There are more than 150 patients at the “Alcor Life Extension Foundation.” Each had their body frozen cryonically shortly after death in the hopes that one day, medical science will find a cure for what killed them, and they can be revived and healed. It’s a scientifically dubious idea, but some people are willing to pay a lot of money in the hopes that one day they can come back for a long and healthy life. Iacopo Luzi has the story.  …

More than 400 teenagers from all over the US spent one week of their summer vacation renovating homes by day, and sleeping on the floor of local churches by night. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, the faith-based program is giving these young people a unique opportunity to learn and grow, while helping people in need. Faith Lapidus narrates. …

A family of Cuban luthiers has produced more than 500 musical instruments for Cuban schools over the past five years in an unprecedented agreement with the country’s ministry of culture, helping to fill a void in the state’s own ability to produce musical instruments. …

Officials in northwestern Pakistan say twin suicide bombings have killed at least eight people and wounded 25 others.  Police say a suicide bomber attacked a security post Sunday in Dera Ismail Khan.  Another suicide bomber, dressed in a burqa, attacked the hospital where the victims from the first explosion were taken, causing further casualties.  The Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for the incidents in an email sent to VOA. …

Ukrainians are going to the polls Sunday to cast their ballots in a snap parliamentary election that could consolidate the power of its recently elected president. A tidal wave of popular support in April carried Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a comedian who played the president on a popular television comedy, to Ukraine’s highest office.  “By calling an early election, the new president hoped to keep the momentum of his presidential victory going,” says Agnese Ortolani of the Economist Intelligence Unit.  “He is backed in this attempt by a majority of Ukrainians who view parliament as inherently corrupt and have given Mr. Zelenskiy a mandate to ‘clean up’ the political class.”  Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People Party, named after the television show, is expected to do well, but may fall short of a majority, forcing it to form a coalition.  Political analysts say the composition of the new parliament could look dramatically different with up to 70 percent of its members being new lawmakers.   …

Health officials say an oppressive heat wave that has blanketed large swaths of the United States has contributed to the deaths of at least six people. Various news outlets have reported heat-related deaths in the states of Maryland, Arizona and Arkansas. The National Weather Service warned a “dangerous heat wave” paired with high humidity in the United States over the weekend could quickly cause heat stress or heat stroke, if precautions are not taken. Events were canceled throughout the nation, from festivals and concerts to sporting events. The NWS said temperatures would remain warm at night, in the upper 70s to low 80s, with more heat on the way Sunday for the East Coast. The agency also advised people to check in on relatives and friends, especially the elderly. During a span of three days in July 1995, more than 700 people died in Chicago, when temperatures rose above 36 degrees Celsius. Many of those who died were poor or elderly with no access to air conditioning. Many also lived alone. Despite the warnings, one runner in the nation’s capital planned to head out for a run early Saturday. “It’s brutal,” Jeffrey Glickman, 37, said, adding, “You just have to …

Britain on Saturday denounced Iran’s seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf as a “hostile act” and rejected Tehran’s explanation that it seized the vessel because it had been involved in an accident.  Iran’s Revolutionary Guards posted a video online showing speedboats pulling alongside the Stena Impero tanker, its name clearly visible. Troops wearing ski masks and carrying machine guns rappelled to its deck from a helicopter, the same tactics used by British Royal Marines to seize an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar two weeks ago.  Friday’s action in the global oil trade’s most important waterway has been viewed in the West as a major escalation after three months of confrontation that has already taken Iran and the United States to the brink of war.  It follows threats from Tehran to retaliate for Britain’s July 4 seizure of the Iranian tanker Grace 1, accused of violating sanctions on Syria.  British Defense Secretary Penny Mordaunt called the incident a “hostile act”. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he had expressed “extreme disappointment” by phone to his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Britain also summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires in London.  A spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier-General Ramezan Sharif, said Tehran had seized the ship in the Strait …

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Saturday that President Donald Trump relished a chant by the crowd at a campaign rally this week that called for a Democratic congresswoman to be sent back where she came from.  Trump renewed his criticism of four minority women lawmakers on Friday, saying that they had said horrible things about the United States, and defended himself from criticism over his comment that they should leave the United States if unhappy.  A day after saying his audience in North Carolina went too far when they chanted “Send her back!” about Somalia-born Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, on Friday he defended the crowd members as “incredible patriots.”  Appearing before her constituents in New York City for the first time since the latest flare-up between Trump and the four Democratic congresswomen, Ocasio-Cortez rejected the president’s statement that he had tried to quiet the crowd, saying he had egged them on instead.  “Roll back the tape … He relished it. He took it in and he’s doing this intentionally,” the freshman U.S. lawmaker told about 200 constituents gathered for a town hall meeting on immigration at a school in the Corona section of Queens.  Video of the crowd in North …

White House national security adviser John Bolton departed on Saturday for a trip to Japan and South Korea as the two countries are in the middle of a trade dispute.  A White House National Security Council spokesman said on Twitter that Bolton planned to “continue conversations with critical allies and friends.”  President Donald Trump on Friday offered his help to ease tensions in the political and economic dispute between the United States’ two biggest allies in Asia, which threatens global supplies of memory chips and smartphones.  Lingering tensions, particularly over the issue of compensation for South Koreans forced to work for Japanese occupiers during World War Two, worsened this month when Japan restricted exports of high-tech materials to South Korea.  Japan has denied that the dispute over compensation is behind the export curbs, even though one of its ministers cited broken trust with Seoul over the labor dispute in announcing the restrictions.  The export curbs could hurt global technology companies.  Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday that South Korean President Moon Jae-in had asked him if he could get involved.  A spokeswoman for Moon confirmed Moon had asked Trump for help at their summit in Seoul on …

MIAMI — American crocodiles, once headed toward extinction, are thriving at an unusual spot — the canals surrounding a South Florida nuclear plant.  Last week, 73 crocodile hatchlings were rescued by a team of specialists at Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point nuclear plant and dozens more are expected to emerge soon.  Turkey Point’s 168-mile (270-kilometer) man-made canals serve as the home to several hundred crocodiles, where a team of specialists working for FPL monitors and protects them from hunting and climate change.  From January to April, Michael Lloret, an FPL wildlife biologist and crocodile specialist, helps create nests for the creatures. Once the hatchlings are reared and left by the mother, the team captures them. They are measured and tagged with microchips to observe their development. Lloret then relocates them to increase survival rates.  “We entice crocodiles to come in to the habitats FPL created,” Lloret said. “We clear greenery on the berms so that the crocodiles can nest. Because of rising sea levels wasting nests along the coasts, Turkey Point is important for crocodiles to continue.”  Wildlife biologist/crocodile specialist Michael Lloret points out a crocodile nest on one of the berms along the cooling canals next to the …

TOKYO — Japanese voters cast ballots Sunday in an upper house election, with Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc looking to protect its majority and keep on track plans to amend the country’s pacifist constitution.    Abe, 64, who is on course to become Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, is also hoping to shore up his mandate ahead of a crucial consumption tax hike later this year, along with trade negotiations with Washington.    Opinion polls suggest his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner Komeito are likely to win a majority, mostly because of a lackluster opposition.    Sunday’s vote is for half the seats in the House of Councilors — the less powerful house of parliament — and polling stations across the country open at 7 a.m. (2200 GMT Saturday).    The vote outcome is expected to become clear shortly after the polls close at 8 p.m., with pollsters suggesting turnout could be lower than 50 percent,  significantly less than usual.  ‘Disarray’ in opposition camp   Abe’s ruling coalition is forecast to win a solid majority of the 124 seats contested in the election, according to pre-election surveys.    The two parties control 70 seats in the half of the chamber that …

ATHENS — Greece will submit a 2020 budget later this year that will fully respect the fiscal targets agreed upon with its lenders, newly elected Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Saturday.  Outlining his main policies after a landslide victory in a July 7 election, Mitsotakis told Greek lawmakers that the budget would not put fiscal targets for 2019 and 2020 at risk.  Greece emerged from economic adjustment programs overseen by its lenders last August but still needs to meet fiscal targets, including a primary budget surplus — which excludes interest payments on its debt — of 3.5 percent of annual economic output up to 2022, which many consider unrealistic.  “In the draft budget for 2020, the given fiscal balance is not disrupted and the primary surplus targets for the years 2019 and 2020, agreed by the previous government, are not disputed,” Mitsotakis said.  Mitsotakis, who takes over from former leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, was elected on a pledge to cut taxes and speed up investments to spur growth in a country that lost a quarter of its output during the Greek debt crisis.  He said that planned tax cuts and bold reforms of the economy and public administration would lead to higher growth and help Greece persuade its lenders to lower fiscal targets after 2020.  “In …

LOS ANGELES — Joe Biden, a former U.S. vice president and Democratic presidential candidate, has compared Republican President Donald Trump to the late George Wallace, a prominent supporter of racial segregation.  Biden, in California for a two-day swing to campaign and raise funds, told a gathering on Friday that Trump is “more George Wallace than George Washington.”  Wallace, remembered for his white supremacist views, served as Alabama’s governor for 20 years, beginning in 1967, and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination several times.  His 1972 presidential bid ended when he was shot, but he survived. Wallace died in 1998.  Biden’s comment came days after Trump said in a tweet that four U.S. congresswomen of color “should go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.”  The tweet kicked off a weeklong furor in Washington, with Democrats, and some Republicans, denouncing the comment as racist. Three of the four congresswomen were born in the United States, and all are U.S. citizens.  “Our children are listening to this. What the president says matters. It matters, because the president is the face of the nation,” Biden said in California.  Trump’s re-election campaign responded with a series of tweets highlighting what they said were Biden’s own past links to Wallace.  Inspired by Charlottesville rally Biden, 76, …

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke with Turkey’s foreign minister on Saturday and expressed disappointment over the country’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 missile system, the U.S. State Department said in a statement.  Washington had opposed Turkey’s purchase of the Russian missile defense system and threatened to impose sanctions. Since then, President Donald Trump has been unclear about whether his administration was planning such an action.  Several Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Thursday pressed Trump to impose sanctions on Turkey for the purchase.  …

HONG KONG — Tens of thousands gathered in Hong Kong on Saturday to voice support for the police and call for an end to violence, after a wave of protests against an extradition bill triggered clashes between police and activists and plunged the city into crisis.    The rally, called “Safeguard Hong Kong,” came a day ahead of another mass protest planned against the government and its handling of the now-suspended extradition bill that would have allowed people in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China for trial.    Police have called for calm ahead of Sunday’s protest, where security is expected to be tight. Authorities have removed metal barriers — which activists have used to block roads during previous demonstrations — from areas around the march route.    “We are experiencing the most serious revolution after Hong Kong’s handover,” said former Legislative Council President Jasper Tsang. “We are also experiencing the most serious challenge for “One Country, Two Systems,” he added, referring to the system under which Hong Kong is governed since its handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997.  Explosive found in raid   Also Saturday, the Associated Press reported that police in Hong Kong found about 2 …

IRBIL / SULAIMANIYA, IRAQ – Security services in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region said Saturday that they had arrested the brother of a lawmaker serving in the Turkish parliament for the assassination of a Turkish diplomat in the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital, Irbil.    The diplomat was one of at least two people shot dead on Wednesday when a gunman opened fire in a restaurant where Turkish diplomats were dining.    “The Kurdistan region announced on Saturday the arrest of the man who planned the assassination of a Turkish diplomat in a restaurant in Irbil, less than a week after the attack,” the Asayish internal security service said in a statement.    It did not name the suspect but said “reports indicated” that his sister served as a Kurdish lawmaker in the Turkish parliament. A separate statement from another Iraqi Kurdish security force, the Counter Terrorism Department, gave the suspect’s name as Mazlum Dag.    Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) later confirmed that the man who arrested was the brother of one of its lawmakers, Dersim Dag.    It said it strongly condemned the attack on the diplomat and that “using the attack as a reason to make one of our lawmakers a target through the name of her …

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven had assured him American citizen and rapper A$AP Rocky would be treated fairly.    Trump said he assured Lofven that Rocky was not a flight risk and personally vouched for his bail.    Swedish prosecutors on Friday extended Rocky’s detention by six days amid their investigation into a street fight in Stockholm.  …

Pakistan organized its first ever provincial elections Saturday in a northwestern region along the mountainous border with Afghanistan that until a few years ago was condemned as the “epicenter” of international terrorism. Pakistani officials said the elections in the seven districts of what were formerly known as the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) are central to steps the government has taken to supplement regional and global efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan and counter violent extremism. Pakistani election officials said some 2.8 million registered voters were to choose from 285 candidates for 16 seats in the legislative assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. The contestants, including two women, represented major mainstream political parties. The election was held under tight security and no incidents of violence were reported. The historic vote came on a day when Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan left for the United States for his first meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, where the two leaders will discuss counterterrorism measures among a range of other issues. A landmark constitutional amendment pushed through the parliament last year paved the ground for the tribal territory to be merged in the adjoining KP province to bring …

Saudi-coalition spokesman Col. Turki al Maliki says that coalition fighter jets took out at least five Houthi air defense sites around the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, early Saturday. Amateur video showed a number of explosions rocking Sanaa, overnight.  Amateur video broadcast by Arab media showed a series of explosions around the Yemeni capital Sana’a, early Saturday, followed by loud percussive explosions. Saudi-owned media, quoting coalition spokesman Turki al Maliki, indicated that at least five Houthi air defense sites were bombed by Saudi warplanes. Maliki claimed that a number of Houthi ballistic missiles were destroyed in the air attacks. The Saudi-owned Asharqalawsat newspaper quoted Maliki as saying the “operation [overnight] targeted the Houthis air defense capabilities, as well as their ability to launch aggressive attacks.” Maliki went on to say the coalition raids “conformed with international human rights law.” Hilal Khashan, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut, tells VOA that he doesn’t think the Saudi air raids are going to have much effect on the ongoing war or the Houthis military capabilities: “This is not the first time the Saudis announced launching attacks on missile sites in Yemen,” he said. “It happened in the past and it’s highly …

Two ossuaries found under the Pontifical Teutonic College in the Vatican were opened Saturday and forensic experts began to analyze the bones. The ossuaries were discovered by the Vatican last week after the opening of two tombs of princesses at the cemetery earlier this month revealed they were empty. The tombs had been opened as part of investigations into the disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, in 1983. The mystery of the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, 36 years ago, continues to deepen at the Vatican, giving rise to more questions rather than answers. The latest mystery involves bones recovered on Saturday for analysis, located in two ossuaries found last week. Earlier this month the Vatican had opened two tombs and found the remains of the bodies that should have been there were not. Church officials said the bodies of the two German princesses who were buried in those tombs may have been removed and never returned to their original resting place. The tombs were opened following a request from the Orlandi family. A demonstrator wears a shirt with writing in Italian reading “Please give the justice dossier for Emanuela” on the outskirts of the Vatican, …

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to meet Saturday with Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno in the capital of Quito as he continues his Latin American trip that has so far been dominated by the growing threat of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. In Argentina Friday, Pompeo confirmed the U.S. imposed financial sanctions against a Hezbollah militant group leader suspected of directing a deadly bombing in 1994 of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.   “They were killed by members of a terrorist group, Hezbollah, and had help that day from Iran,” which provided “logistical support and funding through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Pompeo said at an event in Argentina marking the 25th anniversary of the attack.   U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signs a guest book during a memorial service marking the death of 85 people who died in a 1994 bombing blamed on Hezbollah, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, July 19, 2019. Pompeo announced two actions against Salman Raouf Salman, who he said was the on-the-ground coordinator for the deadly bombing, and “remains a wanted man who continues to plot terrorism on behalf of Hezbollah.” The State Department’s Rewards for Justice …

Italy’s Mount Etna, Europe’s biggest live volcano, erupted overnight with lava flows and explosive burps, vulcanologists said Saturday. A heavy emission of ash into the sky forced the closure of two airports in Sicily’s second-biggest city of Catania. They partially reopened early Saturday. The activity followed “lively spattering” recorded by the  National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology (INGV) in early June and a previous eruption in December last year. Eruptions are frequent, and the last major one dated back to early 2009. The institute said this latest eruption was intermittent and the lava was flowing around 1.5 kilometres (one mile) down a desertic escarpment called the Valle del Bove (Ox Valley) from craters situated on the volcano’s southeast face. …

President Donald Trump attributed statements to a Democratic congresswoman that she didn’t make as he set off an incendiary week of vilification with accusations that she and three other lawmakers of color hate America. The episode roiled the capital and excited Trump’s North Carolina rally, overshadowing distortions in rhetoric that came from many quarters and from both parties on a variety of matters over the last week-plus — the Democratic presidential campaign among them. A sampling: LOVING AMERICA TRUMP quotes Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., as saying: “You don’t say ‘America’ with this intensity. You say ‘al-Qaida,’ it makes you proud. Al-Qaida makes you proud. You don’t speak that way about America.” — North Carolina rally on Wednesday. TRUMP: “I hear the way she talks about al-Qaida. Al-Qaida has killed many Americans. She said, ‘You can hold your chest out, you can — when I think of America — uhh — when I think of al-Qaida, I can hold my chest out.’” — remarks Monday at a manufacturing event at the White House. THE FACTS: This is a wholly distorted account of what the Omar said. She did not voice pride in the terrorist group. Trump is referring to an interview …

President Donald Trump’s suggestion that four activist Democratic congresswomen of color “go back” to countries “from which they came” has excited some in his political base. Yet in many of America’s workplaces and institutions, the same language would be unacceptable and possibly illegal. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal laws against workplace bias, explicitly cites comments like “go back to where you came from” as examples of “potentially unlawful conduct.” Similar phrases routinely show up in lawsuits that the EEOC files against employers alleging discrimination, harassment or retaliation based on race or national origin. Apart from its legality in workplaces, Trump’s language has ignited impassioned responses across racial, ethnic and political divides. “It wasn’t Racist!” tweeted Terrence Williams, a black comedian who supports Trump. “No matter what color you are YOU can go back home or move if you don’t like America.” By contrast, Rachel Timoner, a senior rabbi at a Reform Jewish synagogue in Brooklyn, said such language would never be tolerated among members of her congregation. “I’d want to sit down with them and ask them, where that’s coming from?” she said. “If a person persistently degraded other human beings, I would need to say to …