Connecting with a human face behind the headlines can bring news home. In today’s Daily, you’ll meet the family trying to rebuild after being driven from its village last year by M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Chicago, a crossing guard of 50 years explains why her work has never been more important amid rising threats to pedestrian safety. In Panama, people living close to the canal are more concerned by a planned dam that would flood their homes than by U.S. threats. And the proprietor of Grandmother’s Library Hotel in India left school in fifth grade – and now is boosting literacy for countless children.

As E.M. Forster famously wrote in “Howards End,” “Only connect!”