Three times during his seven-hour swim, Omar Jabr thought that he was not going to make it. The only thing he could hear was his pounding heart, a sound he tried to drown out with silent prayers. He was helped by the sounds of his exhausted body as it fought its way through the water.
When the boat capsized, he had volunteered to do the swim. After all, he was the best swimmer on board, and he judged the visible stretches of the Greek shore to be just about one hour away. While the remaining 20 people from the boat treaded water somewhere in the Aegean Sea that separates Turkey and Greece, he swam. For their lives and his own. For the 30-year-old father of five, the water marked the difference between the hopeless situation in his native Syria and a future in the safety of Europe. He knew he couldn’t return to Syria, but he had no idea where he should seek refuge. He did not care either. For the time being he was more than preoccupied with staying alive.
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Chu nibbles at an unripe mango.The hard chunks quickly disappear in his tiny mouth to later end up in his round belly, distended by hunger. His fragile five-year-old body seems even smaller when he stands in front of the dark green meter-high tea plants that cover a field behind his back. It is February in the Mulanje region in the South of Malawi. Every centimeter of land seems to be covered by growing crops. The next local market, a one-hour walk away, is bulging with vegetables, fruits and dried fish. Still, Chu is chronically hungry. He does not run as much as other children his age and even smiling sometimes is hard for him. Often, a small portion of Nsima, a white watery maize porridge, is his only meal.
Half of Malawi children under 5 are like Chu – stunted: too small for their age. His organs and brain capacity may not develop properly. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 842 million people are undernourished worldwide – more than the population of the U.S. and Europe together. Every six seconds a child is dying due to the consequences of undernourishment, a quarter of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. They don't make it to the headlines or evening news. Thankfully the times of disastrous famines that alarmed the world society, like Ethiopia in the 80s, are over. Today’s hunger is quiet. It is a daily misery in a world of abundance, hidden in regions like Mulanje, far from electricity and Internet. Despite horror scenarios of a growing world population and upcoming food shortage, today we have more than enough. The existing food is enough to feed the world’s population twice, the FAO scientists calculate. Why is Chu hungry then? Circulating less cash might help Denmark’s economy, but will not eliminate the informal market.Besides studying in Denmark’s second city Aarhus, Mathias works from time to time helping friends renovate apartments. It allows him to earn some money, which he usually spends quickly. Doing that kind of work – which Danes call ‘sort arbejde’ or black work – Mathias gets paid in cash, and consequently does not pay taxes on it.
Reading reports that Denmark is moving towards being a cashless economy, Mathias is not worried that he will not be able to do this work, nor is he worried about the next generations. The 27-year-old student expects that people will find a way or another to go through it. With the popularity and reach of the web, users have never been as concerned and conscious about privacy protection matters as they are today.Julia Angwin decided to pull the plug. That was it. She needed her privacy. It was time to be in charge of her own information, other than sitting on the back seat. No more just handing in her information to companies and to the government so they can use it freely. No more receiving undesirable marketing mails. No more surveillance. Not anymore. This time, she was taking control of her personal information.
He stares at the shelf for half a second only before grabbing a jar of Panzani tomato sauce. Thomas Scharwatt, a student in Strasbourg, is doing his weekly grocery shopping at one of the biggest retailers in France: Leclerc. As he reaches the organic food section, he sounds surprised “they have pasta sauce here again!” But his cart already has the well-known brand. He is fast, knows where to go, which products he wants. Next time, maybe.
Although still a niche in slow progress, organic food consumption in France is not the main issue. Rather, the production is. The latest statistics by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), show that in 2013, only 3.9% of the agricultural land was dedicated to organic in France, leaving the country at the 18th position in the European Union. In Sweden, it was 16.3% and the EU leader, Austria, had 19.5% dedicated to organic production. So why is France behind? The shining Sugarloaf Mountain, at the mouth of Guanabara Bay, in Rio de Janeiro, still tries to smile with joy to locals and tourists that wander without a curfew around the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon. It is one of the highest-class neighborhoods in town, which will no longer wave back to the Sugarloaf in the same way they did before.
Brazil remains shocked. On Tuesday, May 19th, 2015, 57-year-old Jaime Gold, doctor, left home around 7 pm for a ride around the lagoon. Three criminals stabbed Gold four times, leaving a trail of blood and all for his bicycle. Not a brand new story of Chinese immigrants.By Shulun Huang It is an usual Sunday, December 1st, 2013. Many people are enjoying the weekend with their family. But the fire accident in a Chinese-owned factory snatched seven Chinese immigrant workers’ lives. The factory is located in Prato, Tuscany. Those Chinese workers both lived and worked at the factory, some have no identity authority to live in Italy. This accident has been widely reported, attracting worldwide attention.
The Italian authority, local procurator in Prato, started to investigate the accident immediately. After one year, reported by The Local, Lin You Lan, the manager of the factory was sentenced 8 years and 8 months in prison. Her sister Lin You Li was also found guilty. But this accident has been described as foretold as Roberto Pistonina from Italian Confederation of Worker’s Trade Unions, posted on his Facebook page to describe that hundreds of Chinese immigrant workers were "living and working in conditions of near-slavery." Many hard-working Chinese work day in and day out in Prato with a lack of enough concern about production safety. "Made in Italy" is actually mostly made by Chinese, the clothing produced by Chinese cheap labor is "at a lightning pace for sale at rock-bottom prices" to occupy large quantity of the European garment market. Alongside with the terrible accident, competition, conflicts between Chinese immigrant group and native Italian group have been surfaced distinctly. The enduring popularity of New Zealand Prime Minister John Key.The Key family must have been positively euphoric as they awoke in their plush Parnell mansion on the morning of 21 September, 2014.
The previous night, disappointed Labour-leader David Cunliffe phoned to concede defeat after it became clear John Key had the numbers to serve a third term as New Zealand’s Prime Minister. In one sense, the victory was unsurprising. A weak Labour party had struggled with in-fighting for much of 2014. Cunliffe had failed to gain traction with the Kiwi public, let alone his own colleagues. All told - the opposition were simply no match for the confidence and perceived stability of a National Government led by Key. Even so, the margin of National’s victory was a surprise. Throughout the year the Prime Minister and Government had survived multiple scandals and controversies. From the revelation they had illegally spied on giant German playboy Kim Dotcom and other New Zealanders, to the covert use of attack bloggers to undermine political opponents. It seemed as though John Key had expended his political capital. The New Zealand electorate felt otherwise. Chinese government’s detention of five feminists may have deeper political concern.By Muyu Xu On March 7th, a hazy Saturday in Beijing, Wei Tingting was doing laundry at home when the police came in and took her away. "She did not turn off the machine when she left. Apparently she thought she would come back home in some hours." Fan Popo, a roommate of Wei, recalled. But Wei was not released until April 13th, 37 days later. According to Chinese law, 37 days is the maximum restrain for detainment.
Wei was not the only one who was arrested on that day. Tens of feminists around the country were taken by the police, but they were set free within 24 hours. Only Wei Tingting, Wu Rongrong, Li Tingting, Wang Man and Zheng Churan were arrested and then detained, on the charge of "creating disturbance". The detained five people are all young, well-educated females on the average 27 years old. They are the core members of Chinese new feminism movements and were dubbed as 'Feminist Five'. The Feminist Five were planing to conduct some activities, aiming at raising public awareness of sexual harassment on public transportation, on March 8th - the International Woman’s Day. |
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