VIDEO: U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border Wednesday to visit some of the thousands of troops called up to assist in security operations there. VOA reports from the Brownsville port of entry located right below one of the international bridges between Matamoros, Mexico and the U.S. state of Texas.

ON THIS DAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY On November 14, 1851, Herman Melville’s classic American novel, Moby-Dick is published. The story about Captain Ahab’s search for a giant white whale opens with one of the most famous opening lines in literature: “Call me Ishmael.” The book was a flop and was largely forgotten until the 1920s. Since then, Moby-Dick has been a staple of American high school reading lists, and the book has been made into a movie several times.

Business website 24/7 Wall Street has ranked all the 50 states in order of how dangerous they are. The most dangerous states might surprise you, as some of them are the least populated states.

VIDEO: This week’s Plugged In with VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren looks at the case of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who was jailed and sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Her acquittal last month sparked violence and protests in major Pakistani cities and renewed the debate over blasphemy laws around the world.

VIDEO: A U.S. State Department delegation visited a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar region to show U.S. support and commitment to the safe return of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar .

Britain’s Theresa May scrambled Wednesday to sell to her Cabinet a draft Brexit divorce agreement British negotiators concluded after months of wrangling with their European Union counterparts.