The three major party leaders spent their last hours on the campaign trail Sunday stumping in key battlegrounds, making their final pitches to voters in a short and divisive campaign in which no party has managed to swing momentum its way.

Heading into election day, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives are in a dead heat nationally, according to Nanos Research polling released on Sunday.

In an election triggered two years early by Mr. Trudeau and in the midst of a surging fourth wave of the pandemic, voter turnout and the extent of vote splits on the right and left will be key to determining who forms government. In 2019, regional divisions in support allowed the Liberals to win more ridings, even when they had a smaller national vote share than the Conservatives.

Read it all.

Election day has arrived. Canadians will decide which parties govern Parliament in an election that’s been stranger than any other thanks to COVID-19 restrictions.🗳️

Here's everything you need to know to vote today.⬇️#Elxn44 #cdnpoli https://t.co/F868V98ncl

— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) September 20, 2021

Elizabeth Clark has had days when she felt unsafe. Days when she hasn’t felt like she can help everyone who needs it. When she’s overwhelmed. When she’s dealt with frustrated people who “say things they wouldn’t in another situation.”

Clark is the only full-time school nurse at Gilbert High School, in the middle of a school district that has had some of the highest rates in the Midlands of COVID-19 spread and exposure since the new school year started just weeks ago.

Since classes resumed in mid-August, the normal maladies that come to a school nurse — from the minor but incessant to the potentially quite serious — have competed for attention with the near-constant focus on COVID-19. At one point, more than 6,000 students in Lexington 1 were excluded from class and multiple schools were teaching online-only classes.

“Two weeks before school, we get health cards on all our students,” Clark said. “I have 1,100 students, and I try to read through every single one by the first couple weeks of school. We just started on those this week. I try to orient myself to my students, but… COVID is so huge and in our face, it’s almost the only thing you can see.”

Read it all.

Nurses feel like they have a limited tool kit with prevention measures like mask mandates taken off the table. “I think we all cry more than we have other years,” one nurse said. “I have.” https://t.co/m7XEx4nLyo

— The State Newspaper (@thestate) September 20, 2021

Dozens of evangelical schools belonging to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) have joined an interfaith effort called Faith in the Vaccine, designed to recruit students and faculty to help inform their communities about vaccination and recognize the role religious identity might play in people’s hesitation.

“This was not about hounding people into getting the vaccine or shaming them if they were hesitant,” said Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith Youth Corps (IFYC), which launched the effort last spring and has disbursed $4 million to fund the campaign so far. “It was very much about engaging with great respect and sensitivity … and helping them kind of talk their own way into vaccination.”

Nearly 50 CCCU member schools signed up for the program. IFYC, along with medical professionals from the Rush University Medical School, trained campus ambassadors in conversational tactics and medical information about the vaccines.

But what started out as a campaign to promote education around vaccination within these faith communities has shifted to efforts to actually get shots in arms. The Faith in the Vaccine ambassadors, according to IFYC, have helped promote or host hundreds of clinics and events across the country, accounting for an estimated 10,000 or more vaccinations.

Read it all.

Faith in the Vaccine ambassadors have helped promote or host hundreds of clinics and events across the country, accounting for an estimated 10,000 or more vaccinations. @ifyc @cccuorg https://t.co/ZByL0TXuhy

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) September 16, 2021

Doctors diagnosed Chen with Alzheimer’s Disease, the most common form of dementia, where people suffer impaired cognitive function including memory loss, eventually needing full-time care.

Approximately 10 million people have been diagnosed with the degenerative — and incurable — brain disorder in China, which accounts for approximately a quarter of the world’s cases.

As the country’s population is rapidly aging, this figure is expected to soar to 40 million by 2050, according to a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The report warned this surge in cases would cost the economy $1 trillion each year in medical expenses and lost productivity as caregivers drop out of the workforce.

Read it all.

"No healthcare problem looms larger in China than Alzheimer's Disease," said Wei Shouchao, a neurologist from Guangdong medical university.

"It is the fastest-growing major illness on the mainland, and we are not at all equipped to deal with it" https://t.co/HJygLSHfCC

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) September 19, 2021

After the press blitz, Beamer tried to withdraw from the spotlight. It was especially painful, she said, that critics called her a hypocrite who was seeking fame, while some believers put her “on a pedestal as God’s chosen woman for such a time as this.”

Nevertheless, “Todd was gone,” she said. “I was called a ‘widow’ and a ‘single parent,’ titles that literally made me sick to my stomach. My sweet husband had become a mythic figure to the public, an idealized version of manhood who died valiantly defending his country.”

In the end, Beamer said it was crucial to strengthen her “core identity,” focusing on her faith and trust in “God’s goodness and his greatness.” She was convinced that, facing the crisis aboard Flight 93, her husband had managed to do that.

That’s the final lesson, she told the students in chapel: “If God is bigger than we can image, we are wasting our time to chase after something or someone lesser. … We must place our ultimate identity not in who we are, but in who we know God to be. That’s it.”

Read it all.

Soaring property prices are forcing people all over the world to abandon all hope of owning a home. The fallout is shaking governments of all political persuasions.

It’s a phenomenon given wings by the pandemic. And it’s not just buyers — rents are also soaring in many cities. The upshot is the perennial issue of housing costs has become one of acute housing inequality, and an entire generation is at risk of being left behind.

“We’re witnessing sections of society being shut out of parts of our city because they can no longer afford apartments,” Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller says. “That’s the case in London, in Paris, in Rome, and now unfortunately increasingly in Berlin.”

Read it all.

Around the world, an entire generation is being locked out of home ownership – and governments don't know how to fix it

Read The Big Take ⬇️ https://t.co/ZcdoCSGTWu

— Bloomberg (@business) September 20, 2021

Almighty God, who didst call thy faithful servants John Coleridge Patteson and his companions to be witnesses and martyrs in the islands of Melanesia, and by their labors and sufferings didst raise up a people for thine own possession: Pour forth thy Holy Spirit upon thy Church in every land, that by the service and sacrifice of many, thy holy Name may be glorified and thy kingdom enlarged; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today the Church of England commemorates John Coleridge Patteson, First Anglican Bishop of Melanesia, and his Companions, Martyrs, 1871 https://t.co/yAWoMa4H2c

Photo c. 1867 in National Library of New Zealand pic.twitter.com/MoBxX5iTal

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) September 20, 2021

Cleanse our minds, O Lord, we beseech thee, of all anxious thoughts for ourselves, that we may learn not to trust in the abundance of what we have, save as tokens of thy goodness and grace, but that we may commit ourselves in faith to thy keeping, and devote all our energy of soul, mind and body to the work of thy kingdom and the furthering of the purposes of thy divine righteousness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Good Monday Morning from Awendaw Creek pic.twitter.com/ZEdA1Ba5Tn

— AMFD PIO (@AMCFD) September 20, 2021

So Na’aman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the door of Eli’sha’s house. And Eli’sha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” But Na’aman was angry, and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place, and cure the leper. Are not Aba’na and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage. But his servants came near and said to him, “My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather, then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

–2 Kings 5:9-14

Good morning… a golden dawn ☀️🙏 pic.twitter.com/QkZLTlUN8C

— Alison O’Neill ~ Shepherdess (@woolismybread) September 20, 2021