MEXICO CITY — Guatemala’s highest court on Monday threw out the genocide conviction and prison sentence of the former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt.
Author: WHES
Wells dry, fertile plains turn to dust
HASKELL COUNTY, Kan. — Forty-nine years ago, Ashley Yost’s grandfather sank a well deep into a half-mile square of rich Kansas farmland. He struck an artery of water so prodigious that he could pump 1,600 gallons to the surface every minute.
84 percent of NYC fast food workers report wage theft in a new survey
At an 11 am press conference outside a Brooklyn KFC restaurant, fast food workers and activists will release a new report alleging rampant wage theft in their industry, one of the fastest-growing in the United States. The report includes results from an Anzalone Liszt Grove research survey of 500 of the city’s fast food workers, in which 84 percent reported that their employer had committed some form of wage theft over the previous year.
Standards clash in Bangladesh reforms
When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. publicly blacklisted about 250 Bangladesh factories this week, it said it was trying to alert other retailers of safety problems and prevent disasters like last month’s fatal building collapse that killed more than 1,100 people.
Humanitarian intervention in violence-hit slums—from whether to how
In a move that experts say could open the door to a more robust aid response to chronic violence in urban areas, the European Commission’s humanitarian aid arm, ECHO, has approved two million euros in funding for violence-hit slums in Central America and Mexico until the end of 2014.
The price of fear: In slums where killings, rape, kidnappings and other criminal violence are commonplace, say researchers, lives and livelihoods are hampered by a force that is tough to measure—fear
In slums where killings, rape, kidnappings and other criminal violence are commonplace, say researchers, lives and livelihoods are hampered by a force that is tough to measure: Fear.
Why aid workers are targets
At last count, 45 humanitarian aid workers have been killed, wounded or kidnapped in Afghanistan so far this year, for a total of over 680 since the conflict began in 2001.
Supreme Court rules for Monsanto, says farmer violated genetically modified soybeans’ patent
Farmers must pay Monsanto each time they plant the company’s genetically modified soybeans, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting an Indiana farmer’s argument that his un orthodox techniques did not violate the company’s patent.
Millions of Americans live in extreme poverty. Here’s how they get by.
The decline of extreme poverty — defined by the World Bank as living on less than $1.25 a day, which is derived from the average poverty line in the world’s poorest countries — in recent decades has been nothing short of remarkable. As Howard Schneider noted here last week, not only has the percent of the world’s population living in extreme poverty been cut in half since 1990, but it’s set to be halved again in the next two decades:
Helping aid workers build meaningful careers
There has been much talk of decentralizing the northern-centric humanitarian aid sector to give more power to southern staff, but how much has changed over recent years?
