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The following news stories are provided as a free service.
They do not necessarily reflect the views of Bread for the World/Bread for the World Institute.
Bread for the World/Bread for the World Institute is not responsible for the accuracy of this information.
International News
Ethiopia aid 'spent on weapons'
March 3, 2010 / BBC
Millions of dollars in Western aid for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels to buy weapons, a BBC investigation finds.
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Learning From the Sin of Sodom
March 2, 2010 / New York Times
For most of the last century, save-the-worlders were primarily Democrats and liberals. In contrast, many Republicans and religious conservatives denounced government aid programs, with Senator Jesse Helms calling them "money down a rat hole."
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Free care for expectant mothers - is it enough?
March 2, 2010 / IRIN
The government of Sierra Leone has announced that from Independence Day (27 April) it will abolish user fees for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under five, but will this, on its own, improve their lot?
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Are we heading for another food crisis?
March 2, 2010 / IRIN
Long dry spells in parts of Africa and erratic rainfall in Asia have cast uncertain clouds over crop yields for 2010 in the world's poorest countries. Food prices in most developing countries are down from their 2008 crisis levels, but still higher than they were in 2007.
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Africa aids Chile
March 1, 2010 / BBC
Kenya is nearly 12,000km (8,000 miles) from Chile and is therefore perhaps not an obvious place from which to try to coordinate the earthquake relief efforts.
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Big rise in Afghan child migrants
March 1, 2010 / BBC
United Nations aid agencies are increasingly concerned about the number of children from Afghanistan migrating across Europe alone.
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WFP increases focus on children under 2
February 26, 2010 / Reuters
Preventing lifelong damage from malnutrition hinges on boosting efforts to tackle the problem in children under two, the head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday.
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Not pleased?
February 26, 2010 / BBC
India's finance minister is seeking to please the middle classes with his latest budget. But his proposals may not address the needs of the underprivileged , says economic analyst Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.
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Here on the hills above Port-au-Prince, a vision for a very different capital city is taking shape.
February 23, 2010 / New York Times
Leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean agreed Tuesday to form a new regional group that brings Cuba into the fold but excludes Canada and the United States.
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Urban commission considers new direction for Haiti
February 22, 2010 / Washington Post
Here on the hills above Port-au-Prince, a vision for a very different capital city is taking shape.
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Green Revolution in India Wilts as Subsidies Backfire
February 22, 2010 / Wall Street Journal
In the 1970s, India dramatically increased food production, finally allowing this giant country to feed itself. But government efforts to continue that miracle by encouraging farmers to use fertilizers have backfired, forcing the country to expand its reliance on imported food.
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Big surge in south Sudan hunger
February 2, 2010 / BBC
The number of people needing food aid in south Sudan has quadrupled in a year to more than four million, the UN's World Food Programme says.
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'It Will Be Terrible': Economists in Davos Look with Concern to 2010
February 1, 2010 / Der Spiegel
Many countries have started to see a rebound from last year's economic recession. But will it last? Economists at the World Economic Forum in Davos warn that paying down massive public debt will be "very, very painful." Deep spending cuts and significant tax hikes may be unavoidable.
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Haiti: A survivor's story
February 1, 2010 / Salon
I came to Haiti to research. Six months later, I lay under the rubble of a house, my friend crushed to death nearby.
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U.S. Resumes Medical Airlift of Haitians
January 31, 2010 / New York Times
The White House said Sunday that it would resume a United States military airlift of Haitians seriously injured in the Jan. 12 earthquake, reversing a five-day suspension that doctors worried would strand patients with devastating burns, head and spinal cord trauma, amputations and other wounds.
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Africa's continental divide: land disputes
January 30, 2010 / Christian Science Monitor
The specialists know the warning signs. Analysts and scientists and field officers and academics spend years writing white papers, issuing reports and holding conferences, trying to provoke interest in issues that often seem arcane. Please, they have urged governments and the United Nations and activists, think about something that sounds boring – land disputes – before it turns into something that is not – war.
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Brazil, U.S. compete for Haiti mission influence
January 26, 2010 / Der Spiegel
Officially, Brazil is responsible for keeping order in earthquake-stricken Haiti, but the country's soldiers -- present for almost six years on the Caribbean island as the leaders of the UN peacekeeping force -- are also helping with humanitarian relief. Behind the scenes, though, Washington and Brasilia are quietly competing for influence and power in Haiti.
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Haiti 'can lead quake recovery'
January 26, 2010 / BBC
Haiti's government can lead efforts to rebuild the country in the wake of its devastating earthquake, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has said.
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Agreement on Effort to Help Haiti Rebuild
January 25, 2010 / New York Times
Concerned about corruption and wobbly Haitian leadership, international donors agreed Monday during a meeting in Montreal on a 10-year rebuilding effort for earthquake-damaged Haiti, one that would create an even better capital city and that the government said would cost $3 billion.
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Haiti plagued by immediate food shortages
January 25, 2010 / New York Times
Maxi Extralien, a twig-thin 10-year-old in a SpongeBob pajama top, ate only a single bean from the heavy plate of food he received recently from a Haitian civic group. He had to make it last.
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Domestic News
Why is American Food So Cheap?
January 11, 2010 / The Atlantic
There are a lot of reasons why obesity has taken off over the last 30 years, but one very obvious reason is that food -- especially fat food -- is so cheap.
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WellPoint Raising Premium Rates By Double Digits In At Least 11 States, Report Says
February 24, 2010 / Think Progress
If Democrats move to pass health care reform after tomorrow's summit, their newfound momentum can be at least partly attributed to WellPoint's decision to drastically increase premiums in California's individual health insurance market.
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Wall Street Bonuses Up 17%, Profits Could Hit 'Unprecedented' Level
February 24, 2010 / Huffington Post
Wall Street bonuses were up 17 percent to over $20 billion in 2009, the year taxpayers bailed out the financial sector after its meltdown, New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said Tuesday.
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US spending rises in December
February 1, 2010 / BBC
US consumer spending rose less than expected in December as people opted to save more.
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US new home sales decline again
January 27, 2010 / BBC
Sales of new homes in the US fell sharply for the second month in a row in December, raising further doubts about recovery in the housing market.
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Underemployment Near 20%
February 23, 2010 / Reuters
Nearly 20 percent of the U.S. workforce lacked adequate employment in January and struggled to make ends meet with reduced resources and bleak job prospects, according to a Gallup poll released on Tuesday.
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U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio
September 26, 2009 / New York Times
Despite signs that the economy has resumed growing, unemployed Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse.
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U.S. House votes to extend unemployment benefits
September 22, 2009 / Reuters
With unemployment lines growing even as the recession eases its grip, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to extend jobless benefits for those who risk exhausting them.
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U.S. growth prospects deemed bleak in new decade
January 4, 2010 / Reuters
Speaking at American Economic Association's mammoth yearly gathering, experts from a range of political leanings were in surprising agreement when it came to the chances for a robust and sustained expansion: They are slim.
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To jumpstart US job market, turn workers into owners
January 11, 2010 / Christian Science Monitor
Seldom do the United Steelworkers, the United Nations, and film director Michael Moore express the same idea at the same time. But all have, in their own way, promoted the benefits of cooperative businesses in recent months.
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This Year’s Housing Crisis
January 4, 2010 / New York Times
The financial crisis and Great Recession have their roots in the housing bust. When it comes, a lasting recovery will be evident in a housing rebound. Unfortunately, housing appears to be weakening anew.
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The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever
October 9, 2009 / Huffington Post
It's now official: The country has lost more jobs as a percentage of peak employment than at any time since the Great Depression.
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The Recession’s Racial Divide
September 12, 2009 / New York Times
What do you get when you combine the worst economic downturn since the Depression with the first black president? A surge of white racial resentment, loosely disguised as a populist revolt.
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The Great Unwinding
June 11, 2009 / New York Times
Here’s one way to look at the politics of our era: We’ve moved from The Age of Leverage to The Great Unwinding.
For about a generation, the U.S. surfed on a growing wave of debt. The ratio of debt-to-personal-disposable income was 55 percent in 1960. Since then, it has more than doubled, reaching 133 percent in 2007. Total credit market debt — throwing in corporate, financial and other borrowing — has risen apace, surging from 143 percent of G.D.P. in 1951 to 350 percent of G.D.P. last year.
Charts that mark these trends are truly horrifying. There is a steady level of debt through most of the 20th century, until the mid-1980s. Then there is a steep accelerating rise to today’s epic levels.
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The Game of Life
September 8, 2009 / Minneapolis Star Tribune
For many Americans our current housing crisis, banking meltdown and global recession is increasing their risk of falling into poverty.
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Survey: U.S. lagging on early child development
September 1, 2009 / AP
America has some of the industrial world's worst rates of infant mortality, teenage pregnancy and child poverty, even though it spends more per child than better-performing countries such as Switzerland, Japan and the Netherlands, a new survey indicates.
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Surprise rise in US job losses
January 8, 2010 / BBC
US employers unexpectedly cut 85,000 jobs in December, but the unemployment rate held steady at 10%, official figures have shown.
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Sugar Shock
U.S. growers' sickeningly sweet deal with the government
August 23, 2009 / The Washington Post
DOWN ON the farm, the latest dispute pits America's sugar producers against their biggest customers: food manufacturers that add the sweetener to everything from raisin bran to raspberry yogurt.
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Subprime Brokers Resurface as Dubious Loan Fixers
July 19, 2009 / The New York Times
LOS ANGELES — From the ninth floor of a downtown office building on Wilshire Boulevard, Jack Soussana delivered staggering numbers of mortgages to homeowners during the real estate boom, amassing a fortune.
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Study: Low-Wage Workers Constantly Being Cheated Out Of Pay
September 1, 2009 / New York Times
Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage, according to a new study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
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Climate Change News
World leaders back climate change action at UN
September 22, 2009 / Toronto Star
Complacency on climate change is tantamount to a global "suicide pact," the President of the Maldives warned today as the largest-ever gathering of world leaders grappled with the issue at UN headquarters in New York.
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UNEP: Suggested emission cuts fall short
February 23, 2010 / AlterNet
Emission cuts pledges made by 60 countries will not be enough to keep the average global temperature rise at 2 degrees Celsius or less, modelling released on Tuesday by the United Nations says.
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UN climate chief won't back down
January 25, 2010 / BBC
The chairman of the UN's climate science body said he would not resign in the wake of a row about a mistake on glaciers that appeared in a key report.
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U.S. refuses Kyoto as basis for Copenhagen
October 7, 2009 / Guardian
The US threatened to derail a deal on global climate change today in a public showdown with China by expressing deep opposition to the existing Kyoto protocol. The US team also urged other rich countries to join it in setting up a new legal agreement which would, unlike Kyoto, force all countries to reduce emissions.
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This decade 'warmest on record'
December 8, 2009 / BBC
The first decade of this century is "by far" the warmest since instrumental records began, say the UK Met Office and World Meteorological Organization.
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Third World population controls won't save climate, study claims
September 29, 2009 / Times Online
The population explosion in poor countries will contribute little to climate change and is a dangerous distraction from the main problem of over-consumption in rich nations, a study has found.
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The unintended ripples from the biomass subsidy program
January 10, 2010 / Washington Post
It sounded like a good idea: Provide a little government money to convert wood shavings and plant waste into renewable energy.
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The Climate of Belief: American Public Opinion on Climate Change
January 6, 2010 / Brookings Institution
Climate change has gained enormous visibility during the past year, reflected in a range of American policy initiatives leading up to the international deliberations in Copenhagen.
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Tackling climate change could earn Africa $1.5bn
September 16, 2009 / Reuters
Using Africa's vast agricultural resources to help tackle climate change could earn the continent $1.5 billion a year, a World Bank head said on Tuesday.
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Small Midwestern States To Be Hit Hardest By Climate Change: Report
August 28, 2009 / Huffington Post
Climate change is, in fact, a regional issue, but not in the short-term way that the coal senators think, according to new analysis from The Nature Conservancy. The environmental group finds that rural Midwestern states will face the greatest consequences of climate change.
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S.Asia's poorest 'to be worst hit by climate change'
September 2, 2009 / AFP
KATHMANDU — Climate change threatens to bring food and water shortages to 1.6 billion people in South Asia, with the region's poorest likely to be worst hit, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said here Wednesday.
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RANKINGS: See The Greenest, Cleanest Countries On Earth (And The Dirtiest)
February 1, 2010 / Huffington Post
Environmental experts at Yale and Columbia universities released their biannual Environmental Performance Index at the World Economic Forum.
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Pentagon to rank global warming as destabilising force ...
January 31, 2010 / Guardian
The Pentagon will for the first time rank global warming as a destabilising force, adding fuel to conflict and putting US troops at risk around the world, in a major strategy review to be presented to Congress tomorrow. The quadrennial defence review, prepared by the Pentagon to update Congress on its security vision, will direct military planners to keep track of the latest climate science, and to factor global warming into their long term strategic planning.
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Our warm globe
November 24, 2009 / BBC
As the UN summit in Copenhagen approaches, we look at the past, present and possible futures of climate change.
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No consensus emerges as UN climate talks end
October 9, 2009 / Christian Science Monitor
Two weeks of UN climate talks ended Friday in Bangkok with little sign of consensus on how to achieve deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are essential to slow global warming.
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Namibia's landmark trees dying from climate change
January 6, 2010 / AFP
An old man gently touches the trunk of the huge quiver tree with a worried look on his wrinkled face, as he points at several dead branches lying on Namibia's rugged terrain.
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Most major deltas are sinking, study finds
September 21, 2009 / MSNBC
Most of the world's low-lying river deltas are sinking due to human activity, making them increasingly vulnerable to flooding from rivers and ocean storms and putting tens of millions of people at risk, a new study finds.
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Island nations urge emissions cuts as matter of survival
October 5, 2009 / IRIN
Up to half a million people in the Pacific will lose their homes and their countries to rising sea levels because small island nations cannot persuade the rest of the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently, campaigners say.
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IPCC looks to address critics with outside review
February 27, 2010 / New York Times
An independent board of scientists will be appointed to review the workings of the world's top climate science panel, which has faced recriminations over inaccuracies in a 2007 report, a United Nations environmental spokesman said Friday.
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Hurdles Remain on Climate Change Goals
October 5, 2009 / Washington Post
Like most members of President Obama's climate team, David Sandalow was one of President Bill Clinton's negotiators in Kyoto. And he carries an indelible lesson from the experience of signing off on the international climate pact there 12 years ago: "Only agree abroad to what you can implement at home."
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