World Radio Day, celebrated annually on 13 February, provides an opportunity to hail the evolution, innovation and connection of this ever-evolving, 110-year-old medium that the UN cultural agency chief called a “vector of freedom”.   

Having grown up a Jewish child in Nazi-occupied Europe, Irene Butter said on Wednesday during a UN commemorative event online, that the United States had seen for itself “echoes of the Holocaust” on 6 January during what she described as an ‘attempted coup’ at the Capitol, in Washington DC. Some of the rioters that day, “wore Nazi symbols and used Nazi slogans”, she attested.  

Children all over the world have had their education severely disrupted this year, as schools struggle to cope with repeated closures and re-openings, and the transition, if it’s even an option, to online schooling. Disadvantaged children, however, have been worst-hit by the emergency measures. In part three of our look back at the effect that COVID-19 has had on the world, we focus on the education crisis provoked by the pandemic.

At least 59 media workers have been killed this year, four of them women, the UN said on Wednesday, in a call to stand up for access to information and factual reporting “as a public good”.