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“According to the 2013 Afghanistan Opium Survey, cultivation amounted to some 209,000 hectares, outstripping the earlier record in 2007 of 193,000 hectares, and representing a 36% increase over 2012.”
Researchers say the Christian population is growing in regions that experience anti-Christian persecution, though this threatens their ability to contribute to societies.
The world’s wealthiest people aren’t known for travelling by bus, but if they fancied a change of scene, then the richest 85 people on the globe – who among them control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together – could squeeze onto a single double-decker.
Dreams can be powerful things, especially when articulated by leaders with the realistic capacity to translate them into action. That was the case 50 years ago with Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and it also seems to be the ambition of Pope Francis’ bold new apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel.”
Coca-Cola has said it will cut off suppliers that do not follow guidelines to protect the land rights of local communities in developing countries. The soft drinks company also pledged to use its clout to encourage other food and beverage firms, traders – especially of soy, sugar and palm oil – as well as governments to endorse and implement voluntary U.N. guidelines on responsible governance of tenure on land, fisheries and forests. “The Coca-Cola Company believes that land grabbing is unacceptable,” it said.
Aid workers have warned that children in the disaster zone left by typhoon Haiyan are particularly vulnerable, as they set up child-focused services to mitigate the impact. UNICEF estimates that 1.7M children are among the 4.4M people in the Philippines displaced by the disaster and said it was receiving reports of missing and separated children in Tacloban and Ormoc.
Britons are chucking out the equivalent of 24 meals a month, adding up to 4.2 million tons of food and drink every year that could have been consumed. Almost half of this is going straight from fridges or cupboards into the bin. One-fifth of what households buy ends up as waste, and around 60% of that could have been eaten.
Slavery in India ranges from bonded labor in quarries and kilns to commercial sex exploitation. It must be noted that slavery still exists in all 162 countries surveyed by Walk Free Foundation, an Australian-based anti-slavery group.
For Philippine diplomat Yeb Saño, the close of U.N. climate talks in Warsaw, last November 23, came with an unusual prize: he can eat again.
On weekday mornings in Mingora, the largest city in Swat Valley, Pakistan, the streets are filled with boys heading to school. Among them are smaller groups of schoolgirls laughing and tucking books under their arms, as they, too, head to school. The scene highlights how far the region has come in the past few years: The Swat Valley, famed for its picturesque mountains, saw more than 400 schools destroyed – more than half of them girls’ schools – when the Taliban took control of the region in 2008.
