For most of her life, the young Afghan woman was fleeing war. But everywhere she went it stalked her.
"She was very quiet and shy, and you could barely hear her speak," said Ashley Jackson of Oxfam. "When the civil war began in the early 1990s, she left Kabul and went to the border. But her son was killed by a rocket attack.
"She went to Pakistan and lived in a refugee settlement, and her daughter was taken by a man who wanted her. When the Taliban fell and the family finally got back to Kabul, her husband was killed.
Big news came on Friday, when the USDA announced that Deputy
Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan would lead the United States
delegation to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United
Nations Ministerial Conference in Rome, Italy, taking place this week
from November 18-23. She will chair the conference, the first time a
woman has done so. In the press release, Merrigan had this to say:
UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will join a
24-hour fast called by the U.N. food chief to show solidarity with the
world's 1 billion hungry ahead of a food security summit next week, a
spokeswoman said on Friday.
U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General
Jacques Diouf said on Wednesday he would not eat for 24 hours starting
Saturday morning, and called on people around the world to follow suit.
Armistice Day reminds us that when wars end, the winners and losers are
supposed to make peace. For the first time, in 2009, leaders of World
War II enemies, Germany and France, commemorated the date together as a
sign of new mutual respect. But this week also marked the ten-year
anniversary of a different kind of war -- a war on Americans' assets
and the poor. Ten years later, while the winners and losers are
obvious, there's no armistice in sight.
Thanksgiving is around the corner, and
families will be gathering to share a meal and, perhaps, enjoy another
annual telecast of "The Wizard of Oz." The 70-year-old film classic
bears close watching this year, perhaps more than in any other, for the
message woven into the lyrics, written during the Great Depression by
Oscar-winning lyricist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg. There's more to the
Scarecrow and the Tin Man than meets the eye, and Harburg's message has
renewed resonance today in the midst of the greatest financial collapse
since the Depression.
Until the summer of 2008,
Orlande Noel supported his family of eight by operating a trucking business in Gonaives, Haiti,
a town of around two hundred thousand people.
Then four huge tropical
storms and hurricanes slammed into Haiti in 30 days. Massive mudslides and flooding roared down
the deforested mountains into Gonaives. Tens of thousands of homes were destroyed and
people were trapped on rooftops for days.
Tearyan Brown became a father when he was
16. He did what a lot of inner-city kids desperate to make money do. He
sold drugs. He was arrested and sent to jail three years later for
dealing marijuana and PCP on the streets of Trenton, N.J., mostly to
white kids driving in from the suburbs. It was a job which saw him
robbed at gunpoint and stabbed in the chest. But it made him about
$1,400 a week.
"You don't have to do this." Those are the near-last words of several victims in the Coen brothers' classic film No Country for Old Men,
as they try to convince the movie's unrelenting assassin that he should
spare them. The assassin, played by Javier Bardem, finds this annoying,
because in his mind these murders are pre-determined.
Almost a year after Hurricane Hanna slammed into Haiti, the memory stops her cold.
Gracieuse Marius, a nurse, had huddled inside until the floodwaters subsided in the city of Gonaives, then she raced into the streets to find someone to save. Instead, she was confronted with silence: Cars, trees, and dead animals floated in the water. She still cannot bring herself to talk about the children.
NEW DELHI - One recent morning, as she'd done most days over the past 20 years, Fatima Begum left her hovel in a slum tucked in the corner of this city's diplomatic enclave and shuffled to a nearby dumpster to begin her work day.
As Begum began to root through refuse, searching for bottles, old light bulbs, and anything else that might be recyclable, someone punched the 65-year-old in the back of the head. She collapsed. Her attacker continued to punch and kick her.
