NEW DELHI — Her first child survived eight months before succumbing to pneumonia; her second was stillborn; her third, delivered in a rickshaw, gasped for an hour before dying.
Author: WHES
Death by chocolate: the sugar-fueled diabetes surge in South Asia
The midweek buffet lunch at a fashionable vegetarian restaurant in Bengaluru was delicious but unexceptional until the dessert arrived one table over. It levitated on a cloud of cardamom smoke, hissing loudly: the sizzling chocolate cake, drowning in chocolate syrup, the size of a dinner plate. Actually two. One for each twentysomething computer techie. Both finished the whole thing.
Will sustainable palm oil surge exclude small farmers?
Among Ghana’s small-scale farmers, there’s a saying that if your cocoa crop fails, you may as well go back and tend your oil palm.That’s because oil palm is more resistant to pests and diseases, and provides a regular harvest throughout the year – as long as it is looked after properly, which is rare, according to Rosemary Addico who runs a program supporting farmers.
Where and why food prices lead to social upheaval
Between 2000 and 2011, prices for most globally traded commodities more than doubled. Since cresting in early 2011, however, oil and industrial metals prices have halved. As the saying goes, however: What’s that got to do with the price of eggs? Not much. Unlike other commodities, global food prices have followed a different trajectory. Although down from near-historic highs in 2007-2008 and 2011, they are still higher than at any point in the previous three decades.
As Walmart gives raises, other employers may have to go above minimum wage
Walmart is the biggest private employer in America, with 1.3 million United States workers. And many of them will soon see a raise, in the latest snippet of corporate news that suggests a firmer job market is starting to enable workers to successfully demand higher pay.
Battle to feed the world pits small farmers against big agriculture. Do small-scale farmers hold the key to fulfilling global goals on hunger and poverty? Or can they only be achieved by large-scale agriculture?
Dotted along the narrow path that skirts the edge of Beatrice Alvitsa’s house in Shimanyiro, a green Kenyan valley near the border with Uganda, are dozens of millet plants, each protected by a carefully assembled fence made of sticks. “These keep the chickens and other animals out,” she says, bending down to mend a break in one of the fences.
Emergency aid projects in Iraq face closure due to funding shortfall
In the last year more than 2.2million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes due to fighting between militants calling themselves the Islamic State and government security forces and are scattered across the country, many in tented camps and makeshift shelters.
Magic mash: reducing child malnutrition with sweet potatoes. A project to introduce orange-fleshed Vitamin-A-rich sweet potatoes to sub-Saharan Africa can improve child health. But can local eating habits be changed?
Bright orange sweet potato mash with a slab of butter melting slowly on top is a familiar sight on Thanksgiving feast tables across north America. Not only delicious, the vegetable is increasingly recognised as a nutritional powerhouse. The intense colour means there is lots of beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A. One small root provides the daily vitamin A needs for a child under five years of age. Sweet potato came out as the most nutritious food in an evaluation of 58 superfood vegetables by the US’s Centre for Science in the Public Interest.
The 25-cent raise: What life is like after a minimum wage increase
PINE BLUFF, Ark. — One Friday last month, Shanna Tippen left the house where she sometimes gets by with candles and flashlights, got into her beat-up 2003 Chrysler Sebring, and drove to work to pick up her first new-and-improved paycheck. The paycheck was stamped at the top with her employer’s name — Days Inn and Suites — and showed the fruits of Arkansas’ long battle over the minimum wage.
Ex movie star and convicted politician still running her Indian state
CHENNAI, India — Her chair in the state assembly room has been kept open, her office left undisturbed like a shrine.It’s been more than four months since Jayalalitha Jayaram, a former film star and three-term chief minister in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, was convicted on corruption charges, briefly imprisoned and forced to step down, an event that caused statewide protests and shuttered shops and schools. A few of her most fervent supporters even lighted themselves on fire.
