If you owe too much money and can’t repay it, you could lose your car or home. Can a nation have too much debt? What happens then? A rooster, a national symbol of France, peeks out from within an empty bank vault. (Illustration by News Decoder) Editor’s...
Obstacles to building housing have created a homeless crisis in California. Can the “Golden State” find a way to house the people living on its streets? Tents house people experiencing homelessness in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles, California on 24...
Obstacles to building housing have created a homeless crisis in California. Can the “Golden State” find a way to house the people living on its streets? Correspondent Tiziana Barghini explores housing shortages, ineffective new legislation and the realities of California’s housing crisis.
Exercise: Explore some of the issues around homelessness. What are the issues that lead to people becoming homeless. Examine these on a personal, community, national and international level. Now look for videos and articles about homelessness and the experience of being homeless. You can use resources like Invisible People or Learning To Give which have films about many facets of homelessness. Present the information that you found in your article or video to the class or write a short piece about what it’s like to be homeless.
Depopulation threatens the long term economic health of developed nations. At some point they will have to open their borders. An Italian Coast Guard boat carries migrants as tourists on boat, foreground, watch, near the port of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa,...
In this Decoder, correspondent Tiziana Barghini covers why changing demographics, increased life expectancy and outdated public policies may spell trouble for developed nations. Migration may be the solution.
Exercise: Using a word cloud generator or class participation tool like Mentimeter, have students contribute words that they think of when they hear the word “immigration” or “migration”. Create a word cloud with these words before reading the article as a class. Then, after reading the article, have students consider how their perspective on migration might have changed. Create a post-read word cloud and discuss what new insights students have learned from the article.
If you owe too much money and can’t repay it, you could lose your car or home. Can a nation have too much debt? What happens then? Currencies from around the world. Getty Images. During the pandemic, businesses closed, people went into lockdown and governments...
Economic issues often confound students – and adults alike. The U.S. has hit its debt ceiling and Italy and Japan are dealing with massive amounts of national debt. But what does that mean and how does that differ from money a student’s family might owe – like a home mortgage or car loan? This month, Correspondent Tiziana Barghini decodes national debt, taking us through this complicated and timely topic.
Exercise: Give students a list of national budget expenses such as defense, food stamps, aid to public schools, road maintenance and construction, public safety etc., with percentages of the budget for each that add up to 92%. The other 8% will be interest payments on national debt. Then increase the percentage for the debt and have students try to get the overall number back to 100% by cutting spending elsewhere. As the payments on the debt go up, where will they find the money to pay it?
Many experts think tech giants have grown too powerful. But they disagree over how best to regulate emerging technology without stifling innovation. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an antitrust hearing before the U.S. Congress in Washington, DC, 10 April 2018 (AP...