USA TODAY — Throughout Nebraska’s history, women have forged its course, shaped its identity and recorded its stories. The women who have inspired and led, fought and transformed have come from every corner of the state, and they represent the vastness of Nebraska. Its sprawling geography — from the sparse, open Plains to the undulating Sandhills and bustling cities. Its diversity — from the early pioneers who brought their varied European cultures and languages to the immigrant stockyard workers and African Americans who moved north and settled along the Missouri River.
PRI: A nation says its final goodbyes to Nelson Mandela
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A minister born and raised in Qunu says a prayer for Madiba. Photo by Robyn Murray.
PUBLIC RADIO INTERNATIONAL – By the time Nelson Mandela’s body was laid to rest in his childhood village of Qunu, South Africa, much of the celebratory mood surrounding his funeral had waned.
As his coffin made its way to the final burial ground, the sound of cannons booming in a military salute, thousands of mourners who flooded the remote area to pay their last respects felt a sense of closure.
BUSINESS DAY: INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS GIVE ‘RURAL POOR A FOOTHOLD’ IN URBAN CENTRES
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An informal settlement in Johannesburg, South Africa. Photo by Robyn Murray
BUSINESS DAY – In a quiet neighbourhood near Johannesburg, a haphazard collection of shacks sits squeezed beneath the towering brick walls of two gated communities. Wedged in on a red dirt road that forms an alleyway between the secured developments, the settlements are held together by sheets of plywood, black garbage bags and a sky-blue tarp with small, plastic windows — a shelter for about half a dozen residents seated around a makeshift card table.
Stray dogs scrounge around their feet for scraps and two toddlers wander through piles of trash, coils of barbed wire and discarded cement blocks.
It is a singularly South African sight, but the problem behind it — rapid urbanisation and inadequate housing — is far more common globally.
MEDILL: Altgeld Gardens, Turning Poverty into Possibility
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MEDILL REPORTS CHICAGO – On a late afternoon in Altgeld Gardens, the neighborhood is quiet and still.
Snow-packed sidewalks muffle the air as one of Chicago’s major snowstorms of the season gets underway. The snow keeps falling as students enter a classroom at Larry Hawkins, a charter school that is the only high school in this Far South Side community. Altgeld Gardens is a sprawling public housing complex – hemmed in by the polluted Calumet River and a sewage treatment plant, in which the average income is less than $10,000 per year.
Robyn Murray 