With the U.S. and China still negotiating a trade deal, and ongoing concerns in the U.S. about China’s technology goals, Silicon Valley is caught between two superpowers. Michelle Quinn reports. …

Northern California is famous for many things, the sun, the surf, the wine, but it has also been infamous for its smog. Smog is a noxious collection of nitrogen and sulfur oxides, along with smoke and dirty particles, which all combine to form a foglike haze in the air. But some new technology is promising to turn a roof into an air cleaner. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

America’s newest capsule for astronauts rocketed Saturday toward the International Space Station on a high-stakes test flight by SpaceX. The only passenger was a life-size test dummy, named Ripley after the lead character in the “Alien” movies. SpaceX needs to nail the debut of its crew Dragon capsule before putting people on board later this year. This latest, flashiest Dragon is on a fast track to reach the space station Sunday morning, just 27 hours after liftoff. Five day round trip It will spend five days docked to the orbiting outpost, before making a retro-style splashdown in the Atlantic next Friday — all vital training for the next space demo, possibly this summer, when two astronauts strap in. “This is critically important … We’re on the precipice of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil again for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. He got a special tour of the pad on the eve of launch, by SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk. An estimated 5,000 NASA and contractor employees, tourists and journalists gathered in the wee hours at Kennedy Space Center with the SpaceX launch …

White House officials are worried that unless more American students study math and science the United States won’t be able to compete with China, India and other nations. The U.S. administration has just published a five-year plan to boost the number of kids who go into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, or STEM subjects. VOA’s Sahar Majid has more in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard. …