Agnes Odhiambo – Good News for Child Protection in Malawi

Malawi has made a commitment to amend its conflicting laws on the definition of a child, a move that will help in the fight against child marriage. Malawi’s constitution and the Child Care, Protection and Justice Act define a child as a person below 16 years. But Malawi is also party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child …

Birgit Schwarz – Unregulated Promotion of Mining in Malawi Brings Hazards and Hardships

Nagomba E. is no longer young; her hip is giving her trouble and her back is stooped from years of bending over her corn and rice fields. Yet every morning, at the crack of dawn, the wiry 74-year-old sets out on a strenuous half-hour walk to fetch water from a nearby river so that her ailing husband can take a …

Barry Grey – IMF downgrades growth projections, warns of “synchronized slowdown”

The International Monetary Fund’s “World Economic Outlook” (WEO), released Tuesday in advance of this week’s semiannual meetings in Washington of the IMF and World Bank, gives a gloomy and fraught estimate of the state of the world economy, nearly eight years after the 2008 financial meltdown. The IMF has again downwardly revised its projection for global growth, the fourth straight …

Jefferey Jaxen – Getting Yearly Flu Shots Decreases Effectiveness, Increases Adverse Event Risks

There is evidence indicating that getting flu shots year after year could actually lower your immune system’s effectiveness. Recently, Dr. Edward Belongia of Wisconsin’s Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation discussed findings that children who had been vaccinated annually over a number of years were more likely to contract the flu than kids who were only vaccinated in the season in which …

Paul Buchheit – Great Embarrassments of an Unequal Society

America has experienced “gush-up” rather than “trickle-down.” The shame is on the adherents of unregulated free-market capitalism, who have assaulted us with the message of “winner-take-all” wealth over the common good. George Will perpetuates the neoliberal myth by quoting one of his idols, John Tamny: “Income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful…it provides the incentive for creative people to …