Reporting Texas
News and features from UT-Austin's School of Journalism
byAlexa K. Haverlah
In the absence of a more robust immigration system, American citizens are hosting refugees, assuming financial responsibility and assisting with the resettlement process.
byJennifer Errico
Diana Mykoliv woke up early on the morning of Feb. 24 for flight attendant training in the United Arab Emirates. Her hair clipped back and uniform pressed, she headed out her apartment door when she received a text from her mother.
“It’s happening, daughter.” The message in Ukrainian stopped her in her tracks.
“My heart just fell from my chest,” Mykoliv, a Ukrainian native, said. “The worst fears I could have ever imagined of the situation were just brought to light. I couldn’t believe it.”
The same morning at 5 a.m. in Kyiv, Mykoliv’s fiancé Oleksandr awoke to explosions of ballistic missiles. In a frenzy, he packed documents, money, some clothes and a Stephen King book, then headed to the train station to flee the city among the sound of alarms.
“I couldn’t sleep for three days,” Oleksandr said. “Air alarms sound every day, sometimes for hours and it just leaves me shaking.”
Mykoliv, 3,000 miles away from her home, felt hopeless as Russian forces marched into her country, uprooting and threatening the lives of her friends, family and fiancé. According to the BBC, President Biden and the policymakers in the European Union responded by issuing severe sanctions targeting four of Russia’s largest banks, its oil and gas industry, and Western exports (especially technology) to the country.
byCesar Perez
At the entrance to one of the country’s largest newspapers, El Universo’s first printing press stands as a monument to victory in Ecuador’s struggle to hold onto a fragile democracy marked by a history of military dictatorships and censorship.
The newspaper’s history includes a government-ordered shutdown for a cartoon, editorial board members jailed, a forced front-page apology, violent demonstrations, a bombing of its building and even a presidential lawsuit seeking the imprisonment of its journalists.