Germany has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Western Europe. The country is now edging closer to mandatory vaccines for the coronavirus with lawmakers set to vote on the issue before the end of the year. And, five years ago, Colombia’s government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement. Since then, deforestation has been on the rise as cattle ranchers, loggers, miners, subsistence farmers and criminal groups move into areas formerly controlled by them. Plus, at midnight, Barbados removed Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state and installed Governor General Sandra Mason as its first president. We hear from Barbados’s poet laureate Esther Phillips about the Caribbean nation’s efforts to grapple with its brutal colonial past.

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