As Venezuela enters its seventh year of a crushing depression, doctors are seeing a rise in infant mortality rates due to deprivation
Her coffin was little larger than a shoe box. Her life had lasted three short months.
“She was a calm little thing,” the girl’s grandmother, Yamilet Zerpa, remembered as mourners filed into her sitting room to say their last goodbyes.
Continue reading...The destructive migratory pest threatens catastrophe as it swarms through countries already plagued by food insecurity
A colleague at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tells a terrifying story about the desert locust.
In 2005 she visited farmers in Niger as they prepared to harvest their crops. Just hours later, a swarm of locusts swept through the area and destroyed everything. One month later, truckloads of families were forced to leave their homes because they had nothing to eat.
Continue reading...Smugglers responsible for mass atrocities in Thailand may be linked to capsized boat carrying refugees from Bangladesh to Malaysia
Activists fear a dangerous transnational trafficking network is being revived after at least 16 Rohingya refugees drowned in the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday morning.
Bangladeshi officials said a wooden fishing boat carrying about 138 people capsized near Bangladesh’s St Martin’s island in the early hours.
Continue reading...After US allies expel foreign health missions, Havana warns that patients will pay the highest price for campaign against its scheme
A Cuban medical programme that has helped some of the world’s poorest communities has become the latest target of the Trump administration’s escalating attempts to pressure Havana’s faltering economy.
Dubbed “Cuban doctors”, the celebrated – if controversial – humanitarian medical mission was founded more than half a century ago in the aftermath of Fidel Castro’s revolution, in part to enhance the country’s international influence.
Continue reading...Doctor warns of pandemic risk due to lack of healthcare in Greek camp
The UN refugee agency has called for the urgent evacuation of families and sick people from the Moria camp on Lesbos. Over the weekend boats continued to arrive on the Agean islands, sending more families into “alarming” and overcrowded conditions in the refugee camps.
The Moria camp in Lesbos has grown from a population of 5,000 last July to around 20,000, with new families arriving daily. Even the most vulnerable new arrivals can no longer find space in the official area, but have to build makeshift shelters in a rubbish-filled olive grove around the camp.
Continue reading...Three years of water shortages in Eswatini have disproportionately affected the HIV-positive community. The founder of a local support group in Lubombo is empowering others to look after themselves
Supported by wealthy foreign backers, a feared paramilitary outfit controls Sudan’s most lucrative industry, complicating the country’s path to democracy
Ornate, heavy necklaces gleam on stands above stacks of thick filigree bangles in the windows of Khartoum’s gold market. The gold is Sudanese, dug from the rich mines that span the country.
Shop owner Bashir Abdulay hands over a palm-sized lump of pure gold with two small bore holes as he explains how the prized metal goes from mine deposit, through middlemen, to Khartoum.
Continue reading...Widespread corruption and deteriorating economy have contributed to rise in sexual bribery, say researchers
Zimbabwe has recorded an unprecedented number of women reporting being forced to exchange sex for employment or business favours.
More than 57% of women surveyed by Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ) said they had been forced to offer sexual favours in exchange for jobs, medical care and even when seeking placements at schools for their children.
Continue reading...Dangerous conditions fail to deter record number of people from attempting to enter UK
The approach of Storm Ciara has not deterred 102 people from trying to cross the Channel on Friday.
Five inflatable boats carrying migrants who said they were from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Syria were picked up by Border Force, the Home Office said.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Inquiry into $21.4m conservation project reports ‘credible’ evidence of abuse
Armed ecoguards partly funded by the conservation group WWF to protect wildlife in the Republic of the Congo beat up and intimidated hundreds of Baka pygmies living deep in the rainforests, an investigation into a landmark global conservation project has heard.
A team of investigators sent to northern Congo by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to assess allegations of human rights abuses gathered “credible” evidence from different sources that hunter-gatherer Baka tribespeople living close to a proposed national park had been subjected to violence and physical abuse from the guards over years, according to a leaked draft of the report.
Continue reading...A nature photographer captured an unlikely friendship between children living in a disused army barracks in Berlin and local wildlife
It all started when I began working as a sports educator for refugee children living in the old military barracks in Spandau, Berlin. It was just a job in the beginning, but it slowly turned into much more. It changed my life.
Continue reading...The threat of famine and the battle for dwindling natural resources are increasingly being recognised as major factors in the exodus
Martina García grinds just enough maize kernels to make a handful of tortillas which she serves to her children and grandson for breakfast with a sprinkling of salt.
García, 40, must ration the family’s last few sacks of tiny corncobs after drought and prolonged heatwaves linked to the climate emergency devastated crops across Guatemala.
Continue reading...Gradual phaseout will begin in March as part of government plan to outlaw all single-use bags by 2021
Tunisia has announced plans to stop its supermarkets and pharmacies from using single-use plastic bags from next month before phasing them out completely in 2021.
Plastic pollution has been a growing problem in the north African country in recent years, along with the challenges presented by its ancient industrial plants and barely managed household waste.
Continue reading...World’s fourth most populous country says it has no confirmed cases despite close links to China
There is growing concern that the new coronavirus may be going undetected in Indonesia, where officials have not confirmed a single case of infection among the 272 million-strong population despite the country’s close links to China.
As of Thursday, Indonesia said it had no confirmed cases of the coronavirus and that 238 people evacuated from Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak, had not shown symptoms, although it said they hadn’t been tested.
Continue reading...From the Gambia to Kenya, FGM has been fought most successfully at grassroots level. The world must pay heed
I underwent female genital mutilation at the age of seven, while on holiday in Djibouti. When I returned to school in the UK my teacher told me that this happened to “girls like me”.
Thankfully, this type of reaction is no longer common, and this country is much better equipped to protect girls at risk. FGM is now seen as a global issue, which we know has affected more than 200 million women and girls around the world.
Continue reading...Failure to report mild symptoms combined with highly contagious nature of disease raises fears existing figures are ‘tip of the iceberg’
Global health experts have warned that “hidden” infections make containment of the coronavirus unlikely and raised fears that the rapidly rising caseload of 25,000 people could be the “tip of the iceberg”.
“Hidden” cases – where people with mild symptoms do not seek medical help and so remain untested and unrecorded – combined with the highly contagious nature of the disease mean there could be “vastly more cases” than previously thought, according to Tom Frieden, a former director at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Continue reading...WHO experts prepare to meet in Geneva amid further significant rises in confirmed cases in China
The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak in China has reached 563, as health experts prepared to meet in Geneva next week in an attempt to develop a vaccine and Japan reported 10 more infections among passengers aboard a luxury cruise liner quarantined outside Yokohama.
Chinese authorities said on Thursday the death toll had risen by 73 in the previous 24 hours – the third record daily rise in a row – with 70 of the deaths recorded in Hubei province, the centre of the outbreak.
Continue reading...Reports of panic buying emerge as airlines drop city as a destination and lucrative tourism from China falls away
Hong Kong’s economy risks being plunged deeper into recession as the coronavirus outbreak wreaks havoc in the crisis-hit territory, with consumers panic buying staple goods and airlines stopping flights.
Hours after the city’s flagship carrier Cathay Pacific placed 27,000 staff on three weeks unpaid leave, Virgin Australia said on Thursday that it would no longer fly to Hong Kong because it was not “commercially viable”.
Continue reading...Watchdog reveals huge sum ploughed into ‘world’s dirtiest fossil fuels’ despite climate vow
UK taxpayer funds totalling $750m (£577m) have been invested in new fossil fuel projects in developing African countries despite the government’s public commitment to tackling the climate crisis, according to an international watchdog.
Global Witness found that a London-based investment group raised $1bn from the UK government over 16 years and spent three-quarters of this supporting oil and gas projects in some of Africa’s poorest countries.
Continue reading...Three new Muppets, Basma, Jad, and Ma’zooza, will star in new show for the millions of children displaced across the Middle East
Cooperation, kindness and the alphabet. For over 50 years, the characters of Sesame Street, from the Cookie Monster to Big Bird, have helped children from diverse backgrounds navigate the challenges of life as a small person in a big world.
From the moment it launched, Sesame Street has unflinchingly dealt with difficult issues – and from this week they are bringing their special brand of magic to the children who need them the most.
Continue reading...