Kenyan Farmers' Fate Caught Up in U.S. Aid Rules - New York Times

7/31/07 Celia Dugger, NY Times.

A woman let water flow into her sorghum plot, part of an American-financed irrigation project in northwestern Kenya. Families were promised corn for their work, but it never arrived. More Photos >

7/27/07 Oxford Analytica, Forbes, Hard Times For U.S. Workers

The federal minimum wage recently rose 70 cents, to 5.85 dollars per hour, the first increase in nearly a decade. While the minimum wage has risen, its effect has been partially offset by a May U.S. Supreme Court ruling that tightened the conditions for demonstrating discrimination in "pay parity" cases--strengthening the hand of employers. The rights and bargaining power of U.S. workers have declined since 2000.

Rich World's Consumerism May Cause African Famines, Experts Warn

Food production in developing countries will halve in the next 20 years unless wealthy nations lower their rate of consumption, the Stockholm Environment Institute warned at a weekend conference.

In a World on the Move, a Tiny Land Strains to Cope - New York Times

James Hill for The New York Times

Stenio da Luz dos Reis, 17, lives in Cape Verde but longs to join his mother in the Netherlands. She moved there in 2001 to find work.

MINDELO, Cape Verde -- Virtually every aspect of global migration can be seen in this tiny West African nation, where the number of people who have left approaches the number who remain and almost everyone has a close relative in Europe or America.

By Daniel Howden, Deputy Foreign Editor

Published: 27 June 2007

The combined forces of population growth and urbanisation are creating a planet of slums, where the urban population will have doubled by 2030, according to a report released by the United Nations today.

Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Trafficking in Women Forced Labor and Domestic Work - in the context of the Middle East and Gulf region</a>. Anti-slavery International Working Paper 2006.

East-West Migration in the Context of an Enlarging European Union: New Opportunities and New Challenges

* Slavery in the UK Independent

This is the story of Somalatha, who is from Sri Lanka. It is not her real name - you are about to find out why. It is a story that most people will disbelieve could occur in modern-day Britain. Sadly, it is true. It happened very recently

Published: 27 December 2006

Somalatha arrived in Britain when she was 29 with a family for whom she had been working in Jordan. Her job was to be a maid. She had to work 16 to 18 hours a day, for which she was paid £200 a month. In the first two years, she was not given one day off.

She was not allowed to eat with the family and had to wait for leftovers. If there were none, she was advised to eat onions and potatoes. If any food was missing, she was automatically blamed for it, or even punished.

* BBC NEWS | Special Reports | Migrants 'shape globalised world'

Near the Wind Tower, an original desert house designed to draw cooling air through its mud walls, thousands of men gather to meet, sit, walk and talk.

They wear their best clothes, filling every available space on the marble avenues and squares that are the preserve of shoppers the rest of the week.

Life at America's bottom wage CSM

A $6-AN-HOUR JOB: John Hosier, who works at the Salvation Army's thrift store in Muskogee, Okla., struggles to pay his family's bills. JENNIFER LYLES/SPECIAL TO THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Life at America's bottom wage The House is to vote Wednesday on a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor MUSKOGEE, OKLA. - It's the kind of December evening when the Hosier family might want to stay home. At work all day, John Hosier has been resting on the living-room couch. Tina, his wife, has had her hands full taking care of their two young children. Yet, here they are, rolling 18-month-old Rose in a stroller with 5-year-old Donald tagging along, on a half-mile walk to the Salvation Army Church in Muskogee, Okla.

In officially colorblind France, blacks have a dream – and now a lobby | csmonitor.com

"To be black and proud - that's not being anti-French," says Mr. Lozès, whose vision challenges France's colorblind model of assimilation. "It's simply theliberation of a people who don't see themselves reflected in their country's public life - in its theater, television, medicine, and universities - except in negative images."

Globalisation and the rise of inequality | Rich man, poor man | Economist.com

Rich man, poor man

Jan 18th 2007
From The Economist print edition

A poisonous mix of inequality and sluggish wages threatens globalisation

James Fryer

GLUERS and sawyers from the furniture factories in Galax near the mountains of Virginia lost their jobs last year when American retailers decided they could find a better supplier in China. At the other end of the furniture industry Robert Nardelli lost his job this month when Home Depot decided it could find a better chief executive in his deputy. But any likeness ends there. Mr Nardelli's exit was as extravagantly rewarded as his occupation of the corner office had been. Next to his $210m severance pay, the redundant woodworkers' packages were mean to the point of provocation.

* Pakistani doctor's suicide highlights plight of unemployed immigrants

By Jonathan Brown and David Langton

Published: 19 February 2007

Imran Yousaf was already a qualified doctor when he said goodbye to his family in their village outside Lahore and headed for Britain to start a new life.

Like generations of other young medics from the Indian subcontinent, he thought he was desperately needed in the UK to shore up an NHS critically short of trained staff.

But two years later, having used up all his family savings and borrowed heavily from friends, Dr Yousaf, 28, was unemployed. Not that he had been idle in the meantime, having paid for and passed with flying colours the exam to practice in Britain. He was also studying for the finals of a Royal College of Physicians post-graduate qualification. Friends recalled how he wrote hundreds of letters each week to UK hospitals and applied for thousands of posts since setting up home in Burnley.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Life on the Burma-Thai border

If you did not know that the town of Mae Sot was in Thailand, you would probably assume it was in Burma.

Burmese script is written on almost every shop front, most of the men walk round town wearing longyis (sarongs) and traditional Burmese teashops are on every corner.

The presence of so much that is quintessentially Burmese is unsurprising, given that Burmese nationals in this border town now outnumber Thais by more than two to one.

Low Pay and Broken Promises Greet Guest Workers - New York Times

To a rice farmer from Thailand making $500 a year, the recruiter's pitch was hard to resist -- three years of farm work in North Carolina that would pay more than 30 times as much as he earned at home.

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Barbara P. Fernandez for The New York Times

Pradit Wiangkham, right; Chinnawat Kompeemay, center; and Worawut Khansamrit, behind Mr. Kompeemay, were recruited from Thailand.

The pitch was so persuasive that the farmer, Worawut Khansamrit, put his farm up as collateral to pay the recruiter $11,000 to become a guest worker. "The amount of money they promised was very attractive," said Mr. Khansamrit, a slight, soft-spoken 40-year-old with a 15-year-old daughter he wants to send to college.

But after he arrived in North Carolina with 30 other Thai workers, he found there was only about a month's work. He was then taken to New Orleans to remove debris from a hotel damaged by Hurricane Katrina -- work he says he was never paid for. This month, he and other Thai workers filed a federal lawsuit asserting that they were victims of illegal trafficking.

* BBC News | EUROPE | Global migration reaches record high

The Geneva-based organisation says there are now about 150 million migrants worldwide - just under 3% of the world population. That is 30 million more than 10 years ago.

Millions who risk death for a better life - Independent Online Edition > Africa

By Steve Bloomfield. Africa Correspondent

Published: 28 May 2007

India's war of the vegetables - Independent Online Edition > Business News

Market traders are ready to wreck a retail revolution. By Richard Orange in Mumbai

Published: 17 June 2007

"A riot will happen. In Jharkand, it was only one shop. In Mumbai, we could destroy 100 shops."

Ever since mid-May, when an angry crowd of vegetable vendors tore apart a newly-opened Reliance Fresh supermarket in India's Jharkand state, young men like Shamrao Patil at the Vashi vegetable market in Mumbai have been waiting for Reliance Industries to bring its retail revolution to town.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | African dream of a better life

By Jenny Cuffe  6/16/07 BBC News

Police on Europe's southern shorelines fear a summer wave of illegal migration from Africa. Some will come from Niger where traffickers are ready to cash in on people who are desperate to leave.

Ferienetu said her parents would be mad with worry and would search the world for her

The girl - she said she was 19 but I would say more like 15 - slept fitfully between bouts of coughing.

She was so small she could stretch out beside me on the back seat. The motif from her t-shirt had left a sprinkling of glitter dust on her shoulders.

courant.com | Poverty, Strife Stanch Nigeria's Oil

Amid Legacy Of Corrupt Regimes, Ogonis Use Crude As A Bargaining Chip

Allies Cited for Human Trafficking - washingtonpost.com

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  State Dept. Adds Arab Nations to List of Worst Offenders

  By Nora Boustany
  Washington Post Foreign Service
  Wednesday, June 13, 2007; Page A14

  The State Department yesterday added seven countries, including four Arab allies, to its list of worst offenders in failing to suppress human trafficking and forced labor, which it called "a modern day form of slavery."

  
  

James Hill for The New York Times

Stenio da Luz dos Reis, 17, lives in Cape Verde but longs to join his mother in the Netherlands. She moved there in 2001 to find work.

MINDELO, Cape Verde — Virtually every aspect of global migration can be seen in this tiny West African nation, where the number of people who have left approaches the number who remain and almost everyone has a close relative in Europe or America.

Mountain men's life under threat | World | The Observer

Shepherds of the Transylvanian peaks face EU rules that may rob them of their traditional work
Daniel McLaughlin in Piatra Craiului, Romania
Sunday June 24, 2007
The Observer

The huge white dogs are used to fending off wolves, bears and lynx, and they erupt when a stranger approaches the shepherds' camp high in the mountains of Transylvania.

The men call them off with shouts and whistles and return to milking their flock, but remain alert for one dreaded visitor - a government inspector who could end their ancient way of life at a stroke. The Transylvanian shepherds make cheese, milk and butter in the same way as their ancestors, but since Romania joined the European Union last January, time is running out for these long-held traditions.