RIO DE JANEIRO — The charges are nothing less than sweeping: Prosecutors say that Eduardo Cunha, the speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress, took as much as $40 million in bribes for himself and his allies, plundering Petrobras, the government-controlled oil company, while laundering money through an evangelical megachurch.
Year: 2015
Louis Stokes, Congressman from Ohio and champion of the poor, dies at 90
Louis Stokes, who as the first African-American congressman from Ohio helped focus federal attention on the nation’s poor and led a special House investigation into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died on Tuesday at his home in a Cleveland suburb. He was 90.
Julian Bond, charismatic civil rights leader, dies at 75
Julian Bond, a charismatic figure of the 1960s civil rights movement, a lightning rod of the anti-Vietnam War campaign and a lifelong champion of equal rights, notably as chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., died on Saturday night in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. He was 75.
Black poverty differs from white poverty
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It’s unconstitutional to ban the homeless from sleeping outside, the federal government says
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Coke funds scientists who shift blame for obesity away from bad diets
Coca-Cola, the world’s largest producer of sugary beverages, is backing a new “science-based” solution to the obesity crisis: To maintain a healthy weight, get more exercise and worry less about cutting calories.
A year after Ferguson, housing segregation defies tools to erase it
ST. LOUIS — When she tore open the manila envelope on a sweltering morning in early June, Crystal Wade thought she had unlocked her ticket to freedom. “The St. Louis Housing Authority is pleased to inform you,” the letter read, “that you have been determined eligible to participate in our Housing Choice Voucher Program.”
Mexico’s anti-poverty programs are losing the battle
While most of Latin America has been reducing poverty, Mexico is moving in the other direction: new official figures reflect an increase in the number of poor in the last two years, despite the billions of dollars channeled into a broad range of programmes aimed at combating the problem.
Mapped: A world at war
The news is dominated by wars and unrest in places like Syria, Iraq and Ukraine, but there are dozens of other conflicts around the globe just as devastating that get far less media attention.
U.S. food aid: Charity begins at home. More than 60 years after the U.S. Food for Peace program was launched, vested interests continue to hinder reforms to allow for more local sourcing of food aid.
The owners of US ships responsible for delivering food aid are now in line to receive millions of dollars in new subsidies as a result of proposed reform, news reports say. Under current law, almost all governmental Title II food aid – worth around $1.8 billion in 2014 – is purchased in the United States, and at least half of it must be transported on US-flagged vessels. Transporing via US vessels is 25-50 percent more expensive than on the open market.
