New Albany

On Russia, Congress shows remarkable unity

The Russia controversy – one of the most defining issues of Donald Trump’s young presidency – has been cast by the president and his supporters as a political “witch hunt,” even while Democrats are all over the news talk shows raising serious questions. In fact, observers say this Congress is the most hard-line against Moscow in decades, mostly because Russia’s attempts to influence last year’s US elections are too close to home to ignore. “When we feel like we’re threatened, and certainly our elections and our cybersecurity are threatened, we go shoulder-to-shoulder,” Sen. David Perdue (R) of Georgia, one of the president’s closest allies in the Senate, told the Monitor last week.

In Ethiopia, model drought defenses are put to the test

Battered by drought and civil wars, more than 20 million people from Yemen to Tanzania are at risk of starvation in what aid workers call the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II. But over the past two decades, nations that once produced searing images of famine's toll have moved to thwart it by strengthening community resilience. Our reporters traveled to Madagascar, Ethiopia, and Somaliland to investigate the daunting challenges as well as the long-term efforts that are saving lives. 

How do refugee students make the jump to Germany's universities?

Mohamad Taqi Sohrabi has had to fight for an education his entire life. An Afghan refugee born in Iran, Mr. Sohrabi says it wasn’t easy for him to go to school. Sohrabi was eventually able to study English translation at a university outside Tehran for four semesters, but as an Afghan in Iran, even that was difficult.

Hot new job for middle-class students: manual labor

Hunched over their workspaces in a dusty, sunlit room in the North Bennett Street School in Boston’s North End, Jim Reid-Cunningham’s bookbinding workshop seems grateful for an interruption. “It’s like getting behind in the pitch count in baseball,” Mr. Reid-Cunningham says. North Bennett Street School runs accredited adult-education programs for a wide assortment of trades, from jewelry- and furniture-making to residential carpentry.