Word: migrants
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...Although nobody starves in Burma, poverty and malnutrition exist and are by some accounts increasing. Outside Mandalay, I visited the families of migrant workers who live in squalid lean-tos on the wide, refuse-strewn banks of the Irrawaddy River. They labor for subsistence wages, shoveling sand from dredging boats or hauling illegal timber. Often there's not enough work to go around, and sometimes?for example, when the dredgers run out of fuel?there's none at all. Sickness is everywhere. "I have a husband and three children," said a woman dressed in rags...
...District Six, a once mixed-race suburb near the city center where residents forcibly removed in the 1960s are only now finally returning. There's also Langa, the city's oldest black township, where tourists can visit the ghetto hostels set up by the apartheid government to house migrant workers, and Khayelitsha, Cape Town 's largest settlement, now with its own vibrant unofficial economy for everything from clothes to cars. The complete tour costs $45. If you want to stay overnight, Khayelitsha resident Vicki Balman runs a guesthouse from her shanty home. Bed and breakfast costs $25 per person...
Last April, China's Southern Metropolis Daily printed a story about Sun Zhigang, a migrant worker in Guangzhou beaten to death in official custody after being detained by police for not carrying ID. The story touched off a wave of public outrage that reached Beijing: in June, Premier Wen Jiabao led a Cabinet vote that proscribed the detention of migrants simply for straying far from their hometowns. The next morning, the paper editorialized: "This is a milestone in the history of citizens' rights that we should cherish forever...
...cooking with gas. Forget Cate, Nicole or any of the other expected hopefuls - Harvek Milos Krumpetzki, an eccentric Polish migrant with pallid skin and ears protruding like Duchamp urinals, is Australia's unlikeliest Oscar contender. Last month the fictional Krumpet's life epic, from his Polish pine-forest birth before World War II to his Alzheimer's fug in a Melbourne retirement village, garnered his Claymation creator a nod for Best Short Film (Animated) at next week's Academy Awards ceremony. Up against toon titans Pixar, Disney and Blue Sky, Elliot and his tragicomic creation, who endures Tourette's syndrome...
...Summit of the Americas in Monterrey. The rich industrial city sits in Mexico's cowboy north, a favorite backdrop for Fox and his conservative National Action Party (pan). Mexicans now wonder if Fox's immigration win - which may grant temporary U.S. legal status to millions of Mexican migrant workers - can help him revive other reforms, from tax policies to the judicial system. Fox started his presidency with an amazing 80% approval rating. And he has scored some important wins - Mexico's first serious crackdown on drug lords and the opening to public scrutiny of its corrupt and cryptic bureaucracy...