Two months after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico struggles to regain electricity, as thousands flee the island – “It’s going to take a decade at minimum for the island to recover and regain some sense of normalcy”

By Milton Carrero Galarza And Kurtis Lee 19 November 2017 AÑASCO, Puerto Rico (Los Angeles Times) – The lights remain off in bustling cities and in small rural villages. Gas generators, the only alternative to the downed power lines that seem to be everywhere, continuously hum outside hospitals and bodegas. When night falls, it’s the […]

Three quarters of companies worldwide yet to acknowledge global warming as a financial risk – “Even among the world’s largest companies, very few are providing investors with adequate indications of value at risk from climate change”

11 October 2017 (KPMG) – Almost three quarters (72 percent) of large and mid-cap companies worldwide do not acknowledge the financial risks of climate change in their annual financial reports, according to the KPMG Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting 2017 published today.Of the minority that do acknowledge climate-related risk, less than one in 20 (4 […]

Burned up and priced out: Santa Rosa fire evacuees fear they can’t afford to return – Largest debris-removal campaign in state history underway

By Louis Sahagun 9 November 2017 (Los Angeles Times) – For Sharon Ditmore, the signs of the holidays showing up in this city devastated by fire are both comforting and depressing.Ditmore lost her home in the working-class neighborhood of Coffey Park and has been living in a friend’s guesthouse. She can’t help but think back […]

Everything you need to know about the massive Paradise Papers leak

5 November 2017 (Vice News) – A vast new trove of 13.4 million leaked documents dubbed the Paradise Papers have been published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) exposing the offshore banking activities of more than 120 politicians around the world. Included in the leak are documents connecting U.S. Commerce Secretary and billionaire […]

The Paradise Papers: Trump-Russia links and offshore piggy banks of the 1 percent exposed

5 November 2017 (ICIJ) – The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists today releases The Paradise Papers, a global investigation that reveals the offshore activities of some of the world’s most powerful people and companies.ICIJ and 95 media partners explored 13.4 million leaked files from a combination of leaked files of offshore law firms and the […]

Charges against Paul Manafort throw light on America’s secret financial havens

By Casey Michel 31 October 2017 (The Washington Post) – Off all the information contained in yesterday’s bombshell indictment of Paul Manafort, one significant fact has gone unremarked. According to the indictment, Manafort was linked to nearly a dozen limited liability companies (LLCs) that helped to funnel cash from accounts in places like Cyprus and […]

Awaiting Trump’s coal comeback, miners reject retraining – “I have a lot of faith in President Trump”

By Valerie Volcovici 1 November 2017 WAYNESBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – When Mike Sylvester entered a career training center earlier this year in southwestern Pennsylvania, he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing.He settled instead on something familiar: a coal mining course.”I think there is a coal comeback,” […]

On the streets of San Juan, police struggle to rein in crime after Hurricane Maria

By David Ovalle 20 October 2017 SAN JUAN (Miami Herald) – Hurricane Maria ripped apart daily life in Puerto Rico but it hasn’t brought a halt to the crime that has long plagued the poverty-stricken island. In the hard-scrabble neighborhood of Rio Piedras, Jessica Rojas was at work this week making sandwiches at a Subway […]

Poorest countries suffer most from global warming

By Martin Wolf 18 October 2017 (The Irish Times) – Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”This sentence from the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides is the philosophy of Donald Trump’s administration. Thus, […]

Murdered Maltese journalist’s final written words: “The situation is desperate”

By Luke Harding, David Pegg, and Juliette Garside 17 October 201 (The Guardian) – In her last blogpost, published the day she died, Daphne Caruana Galizia signed off with a sentence that seems particularly chilling now.“There are crooks everywhere you look. The situation is desperate.”Caruana Galizia, 53, felt she had good reason to feel pessimistic […]

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