In their two-room tin-roof house in one of the many shanty towns that dot Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, Ilyas and Nasim Masih and their seven daughters, aged three to 15, eke out an existence dependent on Ilyas’s meagre income as a day labourer.
Author: WHES
Ernesto Sabato, 99: Writer led investigation of Argentina’s ‘dirty war’
Ernesto Sabato, 99, a celebrated Argentine writer and intellectual who was chosen to lead an official investigation of thousands of killings by the military during the Dirty War of the 1970s and 1980s, and whose long life included careers as a physicist, public servant and artist, died April 30 at his home near Buenos Aires.
Sri Lanka: Muslims and Tamils deal with the past
Sri Lankan Muslims displaced during the country’s decades-long civil war are slowly returning home, but the challenge of reconciling with their Tamil neighbours, and their past, remains.
How Goldman Sachs created the food crisis (opinion)
Demand and supply certainly matter. But there’s another reason why food across the world has become so expensive: Wall Street greed.
Sierra Leone inaugurates free health care for women and children, but major gaps in health care services remain
Donors and NGOs welcomed the Sierra Leone government’s launch on 27 April of free health care for some 1.5 million women and children, but health experts say it is just one step in a long, complex process as critical gaps in the health system remain.
Syrian security forces kill dozens of protesters
BEIRUT — Syrians who took to the streets Friday after prayers knew they were defying threats from their president.
Pakistan government failed to do enough to protect former president Benazir Bhutto and failed to properly investigate her murder, UN commission finds
“These officials, in part fearing intelligence agencies’ involvement, were unsure of how vigorously they ought to pursue actions, which they knew, as professionals, they should have taken,” it added.
People in Jakarta’s slums must pay nearly $1 per day for fresh water while living on less than $2 per day, and bath and wash clothes in murky gray water from fish ponds
In Jakarta’s northern Muara Angke coastal area, a lack of access to piped water has forced people to bathe and wash clothes using murky grey water from fish ponds.
Campaign to eradicate polio makes real progress in countries most affected, Nigeria and India
JOHANNESBURG — A decade after the world’s original deadline for eradicating polio, the most tenacious bastions of the crippling virus — Nigeria and India — have recently shown remarkable progress in halting its spread, giving even some of the antipolio campaign’s severest doubters hope that it may yet largely achieve its goal.
Dams along Mekong River borders not thought by farmers or fishermen to ease drought
BANGKOK — In southern China, the worst drought in at least 50 years has dried up farmers’ fields and left tens of millions of people short of water.
