By Bianca Padró Ocasio29 March 2019 (Orlando Sentinel) – Luis Angel Santos Baez was rummaging in his apartment complex’s dumpster in the early days of January 2018 when he found what seemed like a gift from God: a plastic storage cart that held several bags filled with unused notebooks and other arts-and-crafts supplies. Santos Baez, […]
2 May 2019 (Desdemona Despair) – Everybody knows the “American Dream” of upward class mobility is a shining artifact of the past, to borrow the words of Leonard Cohen. But how fast is the dream dying? Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights project seeks to answer this question and hopes to prescribe remedies. They’ve collected a great […]
28 April 2019 (BBC News) – The situation in northern Mozambique is worse than thought, a UN spokesman says, days after Cyclone Kenneth ravaged the country. The system struck the Africa nation on Thursday with winds of 220km/h (140mph) which flattened whole villages. Around 700,000 people are now thought to be at risk in the […]
By Matthew Cappucci 22 April 2019 (The Washington Post) – Vietnam broke its national high temperature record Saturday, the latest in a mounting list of records to fall as the world continues to warm. The scorcher set the mercury thermometer soaring to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.4 Celsius) in the community of Huong Khe, a rural district in […]
By Julie Ray 25 April 2019 WASHINGTON, D.C. (Gallup) – Even as their economy roared, more Americans were stressed, angry, and worried last year than they have been at most points during the past decade. Asked about their feelings the previous day, the majority of Americans (55%) in 2018 said they had experienced stress during […]
By Bob Henson 25 April 2019 (Weather Underground) – Tropical Cyclone Kenneth slammed onto the coast of far northern Mozambique around 4 pm Thursday afternoon local time (10:15 am EDT) as a potentially catastrophic Category 4 storm. Just before landfall, at 12Z (8 am EDT), Kenneth’s top sustained winds were pegged at 120 knots (140 mph)—solidly […]
By Oliver Milman 15 April 2019 SELMA, Alabama (The Guardian) – West Jefferson, Alabama, a somnolent town of around 420 people north-west of Birmingham, was an unlikely venue to seize the national imagination. Now, it has the misfortune to be forever associated with the “poop train”. David Brasfield, a retired coalminer who has lived in […]
By Emma Rumney; Editing by Hugh Lawson 15 April 2019 JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – One month after Cyclone Idai tore through southern Africa bringing devastating floods, aid agencies say the situation remains critical with some communities in worst-hit Mozambique only just being reached with aid. The storm made landfall in Mozambique on 14 March 2019, flattening […]
10 April 2019 (OECD) – Governments need to do more to support middle-class households who are struggling to maintain their economic weight and lifestyles as their stagnating incomes fail to keep up with the rising costs of housing and education, according to a new OECD report. Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class says that the […]
By Erica Werner and Jeff Stein 29 March 2019 (The Washington Post) – President Trump’s opposition to aid for Puerto Rico has sparked a partisan standoff over a major disaster bill covering much of the United States, threatening to derail the legislation when it faces a critical Senate vote Monday. The stalemate has caused days […]
