Behind the Scenes with Associated Press in Italy

Madagascar: Magnificent and Impoverished

Two teenage girls squat on the ground at the sprawling Antananarivo garbage dump sorting detritus.  Around them hills of garbage spread in all directions, little trails winding through the mounds like a golf course gone rotten.  Instead of golf carts making their way down the fairways, there are trucks, 14 of them come every day rumbling their …

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Learning to Listen on Ventotene

Dear Blog Readers, Last weekend I traveled to the tiny island of Ventotene, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) off the coast of Italy, to participate in the Festival for European Solidarity in the Mediterranean (Festival dell’Europa Solidale e del Mediterranneo) bringing students, refugees, activists and journalists together to talk about how to overcome racism and …

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Baby Flamingos step out for Easter in Rome

Dear Blog Readers, Last Thursday I was between editing the Pope’s Easter Thursday Chrism Mass (where he blesses all the vats of oil to be used in Rome parishes for the year), covering an Amnesty International press conference on how they will be monitoring hate speech used on social media by politicians running in the …

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Panama with Pope Francis

Rock-star priests and dancing nuns, shimmering skyscrapers and stinking chemical toilets, juvenile prisoners with tattoos and rosaries and Vatican staffers in Panama hats…those are just a few of the things I experienced covering the Pope last week in Panama. I sat on a bus with photographers and camerapersons and tried to edit video while helmeted …

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