Parma

Van Hollen eyes 'blue wave' hopes, but midterm map is tough for Democrats

Despite all the talk of a “blue wave” this November, Democrats are facing the real possibility that President Trump may break the mold – again – by holding on to his Republican majorities in Congress. “Senate Democrats are very bullish about the direction of the 2018 elections,” Senator Van Hollen, chair of Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told a Monitor Breakfast Thursday.

In an Ohio town, fostering community over cream puffs

When Larry and Malana Monson packed up their life in California and moved to this tiny town in southeast Ohio, they did so with the dream of opening a bakery and leading a simpler life. What they found was a community hungry for a place to gather to enjoy some living – and, they hoped, the occasional cream puff. Built around the railroad when coal and other commodities poured out of Appalachia, Corning today is a one-stoplight village, its main street bookended by an American Legion and an Eagle’s fraternal order.

As Ebola outbreak grows, Congo puts public health lessons to the test

When a deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus began creeping across communities in West Africa in early 2014, many on the ground quickly sounded the alarm. “We are facing an epidemic of a magnitude never before seen,” said Mariano Lugli, a coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), that April. It would take nearly four more months and nearly 900 more deaths, however, before the World Health Organization declared the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern,” and a massive global humanitarian response shuffled into place.

In Ireland's abortion debate, a struggle to correct past paternalism?

When Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar announced a referendum that could relax one of the most restrictive regimes for abortion in Europe, his nod to women’s rights was clear. The announcement came in the months following the #MeToo movement that swept across the West, and the referendum was seen as another gain for women’s empowerment, as well as a next step in a long process of social liberalization in Catholic Ireland. Mr. Varadkar himself is Ireland’s first – and one of the world’s few – openly gay heads of government.