by Deborah Charles | 5 Jan 2021 | Politics
Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the U.S. presidential election and COVID-19 ensure an uneasy transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden. U.S. President-elect Donald J. Trump shakes hands with Vice President Joe Biden as he arrives for his inauguration on...
by Lauren Heuser | 1 Jan 2021 | Uncategorized
Stories about COVID-19 and the United States attracted the most eyes in 2020 — a year of substantial growth in News Decoder’s worldwide traffic. A man walks past a boarded-up store with coronavirus-inspired graffiti, New York, 7 May 2020. (AP Photo/Mary...
by Natalie Jesionka | 31 Dec 2020 | Americas, Health and Wellness, University of Toronto Journalism Fellows
A Honduran nonprofit that builds schools and tackles poverty hopes to outlast the pandemic. Its financial hardship is shared by nonprofits globally. Shin Fujiyama, fourth from left, and colleagues in Honduras (Photo courtesy of Shin Fujiyama) Shin Fujiyama has spent...
by Helen Womack | 29 Dec 2020 | Health and Wellness, Personal Reflections
For some, COVID-19 has meant grief, for others inconvenience. But the year has made us ask: Should we go back to “normal” when the future arrives? Protesters demanding more resources for public health and against social inequality, Madrid, Spain, 27 Septmber 2020 (AP...
by Jasmine Li | 1 Dec 2020 | China, Culture, Educators' Catalog, Health and Wellness, Student Posts, Westover School, Youth Voices
COVID-19 left me in limbo in the United States, full of fear and anger. Then I returned home to China to face criticism before reuniting with my family. An empty John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York (All photos by Jasmine Li) So this is where I am going...
The coronavirus pandemic has put strains on students, their families, schools, entire communities. But Jasmine Li, a Chinese student at Westover School in the United States, provides a first-person account of the special difficulties facing foreign nationals caught in limbo as COVID-19 triggered global travel restrictions. Li cannot return to her temporary home at school, and when she finally makes it home to China, she discovers some compatriots consider her a traitor and urge her to leave. Adolescence can be a difficult period of self-discovery, but Li’s painful experiences are the product of a globalized world that, in normal circumstances, offers extraordinary opportunities but which, during a pandemic, sees forgotten borders re-emerge. Ask each student to describe their most difficult moment during the pandemic. How do their experiences compare?