POPGAZETA

Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen’s improbable career has brought him rapidly to the brink of operatic stardom at age 25. So it’s not surprising that the Brooklyn-born countertenor would fall prey to feeling a “kind of impostor syndrome” when he walked on stage. “Up until this time I’ve always had this feeling of, ‘What, me? Really?’” Cohen said in an interview at the War Memorial Opera House, where he was finishing a June run of performances as Medoro in Handel’s “Orlando.”  But something changed on opening night. “I wasn’t nervous at all,” Cohen said. “For the first time, I’m feeling I really belong here and I can hold my own.” Indeed, he did more than that. His second-act aria, “Verdi allori,” regularly drew some of the evening’s biggest applause, and Joshua Kosman in the San Francisco Chronicle singled him out for his “strong and gleaming” tone and “endlessly eloquent” phrasing. Cohen is one of a young generation of countertenors who are popularizing a once-obscure vocal register that lies above normal tenor range and requires them to sing in falsetto or “head voice.” The repertoire for these singers was once limited mainly to baroque composers like Monteverdi and Handel, who wrote roles for …

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said on Tuesday that there would “never” be a good moment to negotiate with President Nicolas Maduro’s “dictatorship,” ruling out an expected new round of talks to find an exit from the country’s crisis. Guaido and Maduro had both sent representatives to Oslo in May for discussions that Norway’s government had encouraged, but they were unable to reach any agreement. On Saturday, people familiar with the talks told Reuters that talks would restart this week. Guaido on Tuesday said there had been “no official statement that we would attend a new round” of dialogue. “It is never going to be a good moment to mediate… with kidnappers, human rights violators, and a dictatorship,” Guaido told reporters at the opposition-controlled National Assembly legislature, which he heads. Few details have been released about the talks in Oslo between representatives of Maduro and Guaido, who assumed a rival presidency in January and denounces Maduro as an illegitimate usurper who has overseen a five-year recession. Guaido’s comments came as the opposition expressed outrage over the death last week of Venezuelan navy captain Rafael Acosta in military custody. The captain’s wife and rights groups accuse Maduro’s government of torturing Acosta …

A military jury acquitted a decorated Navy SEAL of premeditated murder Tuesday in the killing of a wounded Islamic State captive under his care in Iraq in 2017.   Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher was cleared of all charges except for posing for photos with the dead body of the captive in a verdict that is a major blow to military prosecutors.   Gallagher reacted with “tears of joy, emotion, freedom and absolute euphoria,” defense lawyer Marc Mukasey said.   “Suffice it to say this is a huge victory,” Mukasey said outside court. “It’s as huge weight off the Gallaghers.”   Defense lawyers said Gallagher was framed by disgruntled platoon members who fabricated the allegations to oust their chief. They said there was no physical evidence to support the allegations.   The prosecution said Gallagher’s own text messages and photos incriminated him. They included photos of Gallagher holding the dead militant up by the hair and clutching a knife in his other hand.   A text message Gallagher sent while deployed said “got him with my hunting knife.”   The prosecution asserted the proof of Gallagher’s guilt was in his own words, his own photos and the testimony of his …

Dozens of Central American migrants who were forced to wait in Mexico for their asylum claims to be processed in the United Stated opted Tuesday to return to their home countries with the Mexican government’s help, the foreign ministry said. Sixty-six people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador had been sent back to Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez opposite El Paso, Texas, after requesting asylum in the United States, the ministry said in a statement, under a contentious U.S policy known as Migration Protection Protocols (MPP). Mexico organized the return trip with the support of the U.N.-backed International Organization for Migration as part of its launch of a “temporary program of voluntary return” for migrants in northern Mexico, it said. Central American migrants travel to Mexico City after they voluntarily asked to return to their countries, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, July 2, 2019. U.S. asylum cases can take months or years to be decided because of a massive backlog of immigration court cases. Even hearings can take months to be scheduled. “The people want to go back to their places of origin, and want to leave this dream behind and go back to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador,” said Javier Calvillo, director …

Looking to improve his standing with black voters, Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg pitched a plan Tuesday to tackle “systemic racism” he said exists in housing, health care, education, policing and other aspects of American life.  The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, told a predominantly black audience at a Chicago meeting of Rainbow PUSH, the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s civil rights organization, that his plan includes providing more opportunity for minority businesses, strengthening voting rights and reforming the criminal justice system. He said he would cut incarceration numbers in half by legalizing marijuana and eliminating prison time for simple drug possession. He wants to restore voting rights for some 6 million Americans with felony convictions and supports “bold and meaningful action” on reparations for the descendants of slaves. Rev. Jesse Jackson addresses reporters at the start of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition Annual International Convention in Chicago, July 2, 2019. Buttigieg’s speech followed the June 16 fatal shooting of a black man by a white South Bend police officer, which he said re-exposed a “racial chasm” between black and white residents in the racially diverse community of roughly 100,000 people. The shooting prompted Buttigieg to leave the campaign trail, and it …

The U.N. World Food Program said Tuesday it will triple the number of people it is providing food and cash assistance to in northeastern Congo’s Ituri province, which is facing inter-ethnic violence and an Ebola epidemic. WFP said a resurgence of clashes between ethnic groups has claimed at least 160 lives in recent weeks and has forced tens of thousands of additional people — many of whom are malnourished — to flee their homes. Ituri is one of two provinces in the grip of Congo’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak, which has claimed more than 1,400 lives. The U.N. food agency said it intends to expand the number of displaced people it is assisting in Ituri every month from 116,000 to 300,000. “Our hearts go out to the latest victims of this senseless cruelty, most of them rural villagers who have had to run for their lives, with little or nothing, right at harvest time,” WFP’s Congo representative Claude Jibidar said in a statement. “Our ongoing relief operation in Ituri … means we are ready and able to quickly scale up.” According to WFP, Congo is “the world’s second-largest hunger crisis,” with 13 million people not having a secure supply of food. …

In a stinging defeat for President Donald Trump, his administration has ended its effort to add a citizenship  question to the 2020 U.S. census, saying that it will begin printing forms that do not include the contentious query. White House and Justice Department officials confirmed the decision, which came in the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling on June 27 that faulted the Trump administration for its original attempt to add the question. Although the court left open the possibility of the administration adding the question, there was little time left for the government to come up with a new rationale. The government had said in court filings that it needed to finalize the details of the questionnaire by the end of June. Trump had suggested delaying the census so that the question could be added. …

Hundreds of Israelis are protesting across the country against alleged police brutality against the country’s Ethiopian community following the killing of an Ethiopian Israeli teen by an off-duty police officer.   Demonstrators blocked a main highway in central Tel Aviv and major thoroughfares around the country on Tuesday. They have been voicing frustration over perceived systemic discrimination against the community’s roughly 150,000 members. Police say officers arrested at least three protesters at a demonstration outside Haifa that turned violent.   On Sunday, an off-duty police officer shot and killed Ethiopian Israeli teen Solomon Teka. Police said the officer was arrested and placed by a court in protective custody.   Thousands of people attended Teka’s funeral at a cemetery near Haifa on Tuesday.   …

A Mexican official says about 70 Central American migrants who’d been returned to Ciudad Juarez to await the outcome of their U.S. asylum claims are being bused back to their countries. The official with the Foreign Relations Department says the bus left Juarez on Tuesday morning. All the people are said to have volunteered, and all are from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras.   The official isn’t sure what impact their decisions might have on their asylum claims in the United States.   The person adds that similar busings are expected “soon” in Tijuana and Mexicali, two other cities that have been taking in returnees from the United States under the program. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made public.   …

Saturn’s moon Titan has all the right ingredients for life. NASA’s newly announced mission, Titan in front of Saturn as seen by Cassini. (Image credit: NASA) Titan’s surface is hidden from view by its hazy atmosphere, which is four times denser than Earth’s. Combined with the low gravity – just one-seventh as strong as what we’re used to – the thick atmosphere makes Titan an ideal target for an airborne explorer. The idea of building an aircraft to fly in Titan’s thick atmosphere isn’t new, but it wasn’t until drone technology became more advanced that the Dragonfly team realized they could make their dream of flying on Titan a reality. Leapfrogging across Titan With its two sets of four propellers stacked on top of one another, Dragonfly looks a little bit like a drone, but it’s much bigger than something you would fly around in your backyard – around 3 meters long and more than a meter tall. The design will allow Dragonfly to take pictures from the air and land on Titan’s frozen surface for a closer view. It will initially target a region near the moon’s equator that is covered in sand dunes, similar to what is found …

The White House on Tuesday downplayed President Donald Trump’s concession to allow sales of some computer chips to China’s Huawei Technologies company, saying the telecommunications giant remains blocked because of national security concerns from buying parts to produce its newest 5G smartphones. Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro told CNBC, “All we’ve done basically is to allow the sale of chips to Huawei and these are lower tech items, which do not impact national security whatsoever. Selling chips to Huawei, a small amount of chips – less than $1 billion a year – in the short run is small in the scheme of things.” Washington had put Huawei on an export blacklist in May, citing national security concerns related to its technology for the company’s 5G – Fifth Generation – smart devices. Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei speaks during a roundtable at the telecom giant’s headquarters in Shenzhen in southern China on Monday, June 17, 2019. Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei also said that Trump’s agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the weekend to relax a ban on U.S. sales to Huawei would not have “much impact” on the company’s business. But Ren said he is willing to continue to buy U.S. …

A Sudanese opposition group said Tuesday that two of its leaders have been arrested amid a weekslong standoff between the ruling military council and a protest coalition that held mass marches this week. The Sudanese Professionals’ Association, which has spearheaded protests since December, said security forces arrested Yassin Abdel-Karim, head of the Sudanese Teachers’ Committee, in the capital, Khartoum. The committee is part of the SPA. It said they also arrested lawyer Abdel-Majed Aidrous in the northern city of Atbara, the birthplace of the uprising that led to the military overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir in April. The group said security forces searched the homes of three other leaders. The SPA is part of the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change, which represents the protesters. A police spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The arrests came two days after protesters flooded the streets of Sudan’s main cities in the biggest show of numbers since security forces cleared a sit-in outside the military headquarters last month. At least 11 people were killed in clashes with security forces, according to protest organizers. The FDFC on Monday called for marches in Khartoum and elsewhere on July 13 and …

A top Democratic National Committee official has raised $1.5 million in his challenge to U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Campaign officials tell The Associated Press that Jaime Harrison raised the money in the second quarter, which ended Sunday. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is backing Harrison in the associate DNC chairman’s effort to block Graham from a fourth term in 2020. Flipping a Senate seat from red to blue in South Carolina would be difficult and likely would require millions of dollars in fundraising, an area in which national-level groups like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee would be crucial.   …

Authorities have confirmed an Ebola case just 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Congo’s border with South Sudan. The development is troubling as South Sudan’s health care system is less equipped to handle Ebola should cases develop there. The report of the case near South Sudan came Tuesday from South Sudan’s health ministry and was seen by The Associated Press. Health officials say the confirmed case near South Sudan involved the contact of a known Ebola case in Congo’s Beni town. The person was supposed to stay in regular contact with Congolese health authorities during the 21-day incubation period. Congo’s Ebola outbreak has killed more than 1,500 and has spread to neighboring Uganda where two people died last month after a family that sickened in Congo returned home across the border.   …

German authorities say they have issued Facebook with a 2 million-euro ($2.3 million) fine under a law designed to combat hate speech. The Federal Office for Justice said Tuesday that the social networking company had failed to meet transparency requirements for its handling of hate speech complaints. The agency said Facebook’s report for the first half of 2018 didn’t reflect the actual number of complaints about suspected illegal content, which in Germany includes anti-Semitic insults and material designed to incite hatred against persons or groups based on their religion or ethnicity. It said there was also incomplete information about the language skills and training of staff tasked with processing hate speech complaints.   …

Environmental activists who have been joined by some yellow vest protesters are disrupting Amazon sites in France, accusing the online company of destroying jobs and hurting the planet. A few dozen demonstrators climbed a fence and forced their way into Amazon offices in northern Paris on Tuesday, according to images shared on social media. They spoke with employees and staged a sit-in at the security gates. Regional media also reported protests in the southern city of Toulouse and near the northern city of Lille.   Organizers oppose three new Amazon warehouses slated to open around France. They accuse the company of killing jobs in local businesses, and exacerbating climate change because of the emissions used in transporting its huge volume of goods.   …

Atlanta’s city council has approved a far-reaching ban on smoking and vaping in restaurants and bars – and inside one of the world’s busiest airports.   The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that city council members approved the ban on Monday. It covers cigarettes, cigars and electronic cigarettes. If signed by the mayor, it would take effect on Jan. 2, 2020.   Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is one of the few major U.S. hubs where people can still smoke inside designated rooms.   The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a 2017 report that most busy U.S. airports ban smoking in all indoor areas. Denver International Airport last year closed the last of its indoor smoking lounges and is now smoke-free indoors. …

Ethiopia has begun restoring internet access 10 days after it was cut following the assassinations of six top government officials. The internet shutdown affected the entire country but in recent days a few locations were able to function.   No official explanation has been given for the internet cut but many Ethiopians suspect it was aimed at preventing government critics from communicating to wide audiences and to protect the country from fake news and disinformation.  Ethio Telecom, the country’s state-owned monopoly of telecommunications services, also cut internet access two weeks ago during the national school exams.  NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group, estimated Ethiopia was losing a minimum of $4.5 million a day during the internet cut. …

In Malawi, a young albino man is using music to fight discrimination and misconceptions about the genetic condition in a country where more than 100 people with albinism have been attacked since 2014. Lazarus Chigwandali has long been performing on the streets of Lilongwe.  But after catching the eye of a Swedish producer, he began work on an album that is due out in August. He’s also about to embark on a nationwide tour to promote a documentary, produced by American pop star Madonna, about the plight of albinos in Malawi. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe. …

In Malawi, a young albino man is using music to fight discrimination and misconceptions about the genetic condition in a country where more than 100 people with albinism have been attacked since 2014.  As teens, Lazarus Chigwandali and his late brother, who also had albinism, played on the streets of Lilongwe, mostly to raise money to buy protective skin lotion. He says in those days it was difficult to find skin lotion that would protect them from the sun, so they had sores all over their bodies. As a result many people discriminated against them because of the way their bodies looked. Attacks continue Discrimination and attacks against albinos like Chigwandali continue. Some Africans believe their body parts, used in so-called magic potions, will bring good luck. At 39, Chigwandali began composing songs about the myths and misperceptions about people with albinism. Then he heard music producers from abroad wanted to meet him at his home village to record his music, something that worried his wife, Gertrude Levison. She says she was afraid that maybe they wanted to kidnap them all. But she realized that it was a peaceful move when she heard her husband talking with a friend of …

Iran announced Monday that it has exceeded its low-enriched uranium stockpile limit, violating the amount it agreed to hold in the 2015 international deal. The move is aimed at forcing the signatories of the nuclear deal to give Iran relief from U.S. sanctions. VOA’s Kurdish Service discussed the consequences of Iran’s action with two experts on Iranian issues. Zlatica Hoke has a summary of what they said. …

Forests are one of the planet’s best defenses against climate change. But trees are worth more to most people as building material or firewood than as sponges for planet-warming carbon dioxide. Conservationists are working to find ways to make forests valuable while protecting the livelihoods of people who earn a living from them. In the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, an environmental group recently bought 40,000 hectares of forest. But that will not mean an end to logging. VOA’s Steve Baragona has a look. …