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In the age of social distancing, Sudanese open their homes to Ethiopian refugees

Hadeel Imad al-Deen

January 18, 2021 |

The National |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Sudan, Hamdiyet

Tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees fleeing to Sudan to escape the war in their home region ended up in the border town of Hamdiyet, where a refugee camp and its supplies were quickly overwhelmed. So local residents, despite the pandemic, opened their homes to the refugees, housing and feeding at least 16,000 in the town of 6,000 over a two-month period. So far, COVID-19 has remained under control. Even though thousands of refugees have eventually transferred to camps elsewhere, hundreds more arrive every day.

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A Thin Green Line With Global Impact

Robert McClure

January 18, 2021 |

InvestigateWest |

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Over 3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Seattle, Washington

For over a decade, environmentalists, Indigenous tribes, ranchers, politicians, scientists, and fishers in the Pacific Northwest have been able to defeat more than 20 proposals from coal and oil firms to ship fossil fuels from their ports. Through protests, public hearings, and petitions to government agencies, activists blacked almost every fossil fuel effort in the region between 2004 and 2017.

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This L.A. project shows that homeless housing can be done quickly and cheaply

Doug Smith

January 18, 2021 |

Los Angeles Times |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Los Angeles, California

A housing complex in Los Angeles was approved and constructed with unprecedented speed and at a much lower cost than traditional homeless housing projects. Using up-cycled shipping containers, the project will include amenities such as bathrooms and refrigerators for each room. Teamwork and collective action from the county’s public works department resulted in the successful project.

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Black people no longer disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in Flint, health officials say

Carmen Nesbitt

January 17, 2021 |

Flint Beat |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Flint, Michigan

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, public health officials in Flint, Michigan began tracking the demographics of those who were testing positive for the virus in order to better align the county's public health action and outreach. In doing so, officials realized that a lack of access to testing in predominately Black neighborhoods was a contributing factor and decided to launch mobile testing, barrier-free sites, and other interventions at the state level.

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Albuquerque's vision for non-police first responders comes down to earth

Ted Alcorn

January 17, 2021 |

New Mexico In Depth |

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Over 3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Albuquerque, New Mexico

In response to the 2020 policing protests, Albuquerque was among the first cities to embrace a major change in handling mental-health-crisis calls to 911. But its new Community Safety Department has foundered in its first year, a victim of inadequate planning and resources. The plan to send unarmed first responders on such calls, to reduce the risk of a violent over-reaction by the police, depended on reassigning city workers from other agencies, none of whom were mental health professionals. City councilors have sent the planners back to rethink the latest in a history of failed responses.

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In South Bend, Pete Buttigieg challenged a decades-old assumption that streets are for cars above all else

Ian Duncan

January 16, 2021 |

The Washington Post |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, South Bend, Indiana

Reconfiguring streets to slow automobile traffic through its downtown business district and encourage pedestrians and bicycling enlivened South Bend's street life and proved a boon to its restaurants and other businesses. Then-Mayor Pete Buttigieg pushed for the $25 million plan to make the streets safer and encourage people to spend more time and money in the area. Drivers complained about increased travel time, as they have about other cities’ “complete streets” programs. But Buttigieg and his supporters hope to push the concept when he runs the federal Transportation Department.

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How British Scientists Found the More Infectious Coronavirus Variant

Benjamin Mueller

January 16, 2021 |

The New York Times |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United Kingdom, Cambridge

In March when fewer than 100 coronavirus infections had been found in the U.K, researchers in Cambridge decided to begin sequencing coronavirus samples as part of an "unparalleled surveillance system for Covid" that could identify and track possible mutations or the virus. This effort – which involves labs sending leftover material from testing swabs to the researcher's genomics lab where they are stored and analyzed – has culminated in hundreds of thousands of genome sequences and "sounded an alarm for the world" about the new fast-spreading variant.

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By backing Raphael Warnock against Kelly Loeffler, Sue Bird and the WNBA helped flip the Senate

Percy Allen

January 16, 2021 |

The Seattle Times |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

During her bid for reelection, former senator Kelly Loeffler, also co-owner of a WNBA team, publicly fought with the league for dedicating its season to Black Lives Matters and fighting for racial justice. Players decided collectively to stop talking publicly about Loeffler to limit her media attention. Next, after carefully vetting candidates they decided Raphael Warnock best represented their interests. In a public endorsement, players across the league wore VOTE WARNOCK shirts to nationally televised games. Within days, Warnock gained 4,000 Twitter followers, raised over $250,000, and gained in the polls.

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“What You Share Defines You”: Indonesia Has World's Biggest Fact-Checking Network

Meleva Thorn, Sienna Curnow

January 16, 2021 |

The Jakarta Globe |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Indonesia

CekFakta is a collaborative network that fights misinformation with around 6,000 fact-checkers from major Indonesian media organizations, citizens, and academics. The group holds training sessions to help journalists identify doctored images and misinformation, with the idea that participants will pass the skills on to their colleagues. CekFakta impacted 2019 presidential debates with large-scale, real-time, collaborative fact-checking that enabled a quick release of fact-checked information. The collaborative process is key to helping people find high-quality information amid so much online content.

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One, two, tree: how AI helped find millions of trees in the Sahara

Amy Fleming

January 15, 2021 |

The Guardian |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Algeria

Tree mapping helps researchers understand deforestation and climate change, however the technologies used often miss trees that aren’t clustered. Researchers, in collaboration with NASA, used high-resolution satellite images, previously only available to commercial entities, to find a surprisingly large number of trees in the Sahara Desert. Using AI deep learning and one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers at the University of Illinois, they identified more than 1.8 billion trees, manually marking nearly 90,000 so the computer could “learn” which shapes and shadows indicated the presence of trees.

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