Newsletter Archive

Refugee children in Lebanon are among those making their voices heard under the guidance of a renowned Arab composer and conductor. Three hundred children — Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian — from deprived backgrounds are learning to sing from Salim Sahab, a big name in Middle Eastern music and opera. In a few months, the choir will perform with an with an orchestra before an audience of hundreds. Through music, the maestro is determined to teach the children not just how to sing, but also how to dream.

London is emerging as an important hub of suspected Kremlin meddling in Western politics, according to experts. Political pressure is mounting on Britain’s Conservative government to launch a formal inquiry into whether Moscow sought to influence the vote for Britain to leave the EU. Suspected Russian subversion of last year’s US presidential race and the 2016 Brexit referendum increasingly point to the British capital as a hotbed of Russian intelligence activity.

A Nigerien man who says he found three of the four US soldiers killed in Niger last month says the bodies were bloodied and stripped of their uniforms. Adamou Boubacar tells VOA’s French to Africa service that he was the first to discover the slain men.

People were beheaded, shot or bludgeoned to death in Raqqa during Islamic State’s time there. Their bodies were put on display in the center of town, a place called Heaven Square, which quickly became known as Hell Square. VOA is in Raqqa, where making the city livable again remains an overwhelming task — as is rebuilding lives after mass trauma.

VIDEO: Since British colonial times, the Pakistani province of Baluchistan has been well known for its coal production. Today, most of the thousands of people who work in the mines are contract laborers who put aside any fears about unsafe conditions because there is little other work for them in the region. VOA takes a look inside a coal mine near Quetta.

Game of thrones. It was high drama in Saudi Arabia this past weekend when dozens of princes and ministers were rounded up and arrested. However, rather than being sent to jail, the detained men are roughing it in opulent hotels like the Ritz. Saudi officials say the arrests are part of an anti-corruption drive, but their scale suggests mounting fears by the Crown Prince — who is pushing to modernize the Kingdom — and his father that a coup is being hatched.

VIDEO: Echoes of the US Civil War can still be heard as Americans gather to re-enact battles of the bloody conflict. They buy uniforms, authentic weapons, gather food typical of that era and sleep in tents on the battlefields some of their ancestors fought on. VOA took in the action in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and decided to ask the re-enactors for their take on the current debate over the future of Confederate monuments.