Pulitzer Center Update

This Week: What Comes After ISIS Goes?

August 22, 2017 | Newsletter
By
Tom Hundley
Still image taken from PBS NewsHour video, Syrians try to salvage life from the wreckage of Raqqa. Aired August 16, 2017.

Still image taken from PBS NewsHour video, "Syrians try to salvage life from the wreckage of Raqqa." Syria, 2017.

The Real Tragedy of Raqqa

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

An unsteady alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters, backed by the U.S., is slowly pushing ISIS out of the Syrian city of Raqqa, its last significant stronghold. In the first of a multi-part series for the PBS NewsHour, grantee Gayle Tzemach Lemmon talks with civilians who have borne the brunt of Syria’s civil war. “Whatever I say, it won’t describe the suffering we have seen,” one woman tells Gayle. “I am devastated deep inside. I feel the pain of all Raqqa’s people as the pain of my own family. I can feel the injustice, how people lose their children. Even those who survived have nothing.”

Lee Ching-yu, the wife of the Taiwanese human rights activist imprisoned in China, at the office in Taipei where she studies the history of Taiwan's democratic movement. Image by Richard Bernstein. Taiwan, 2017.

Lee Ching-yu, the wife of the Taiwanese human rights activist imprisoned in China, at the office in Taipei where she studies the history of Taiwan's democratic movement. Image by Richard Bernstein. Taiwan, 2017.

Alone Against China

Richard Bernstein

Despite enormous economic progress, China remains a cruel one-party dictatorship. In a rare interview with one dissident’s wife, grantee Richard Bernstein explores “the Kafkaesque world of a husband’s imprisonment by a secretive, unaccountable, all-powerful police.”

Tire-tics are available at many pharmacies in France and can be used to pull out attached ticks. Image by Jesse Costa/WBUR. France, 2017.

Tire-tics are available at many pharmacies in France and can be used to pull out attached ticks. Image by Jesse Costa/WBUR. France, 2017.

The French Way

David Scales

More than 300,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported each year in the U.S., yet there is no national plan for fighting the tick-borne illness. Grantee David Scales reports that the French have a better idea.

 

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