Browse past isues
Help the mission
Support the mission
Get in touch
The world’s existing cropland could feed at least 3 billion extra people if it were used more efficiently, a new study has found, showing that the large increases in population expected in the next three decades need not result in widespread hunger.
Vietnam’s first Catholic university is no longer a mirage. It is very soon going to become a reality. In fact, according to Paul Bui Van Doc, Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City, the structure could be ready within a year. It is going to mark a crucial turning point in the history of the Vietnamese Catholic Church, the sign of an eagerly awaited return to the freedom of education, which the communist government has denied the people for 60 years.
The number of executions worldwide increased last year despite a global trend toward capital punishment abolition. This is the finding of the 2014 report entitled “The death penalty in the world,” compiled by the Italian organization, Hands Off Cain, and presented recently in Rome, Italy. Asian and Middle Eastern nations are in the lead for the number of people sent to their death. Once again, in 2013, China won this sad award, followed at some distance by Iran and Iraq.
Global urban population is expected to increase by another 2.5 billion people by 2050 from current levels of 3.9 billion or 54% of population, with the greatest growth expected in India, China and Nigeria, according to the 2014 revision of the World Urbanization Prospect.
When Ebola first struck Pujeh, a village deep in Sierra Leone’s forested interior region, residents did what they always do when a mysterious illness brings death: they consulted the traditional healer. But the elderly herbalist soon caught one of the world’s most contagious diseases, and then became a source for spreading it as visitors streamed in.
Australia is pursuing draconian measures to deter people without visas from entering the country by boat. In doing so, it is failing in its obligation under international accords to protect refugees fleeing persecution.
Before the sun has risen, Sami is pushing a dented wheelbarrow through the dim streets, at 13, still a tiny figure among the vegetable hawkers and butchers slicing bloody flanks of sheep from carcasses hung on hooks. He gathers water from a public well and takes it back to the bakery.
When he was seven years old, Jun Rey Bigallera would wake up before dawn, not to get ready for school but to go to a public market in the southern Philippine city of Davao to sell vegetables. Jun recalls walking for two hours to reach the market.
Once a hub of Christianity, worshippers in Wenzhou fear their faith is facing its biggest threat since the Cultural Revolution.
Southeast Asia’s largest red-light district, in the Indonesian city of Surabaya, was shut down recently after pressure from locals. Authorities have announced the closure of the Dolly prostitution complex in Putat Jaya village, Sawahan subdistrict, stating that the area should be transformed into a “dignified” space that will attract businesses.
