Author: Reporter

Although women who lost or left their jobs at the height of the crisis have largely returned to the workforce, a recent finding points to the price many paid for stepping back. In 2023, the gender wage gap between men and women working full-time widened year-over-year for the first time in 20 years, according to an annual report from the U.S. Census Bureau. Economists trying to make sense of the data say it captures a complicated moment during the disjointed post-pandemic labor market recovery when many women finally returned to work full-time, especially in hard-hit low-wage industries where they...

At Sunshine Adult Day Center, every morning starts with a parade around the room. Today, the theme is multicultural, and the flag bearers have no shortage of countries: Philippines, India, Haiti, Mexico, United States. Most of them older adults, attendees dance through the room, waving streamers and banging drums as Pitbull’s “I Know You Want Me” blasts. Proudly representing her home country of Nigeria, Charity Wogwugwu, 87, is dressed to the nines in a pistachio green skirt embroidered with red and gold flowers, a lemon yellow floral top with puffed sleeves and a pleated gold headwrap. “They pay attention...

Gaza has long been a powder keg, and it exploded after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and began killing and abducting people, sparking a crushing Israeli military operation that’s only recently stopped under a tenuous ceasefire. Convicted felon and U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion on February 4 that displaced Palestinians in Gaza be permanently resettled outside the war-torn territory and the U.S. take “ownership” of the land is triggering new tensions over the future of the enclave. While “owning” land is a term that appears to be more applicable to real estate than to territories,...

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are eager to leave miserable tent camps and return to their homes if a long-awaited ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Hamas war holds, but many will find there is nothing left and no way to rebuild. Israeli bombardment and ground operations have transformed entire neighborhoods in several cities into rubble-strewn wastelands, with blackened shells of buildings and mounds of debris stretching away in all directions. Major roads have been plowed up. Critical water and electricity infrastructure is in ruins. Most hospitals no longer function. And it is unclear when — or even if — much...

Two years have passed since a devastating earthquake shattered Turkiye’s southern region, but for many of its survivors, like Omer Aydin, the memory and the suffering remain fresh. While struggling with a third winter in the cold inside a shipping container-like temporary housing unit, the single father of three is grappling with a cost-of-living crisis that is affecting the whole country as well as still trying to heal the scars from the disaster. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake on February 6, 2023, and a second powerful tremor that came hours later, destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in...