With so much of the West Coast beset by wildfires, New Mexico has only been burdened with the smoke.  But both are tokens of what climate change is doing to the Land of Enchantment and the West.  Laura Paskus of NM Public Television has written a new book: At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate.  Losses in water from snowpack, rivers and streams a below ground aquifers are just the symptoms of the problem here. 

For the Native Americans living in tiny settlements scattered across the vast reaches of the Navajo Nation, getting an education isn’t easy, but it is an opportunity guaranteed to them by American laws and treaties.  Alden Woods of the Arizona Republic and Pro Publica notes, providing that schooling isn’t easy for the Bureau of Indian Education.  But that’s no excuse for BIE’s many failings, which include often-poor academic standards and an addiction to extreme un-transparency.

Hagia Sophia, the 6th century architectural masterpiece at the heart of Istanbul, Turkey was built as a Roman Catholic cathedral.  It has, over 1500 years, been devoted to the Eastern Orthodox Church, Islam and the Turkish secular state.  Now, it’s been reclaimed for Islam and the political interests of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the re-opening of the mosque has been celebrated by selected Muslims and selected political supporters. Pinar Tremblay of Al-Monitor has the story.

So much depends on getting a correct count of residents of America for the 2020 census, so why is the Trump Administration trying so hard to mess with and shorten the process of counting?  Julia Sclafani of Searchlight NM went to a small southern New Mexico town to show what’s at stake.  There is money, of course, Federal aid is often shaped by the Census count, and there is dignity, too.  The census underscores that everyone living in America matters. 

There was shock in New Mexico that a clash over a statue and over two different views of history could end in a shooting.  The shooter was defending a statue of Juan de Onate, an historic hero to many New Mexico Hispanics.  His victim supported protests by the Native American community who remember Onate as a mass murderer. Stan Alcorn reported the story for Reveal and NM in Depth and discovered a neo-Nazi at its heart.

 CBS News correspondent Christopher Livesay and his video team were rushed to Belarus in mid-August to report on the rebellion against the apparently fixed re-election of long-time dictator Aleksander Lukashenko.  Then, his cameraman and producer were both detained and deported. But he snuck by, and covered the story.  How he did it and what he found in a country trying, in a civil way to overthrow a most un-civil government. 

Spain followed Italy as the European country worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic.  And, like Italy, months of tight lockdown restrictions seemed to have Covid-19 on the ropes, and the country re-opened.  Too soon and too fast is today’s hindsight.  Journalist and documentarian Diane Sylvester has watched as Spain re-claimed the unwanted title – worst Covid-hit country in Europe. Schools are still set to open in the teeth of a rampant resurgence of disease.

Almost every society claims to honor and protect its elders.  The global pandemic of Covid-19 has put that claim to the test and shown it to be false, in developed countries with national systems of nursing homes and elder care and in traditional societies like the Navajo Nation, neglect and despair are the old folks’ unwanted portion.  Sunnie R. Clahchischiligi of Searchlight NM sought out elders living alone and left behind.

The recent agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is a game-changer in many ways… bringing Israel and a leading Arab state closer together while driving supporters and scorners of an eventual Palestinian state farther apart. AP’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief Josef Federman on what comes next.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has suspended his controversial plan to annex the West Bank. Is that the end of it?