| Never mind he’s only in his mid-20s. He’s already conducted 22,000 performers. Posted: 03 Aug 2017 02:46 PM PDT ![Never mind he's only in his mid-20s. He's already conducted 22,000 performers.]( "Never mind he's only in his mid-20s. He's already conducted 22,000 performers.") The rehearsal in June at a school in Viimsi, Estonia – a Baltic coastal town that was a Soviet submarine base – ended quite a stint for Rasmus Puur. For weeks this composer and conductor had crisscrossed his native Estonia, preparing thousands of children for Laulupidu, a big choral event that happens every few years in this tiny country on Europe's eastern frontier. In his Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, Mr. Puur could be mistaken for one of the young singers.
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| Partisan debate: Can you win 'fair and square' when you listen to only one side? Posted: 03 Aug 2017 12:54 PM PDT ![Partisan debate: Can you win 'fair and square' when you listen to only one side?]( "Partisan debate: Can you win 'fair and square' when you listen to only one side?") Nearly a decade ago, in a blow-by-blow assessment of high-level Arab-Israeli peace talks, an associate revealed how US Secretary of State James Baker prepared himself to negotiate thorny issues. Mr. Baker got his most useful ideas, wrote Aaron David Miller, a longtime State Department adviser, by listening as his aides examined all sides of a question in a free-wheeling debate. The idea of free and fair debate attracted Americans long before James Baker, of course.
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| Swimming in the Seine by 2024 Games? Yes, we canal! Posted: 03 Aug 2017 12:26 PM PDT ![Swimming in the Seine by 2024 Games? Yes, we canal!]( "Swimming in the Seine by 2024 Games? Yes, we canal!") Now that Paris has gotten closer to hosting the 2024 Olympic Games – after Los Angeles relinquished its competing bid this week – this scene might one day not be such an anomaly, one that prompts passersby to snap photos and film videos. Paris has proposed that Olympic competitions not just be organized throughout the city built on the Seine, but in the Seine itself. Guillaume Tavitian, a Parisian who was taking a walk with his father over a footbridge spanning the canal, says he remembers when former President Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, announced in 1988 that he'd swim in the Seine within five years.
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| Troubled Venezuela’s path to peace Posted: 03 Aug 2017 10:50 AM PDT ![Troubled Venezuela's path to peace]( "Troubled Venezuela's path to peace") This illusive "it" is legitimacy, or the public's support of leaders who best express a people's values and principles. The clearest sign is a plan by the coalition of Venezuela's opposition parties to set up a "parallel government" to the ruling regime of President Nicolás Maduro. Another sign is that the opposition-run legislature, which has been sidelined by Maduro, went ahead and appointed new judges to the supreme court (which Maduro has co-opted).
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