Year: 2015

Thirty million children, far from home. Here are three of them.

I have two photos on my desk. The first shows a child, a girl of about 10. She is standing behind an enormous pile of her family’s belongings, which have been tightly packed for a long journey. Her face is blank with uncertainty, but she strikes a bossy pose — one hand on her hip, the other planted firmly against the bundles. Her companions are an older woman, probably her mother, and a little boy — her younger brother? Both look directly at the photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, who took this picture in Dessau, as scores of Germans displaced during World War II began returning home. It is 1945. Where has this girl been, and what has she seen?

We are the solution: African women organize for land and seed sovereignty. An interview with Mariama Sonko.

Mariama Sonko, third from right, with a women farmers’ organization. Photo courtesy of Fahamu.Mariama Sonko is a farmer and organizer in Casamance, Senegal. She is the National Coordinator of We Are the Solution, a campaign for food sovereignty led by rural women in West Africa.

Ethiopia tries to avert another famine. Mindful of past disasters, Ethiopians are readier than before to deal with drought.

JUMPING a fence of prickly pears, Gumat Hussain, a local chief in the driest district of North Wollo, Ethiopia’s most drought-prone province, walks gloomily through his sorghum. “The crops have not produced grain. They are useless even for the animals,” he sighs. El Niño, the world’s largest climatic weather phenomenon, is keeping the rains away across swathes of Africa this year. Ethiopian officials say that the harvest is failing as completely as in a series of droughts that together killed more than 1m of the country’s people between 1965 and 1985, and made Ethiopia a byword for hopeless famine.

Prestigious medical journals rejected stunning study on deaths among middle-aged whites

A startling new study that shows a big spike in the death rate for a large group of middle-aged whites in the United States was rejected by two prestigious medical journals, the study’s co-author, Nobel laureate Angus Deaton, said Tuesday.

A group of middle-aged whites in the U.S. is dying at a startling rate. Drugs, alcohol and suicide appear to be taking a toll on men and women ages 45-54 with no college education.

A large segment of white middle-aged Americans has suffered a startling rise in its death rate since 1999, according to a review of statistics published Monday that shows a sharp reversal in decades of progress toward longer lives.

Carson’s positions on poverty create tension with rags-to-riches life story. On his way up the ladder, Carson benefitted from several government assistance programs for the poor.

DETROIT — Ben Carson was born on the southwest side of this city to a mother who could not read. He spent much of his youth in what he has described as “dire poverty,” but his neighbors kept their lawns trimmed, and parents called other parents if they saw kids stirring up trouble.

Bread is broken. Industrial production destroyed both the taste and the nutritional value of wheat. One scientist believes he can undo the damage.

On the morning of July 13, like most mornings, Stephen Jones’s laboratory in Mount Vernon, Wash., was suffused with the thick warm smell of baking bread. Jones walked me around the floor, explaining the layout. A long counter split the space down the middle. To the right was what Jones called ‘‘the science part,’’ a cluster of high-tech equipment designed to evaluate grain, flour and dough. Jones, who is 58 and stands a daunting 6 foot 5, calls to mind a lovably geeky high-school teacher. He wore dungarees, a plaid shirt, a baseball cap and a warm, slightly goofy smile. Two pairs of eyeglasses dangling from his neck jostled gently as he gesticulated, describing the esoteric gadgetry surrounding us. The 600-square-foot room, known as the Bread Lab, serves as a headquarters for Jones’s project to reinvent the most important food in history.

Commemorating 20 years of U.S. food security measurement

October 28, 2014) Last week the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS) celebrated its 20th year of measuring food security in the USA. Using 10-18 indicators to measure hunger, first developed at Cornell University, the ERS has measured food insecurity and very low food security in households across the country. In 1995, 12 percent of households reported having food insecurity, and of that, 4 percent reported having very low food security. Today, the numbers have risen, with 14% of households being food insecure and 5.6 percent very low food security. Food security is defined as consistent access to enough food for active, healthy living, The measurement has been validated and proven to be a reliable indicator of food insecurity in the US. Four other countries have adapted a similar survey method. What is striking about the data is that we still have a long ways to go to reach zero food insecurity. More information can be found at http://www.ers.usda.gov/