism.

On this Science Edition, Rick Pantaleo talks about the work of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office with Dr. Thomas Statler and NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission with Drs. Nancy Chabot and Andrew Rivkin from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Host Carol Castiel talks with voting rights expert, author and president of the Brennan Center for Justice, Michael Waldman, about the factors that led to the failure of federal voting rights legislation in the Senate, dealing a blow to a key facet of President Joe Biden’s agenda. Waldman tells Castiel that the wave of restrictive voting laws emanating from mostly Republican state legislatures and the Supreme Court’s gutting of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, make it even more...

NASA says there are some 28,000 comets and asteroids in our planet’s neighborhood, with more being discovered every day. Fortunately, the space agency also says the probability of a major collision is quite small. Dr. Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, joins Rick Pantaleo on the Science Edition of Press Conference USA to talk about asteroids and other near-Earth objects.

Host Carol Castiel talks with Ambassador William (Bill) Taylor, V.P. at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), formerly Ambassador to Ukraine, about Moscow’s designs on Ukraine given the ominous Russian troop buildup along the Ukrainian border. Taylor assesses whether the series of high-level meetings recently held in Brussels with NATO and EU representatives and the OSCE in Vienna can stave off a Russian incursion into Ukraine. He affirms that the western alliance is united and prepared to...

How can the United States strike the delicate balance between its values of democracy and human rights and its national security interests with allies who are backsliding on the former? Host Carol Castiel and VOA senior analyst, Mohamed Elshinnawi, talk with Thomas Carothers, Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about his new article, “Navigating the Democracy-Security Dilemma in U.S. Foreign Policy: Lessons from Egypt, India, and Turkey,” about the...

On this annual edition of Press Conference USA, host Carol Castiel and co-host, Rick Pantaleo, speak with Amy Webb, CEO and Founder of “Future Today Institute” about the latest biological, technological and metaverse trends for 2022. They will also discuss the impact of the Covid-19 vaccines on future therapies.