The numbers leaving Honduras are rising as the country grapples with the economic fallout of the pandemic, the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost of living crisis, as well as the more entrenched issues of gang violence, poverty and climate change. It’s impossible to know how many people leave Honduras. One estimate is that every year, 130,000-150,000 people try to reach the USA.

The route to the US is full of danger, and migrants are “extremely vulnerable”. Some perish from exposure to the elements in the desert that lies along the Mexico-US border; others are killed in road accidents or die grisly deaths on “the beast” – a freight train that traverses Mexico; some are detained by authorities; and some, like Rosa and her daughter, fall victim to criminal gangs in Mexico, who view migrants as a business opportunity.

“There are multiple factors here in Honduras that force people to migrate,” says Rolando Sierra, director of the faculty of social sciences at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. “Honduras has a high percentage of the population living in poverty without opportunities for employment. And, if levels of violence, corruption and impunity don’t reduce, then neither will migration.”

The International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project documented that between January 2014 and March 2022 at least 6,141 people died or disappeared along migratory routes on the American continent. Between 2007 and 2021, the Jesuit Migrant Service attended to 1,280 cases of missing migrants in Mexico, of which 71% were from Central America. In Mexico, where many go missing, there is a forensic crisis, with more than 52,000 unidentified bodies lying in mass graves, forensic service facilities, universities and forensic storage centres.

 In Honduras alone there are 3,500 people listed as missing.

Sierra adds: “In Honduras, there are no policies in place to deal with irregular migration. There are no specialised services to investigate what has happened to people who disappear or to support their relatives.”

There is no central database of missing people, which “invisibilises the phenomenon”, according to Jérémy Renaux, coordinator for the programme of disappeared people at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Families face obstacles in reporting cases, and then receive no help.

Eva Ramirez, who founded the Comité de familiares de migrantes desaparecidos Amor y Fe, a group of people with missing relatives, explains, “People don’t leave the country because they want to. They leave because they have to. We live in a country that expels people through extreme poverty and a lack of opportunities, and violence, among many other factors.”

‘Sell your organs to raise the ransom’: the Hondurans risking kidnap and death to reach the US | Global development | The Guardian

 Emily Maitlis, the former Newsnight presenter highlighted the role of Sir Robbie Gibb, who previously worked as Theresa May’s director of communications and helped to found the rightwing GB News channel. She described him as an “active agent of the Conservative party” who is shaping the broadcaster’s news output. Gibb was appointed to the BBC’s board by Boris Johnson’s government.

 Maitlis said the BBC often slipped into a “both-sides-ism” approach to impartiality that gave a platform to individuals that did not deserve airtime.

She also said attacks on the media can cause journalists to “censor our own interviews to avoid the backlash.”

Despite queues at the British border and economic issues piling up, such outlets are still reluctant to discuss the impact of Brexit “in case they get labelled pessimistic, anti-populist, or worse still, as above: unpatriotic”.

Maitlis warned that the traditional media is becoming increasingly afraid to stand up for itself in an era where “facts are getting lost, constitutional norms trashed, claims frequently unchallenged”.

She explained,  “And yet every day that we sidestep these issues with glaring omissions feels like a conspiracy against the British people; we are pushing the public further away. Why should our viewers, our listeners, come to us to interpret and explain what is going on when they can see our own reluctance to do so?”  

While journalists do not have to be campaigners they should avoid being “complaisant, complicit onlookers”.

Emily Maitlis says ‘active Tory party agent’ shaping BBC news output | BBC | The Guardian

 Emily Maitlis, the former Newsnight presenter highlighted the role of Sir Robbie Gibb, who previously worked as Theresa May’s director of communications and helped to found the rightwing GB News channel. She described him as an “active agent of the Conservative party” who is shaping the broadcaster’s news output. Gibb was appointed to the BBC’s board by Boris Johnson’s government.

 Maitlis said the BBC often slipped into a “both-sides-ism” approach to impartiality that gave a platform to individuals that did not deserve airtime.

She also said attacks on the media can cause journalists to “censor our own interviews to avoid the backlash.”

Despite queues at the British border and economic issues piling up, such outlets are still reluctant to discuss the impact of Brexit “in case they get labelled pessimistic, anti-populist, or worse still, as above: unpatriotic”.

Maitlis warned that the traditional media is becoming increasingly afraid to stand up for itself in an era where “facts are getting lost, constitutional norms trashed, claims frequently unchallenged”.

She explained,  “And yet every day that we sidestep these issues with glaring omissions feels like a conspiracy against the British people; we are pushing the public further away. Why should our viewers, our listeners, come to us to interpret and explain what is going on when they can see our own reluctance to do so?”  

While journalists do not have to be campaigners they should avoid being “complaisant, complicit onlookers”.

Emily Maitlis says ‘active Tory party agent’ shaping BBC news output | BBC | The Guardian

 Emily Maitlis, the former Newsnight presenter highlighted the role of Sir Robbie Gibb, who previously worked as Theresa May’s director of communications and helped to found the rightwing GB News channel. She described him as an “active agent of the Conservative party” who is shaping the broadcaster’s news output. Gibb was appointed to the BBC’s board by Boris Johnson’s government.

 Maitlis said the BBC often slipped into a “both-sides-ism” approach to impartiality that gave a platform to individuals that did not deserve airtime.

She also said attacks on the media can cause journalists to “censor our own interviews to avoid the backlash.”

Despite queues at the British border and economic issues piling up, such outlets are still reluctant to discuss the impact of Brexit “in case they get labelled pessimistic, anti-populist, or worse still, as above: unpatriotic”.

Maitlis warned that the traditional media is becoming increasingly afraid to stand up for itself in an era where “facts are getting lost, constitutional norms trashed, claims frequently unchallenged”.

She explained,  “And yet every day that we sidestep these issues with glaring omissions feels like a conspiracy against the British people; we are pushing the public further away. Why should our viewers, our listeners, come to us to interpret and explain what is going on when they can see our own reluctance to do so?”  

While journalists do not have to be campaigners they should avoid being “complaisant, complicit onlookers”.

Emily Maitlis says ‘active Tory party agent’ shaping BBC news output | BBC | The Guardian

 Fertility rates have “declined markedly” in the past six decades says the OECD – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. But the trend has been particularly pronounced in South Korea, where family sizes have reduced in the span of a few generations. 

At the start of the 1970s women had four children on average but South Korea has again recorded the world’s lowest fertility rate with the number sinking to a new low.

  Four-year-old Yasmin, a Rohingya, has lived a life of uncertainty, unsure where she belongs. Born in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, living in India’s Delhi she is unable to return to t family home in her ancestral village in Myanmar.

  Empty office space in London is estimated at roughly 2.88m sq metres (31m sq ft).

 That’s about 2.88 sq km (712 acres), and it’s 50% more than the mere 1.8m sq metres available in the capital in 2019.

British workers are at breaking point, with anger over the cost of living crisis reaching a level not seen since the poll tax riots of the 1990s, Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, said. The frustration at pay failing to keep pace with soaring inflation was spilling over into a wave of strike action that would extend from a summer of discontent into the winter. Graham said a groundswell of unhappiness over living standards was sweeping the country.

She was speaking from the picket line outside the port of Felixstowe, where thousands of dock workers are striking over pay this week, and compared the situation to widespread national anger over Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax, more than three decades ago. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in towns and cities around Britain in March 1990, in a rebellion that culminated in clashes with mounted police in Trafalgar Square, central London. It was regarded as a key event in bringing about the end of Thatcher. 

Asked whether she felt the country was facing a moment with clear parallels to unrest over the poll tax, she added: “I think we could be, without a shadow of a doubt. I actually think there is a moment where people could rise to doing exactly the same thing again,” Graham stated.

Dismissing speculation that union leaders are coordinating industrial action to exert maximum pressure on employers and the government, Graham pointed out that, “It’s the other way around. There is a coordination of workers, who are saying: ‘I’m not taking this any more’. That is happening organically, which is what happened with the poll tax. Yes, there are leaders of things. But collectives make change, not individuals.”

Workers’ anger at cost of living as strong as time of poll tax riots, union boss says | Industrial action | The Guardian

 Emmanuel Macron has warned the French they are facing sacrifices.

Macron said France and the French felt they were living through a series of crises, “each worse than the last”.

“What we are currently living through is a kind of major tipping point or a great upheaval … we are living the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance … the end of the abundance of products of technologies that seemed always available … the end of the abundance of land and materials including water.” 

“This overview that I’m giving, the end of abundance, the end of insouciance, the end of assumptions – it’s ultimately a tipping point that we are going through that can lead our citizens to feel a lot of anxiety. Faced with this, we have a duty, duties, the first of which is to speak frankly and clearly without doom-mongering,” he said.

Philippe Martinez, the secretary general of the powerful CGT union, said Macron’s comments were “misplaced” and that many in France had never known abundance.

“When we talk about the end of abundance, I think of the millions of unemployed, the millions of those in a precarious situation. For many French people, times are already hard, sacrifices have already been made,” Martinez said.

The leader of the French Communist party, Fabien Roussel, a presidential candidate earlier this year, expressed astonishment at Macron’s speech. “Unbelievable! It’s as if the French have had no worries and been over-indulging themselves. We have 10 million poor in France because of President Macron’s carelessness and the predatory behaviour of the rich,” Roussel tweeted.

Macron’s speech came as it was revealed that the dividends paid out by major French companies reached a record €44bn in the second quarter of 2022, as a result of what was described as exceptional profits in 2021. The dividend payout was almost 33% up on the previous year.

Macron warns of ‘end of abundance’ as France faces difficult winter | France | The Guardian