PRI - APM

Along the Amazon River, people have long moved freely among the small towns that sit where the borders of Brazil, Colombia and Peru converge — walking and driving between countries, or rafting from one shore to another. 

Earlier this week, senior members of former Sudan President Omar al-Bashir’s regime were reportedly diagnosed with the coronavirus and transferred from the notorious Kober prison to a hospital in Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum.

Editor's note 5/27/20: A previous version of this story displayed images of an asylum seeker. They have been removed for the asylum seeker's protection.

At the airport in the Russian Arctic city of Murmansk, passengers file out from the morning flight from Moscow — many seemingly dazed by the surroundings and clearly underdressed for the coming polar winter.

“We are all from hell,” says a passenger named Tomasi, an Iranian from Tehran, when asked where he and others had arrived from.

The inner workings of the powerful Assad family have remained under close wraps in the past five decades or so since Hafez al-Assad took control of Syria in a coup.

On the surface, all seemed fine between the ruling elites.

This story is part of "Every 30 Seconds," a collaborative public media reporting project tracing the young Latino electorate leading up to the 2020 presidential election and beyond.

Women vote at higher rates than men across all racial and ethnic groups in the US. That gap is particularly wide for Latino voters. 

South Korea limited the spread of the coronavirus through aggressive contact tracing that relies heavily on data collection. But following a recent outbreak, many in the country’s LGBTQ community feel they’re being singled out.

South Korean health officials gain access to the cellphone GPS records, credit card transactions and transportation history of anyone who tests positive for COVID-19, and then they release much of that information to the public. Text message alerts urge everyone who might have crossed paths with the patient to immediately get tested.

Theater producer Nica Burns remembers precisely where she was when word filtered through that all theaters across London would have to close — she was backstage with the cast of her new show, "City of Angels." 

One of the world's richest nations, Saudi Arabia, is calling for shared economic sacrifice.

The announcement came earlier this month when the Saudi finance minister, Mohammed al-Jadaan, went on state media.

He told the nation that starting July 1, they will have to pay a 15% tax on all goods and services in the kingdom.

India and Bangladesh evacuated around half a million people out of the way of the most powerful storm in a decade ahead of its landfall on Wednesday amid fears of heavy damage to houses and crops and disruption of road, rail and power links.

The authorities' task to save lives was complicated by ongoing efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic and enforce social distancing to avoid a surge of infections. Many thousands of migrant workers are on the roads trying to get home from big cities after a nationwide lockdown destroyed their livelihoods.

Gloria Fung first saw them nine months ago. She was at a rally she helped organize in front of Toronto’s old City Hall, to show support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

“Soon after we had assembled, more than 100 counterprotesters blocked our way chanting, ‘One China,’” Fung said, recalling that the counterprotesters waved Chinese flags.

“They shouted insults and threats and photographed individuals as an intimidation tactic.”