VIDEO: In a decades long tradition , U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned a turkey sent to the White House for the Thanksgiving holiday, which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. VOA looks at the ceremony, which dates back to President Abraham Lincoln but became a tradition in more recent decades .

ON THIS DAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY On November 21, 1877, American inventor Thomas Edison announces he’s invented the phonograph, a device which allows the recording and playback of audio. The invention was actually an accident, as he was really trying to figure out a way to record telephone communications using a stylus on a tinfoil cylinder. Edison is also credited with inventing the light bulb and motion picture camera.

VIDEO: U.S. institutions continue to make the case to be the first destination for international higher education. But are American institutions losing their edge? VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren talks to recruiters, students and a State Department official about new challenges for schools trying to recruit foreign scholars .

Life is harsh for L.A.’s homeless who camp on the sidewalks. In the shadow of office towers, tent cities line the concrete on street after street in the neighborhood called Skid Row. Inside the Los Angeles Mission, a Christian charity, workers and volunteers in an industrial scale kitchen prepare Thanksgiving meals for the city’s thousands of homeless.

North Korean hackers continue to circumvent protections and compromise computer systems around the globe. Pyongyang’s cyber operatives, like the Lazarus Group, have been linked to computer system infiltration like the 2014 Sony Pictures Studios hack prior to the release of the U.S. film “The Interview” and the attempted theft of close to $1 billion from the central Bangladesh bank using the SWIFT banking network in 2016. How did they get so good at hacking?

Hajji Abd al-Nasir, an Iraqi national who served as a senior Islamic State military leader in Syria and a close confidant of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been named as a specially designated global terrorist by the United States, the U.S. State Department announced Tuesday.