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What Would Student Debt Cancellation Look Like?

A higher education is now the second largest source of consumer debt, second only to mortgages. Amid the pandemic, there have been increasing calls to forgive student loan debt or cancel it all together. The 21st discusses what debt cancellation could look like, and who it could help most. 

Human Trafficking and How the Pandemic Plays a Role

The pandemic has halted and changed our many ways of living across our state and the world. Despite these drastic changes to our lifestyles and traveling opportunities, there is one issue that has not gone away during this pandemic – and that is human trafficking. It happens right here in Illinois and to learn more about how the pandemic plays a role in it, The 21st was joined by two experts and a survivor.

This March 22, 1995, file photo shows the interior of the execution chamber in the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. Executioners who put 13 inmates to death in the last months of the Trump administration likened the process of dying by lethal injection to falling asleep, called gurneys “beds” and final breaths “snores.” But those tranquil accounts are at odds with AP and other media-witness reports of how prisoners’ stomachs rolled, shook and shuddered as the pentobarbital took effect inside the U.S. penitentiary death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana.
AP Photo/Chuck Robinson, File

Witnessing Executions

Over the course of the final six months of Donald Trump's presidential term, the administration carried out more than 13 executions.That's more than the federal government executed in the previous half-century combined. Reporter Michael Tarm witnessed 10 of those executions for The Associated Press, and his observations are at odds with what federal officials noted in their reports.

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All Dinosaurs Considered: Looking Back at Prehistoric Illinois

To look back in time and explore what prehistoric Illinois may have looked like, what creatures roamed these lands and why you likely won’t be finding any dinosaur fossils here, The 21st was joined by senior paleontologist at the Illinois State Geological Survey and a vertebrate paleontologist and associate curator of Fossil Reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago.

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