Wow!: Scrap by scrap, New York designer creates fashion from waste

ELLEN WULFHORST, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on how Daniel Silverstein is taking a more sustainable approach to fashion…
North Korea enhanced nuclear, missile programs in 2019 in breach of sanctions – UN report

Reuters North Korea continued to enhance its nuclear and ballistic missile programs last year in breach of United Nations sanctions, according to a confidential UN report seen by Reuters on Monday. The country also illicitly imported refined petroleum and exported some $US370 million worth of coal with the help of Chinese barges, the report added. […]
Smart drones to be tested in battle against East African locust swarms

Nairobi, Kenya Thomson Reuters Foundation The United Nations is to test drones equipped with mapping sensors and atomisers to spray pesticides in parts of east Africa battling an invasion of desert locusts that are ravaging crops and exacerbating a hunger crisis. Hundreds of millions of the voracious insects have swept across Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya […]
GOD’S HOSTAGE

For February and March, 2020 – we’re reading American Andrew Brunson’s account of his arrest and imprisonment in Turkey, God’s Hostage: A True Story of Persecution, Imprisonment, and Perseverance.
‘Parasite’ from South Korea makes Oscar history with best picture win

Los Angeles Reuters South Korean social satire Parasite won the Oscar for best picture on Sunday, making history as the first film not in the English language to win the movie industry’s highest honour. Parasite, about the gap between rich and poor in modern Seoul, won a total of four Oscars, including best director and […]
Bangkok court halts river promenade project that would worsen flooding

Bangkok, Thailand Thomson Reuters Foundation A court in Bangkok has asked the city’s authorities to stop work on a riverside promenade that urban planners and environmentalists said would worsen flooding and uproot hundreds of families dependent on the river to make a living. The administrative court last Wednesday told the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration that the […]
Updated: “Enemy of mankind”: Coronavirus deaths top SARS as China returns to work

Updated 12pm Shanghai/Beijing, China Reuters The death toll from a coronavirus outbreak in mainland China rose to 908 as of the end of Sunday, the National Health Commission said on Monday. The number of new deaths on Sunday rose 97, the NHC said in a statement on its website, another daily record increase. Passengers wearing […]
SOUTH AMERICA: IN PERU’S HIGHLANDS, STUDENT RADIO SHOW SOUNDS ALARM ON TRAFFICKING

ANASTASIA MOLONEY, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports from southern Peru…
Essay: National Prayer Breakfast was a moment for leaders to show humility – Trump changed it

In an article first published on The Conversation, DIANE WINSTON, associate professor and Knight Center chair in Media & Religion at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, looks at the history of the National Prayer Breakfast in the US – and Donald Trump’s contributions…
Who is Indigenous? Millions may be denied land in India’s Assam over definition

Guwahati, India Thomson Reuters Foundation Millions of migrants and tribal people in India’s north-eastern Assam state could be denied land because of a new definition of the term “Indigenous”, land and human rights experts said. Assam has a long-simmering movement against immigrants and its 2019 land policy, aimed at overhauling a three-decade old land law, […]