VIDEO: Coal has powered progress since the Industrial Revolution. While coal-fired power is on the rise in Asia, it’s declining in the United States and much of Europe as cheaper alternatives and climate concerns push it out of the market. While the fall has hit coal towns hard in the Appalachian region of the eastern United States, the Western state of Wyoming is the nation’s leading coal producer. Now, coal’s troubles have arrived in this energy-rich state, too.

ON THIS DAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY On August 22, 1950, tennis player Althea Gibson becomes the first African-American allowed to play in the United States Lawn Tennis Association’s championship in Forest Hills, New York. She won her first round match and was eliminated in the second round, but her career was just getting started. In 1956, she won the French Open, and the next year, she won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. She won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open again in 1958. All of this was done as an amateur. Her talents were not limited to tennis as Gibson was a talented singer, saxophonist and golfer. As a professional golfer, Gibson was consistently among the top 50 money winners on the women’s tour. Gibson died in 2003 at the age of 76.

In an escalation of its bitter dispute with Japan, South Korea decided Thursday to scrap a military intelligence sharing agreement with Tokyo, opening a new divide in trilateral security cooperation between the U.S., Japan and South Korea.

VIDEO: To get medical supplies or food, people in some places around the world are showing not a government ID but their iris or their thumbprint. VOA talked to one Silicon Valley company providing the new tech tools.

VIDEO: Protests paralyzing Hong Kong’s central district are growing by the week. They are demonstrating to maintain Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms in the face of Chinese pressure. Plugged In with Greta Van Susteren examines what is at stake and the US policy on the growing unrest.

A Spanish navy frigate sailed from Cadiz, Spain, Wednesday to escort the humanitarian vessel Open Arms back from Italy with a token number of 10 refugees Spain has agreed to take in. It could be the Barcelona-based ship’s last voyage as pressure mounts to stop rescuing shipwrecked African migrants.