One person is estimated to be dying of hunger every four seconds. 19,700 people are estimated to be dying of hunger every day, which translates to one person dying of hunger every four seconds.

238 organisations from 75 countries – including Oxfam and Save the Children have warned that urging decisive international action is required to “end the spiralling global hunger crisis”.

In an open letter addressing world leaders gathering in New York for the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, they expressed outrage at skyrocketing hunger levels.

“A staggering 345 million people are now experiencing acute hunger, a number that has more than doubled since 2019,” they said.

 “Despite promises from world leaders to never allow famine again in the 21st century, famine is once more imminent in Somalia. Around the world, 50 million people are on the brink of starvation in 45 countries,” they said.

“It is abysmal that with all the technology in agriculture and harvesting techniques today we are still talking about famine in the 21st century,” Mohanna Ahmed Ali Eljabaly from the Yemen Family Care Association said. “This is not about one country or one continent and hunger never only has one cause. This is about the injustice of the whole of humanity.”

According to the organisations, the global hunger crisis has been fuelled by a “deadly mix of poverty, social injustice, gender inequality, conflict, climate change, and economic shocks”, along with the lingering impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which further increased food prices.

Hunger now killing one person every four seconds, NGOs say | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

 They have fought to deny sick days and other vital benefits to workers in the rail freight industry and the safety of workers and communities, meanwhile, has been put in jeopardy by executives who have fired workers and increased hours, train operator executives have been rewarding shareholders with billions of dollars in stock buybacks and dividend bumps.

According to Railroad Operators: Bad for Workers, Good for Investors, a collection of data compiled by the Groundwork Collaborative, a handful of major rail companies reported more than $10 billion in buybacks and dividends over the first six months of 2022.

“Our research shows just how far railroad executives will go to funnel record profits to their shareholders—even if that means stagnant wages, inhumane attendance policies, and throwing our supply chain into further turmoil,” Mike Mitchell, director of policy and research at Groundwork Collaborative, explained.

Groundwork found that Union Pacific is leading the pack in 2022. Rather than using billions of dollars in revenue to improve pay and job conditions, Union Pacific gave $5 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends in the first six months of this year alone. CSX, for instance, funneled nearly $3 billion in buybacks and dividends to investors from January through June, while Canadian National Railway reported $2.3 billion in stock buybacks during the same time period.

Norfolk Southern’s chief financial officer Mark George said on a July call that “shareholder distributions are up and you’ll observe here the 19% higher dividend payments through six months on top of continued strong share repurchase activity.”

Railroads have been enjoying record profits after decades of deregulation, consolidation, and “just-in-time” practices known as “precision railroad scheduling” transformed the industry into what Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, describes as “another monopolized cash cow for Wall Street.”

Union Pacific chief executive officer Lance Fritz told investors on a July call that the company had cut staff by a third since 2018 and said, “We’ve got to do some other unique and creative things with our labor unions in order to make our crews more available and more productive.”

 He also said that Union Pacific is prepared to make further staffing cuts during an economic downturn, asserting that conductor-less trains would be “better for the conductors’ quality of life.”

While Fighting Workers, Railroads Made Over $10 Billion in Stock Buybacks (commondreams.org)

 Save the Children is urgently calling on the international community to ramp up its support to Haiti, to meet the growing needs of vulnerable children and families.

More than 4.9 million people—including 2.2 million children—need assistance, many of them suffering from hunger and malnutrition. 

Widespread poverty, a rising cost of living, extreme levels of violence, low agricultural production, expensive food imports and growing political instability have worsened existing food insecurity in the country.

Chantal Imbeault, Save the Children’s Country Director in Haiti, said, “The situation in the country is increasingly precarious, violence has reached extreme levels. It is very difficult to access water and food, with children being the most affected, suffering from hunger and at risk of losing their lives. There is lack of health services for mothers who are blocked behind barricades. We urge the international community to continue the efforts to assist children and families in Haiti.”

Haiti: More than 2.2 million children in need as violence surges across the country – Haiti | ReliefWeb

 Female protesters have been at the forefront of escalating protests in Iran and have been burning headscarves, after the death in custody of a woman detained for breaking hijab laws. Mahsa Amini died in hospital on Friday after spending three days in a coma. Ms Amini was arrested in the capital last week by Iran’s morality police, accused of breaking the law requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf, and their arms and legs with loose clothing. There were reports that morality police beat Ms Amini’s head with a baton and banged her head against one of their vehicles,

 An estimated 20% of UK adults, or 10.9 million people, are behind on one or more household bill – up by 3 million since March – according to the Money Advice Trust report. This figure was much higher, at 45%, for households that received a means-tested benefit, the debt charity said. High energy price rises had already become unaffordable for millions of people, the charity said. About 10.7 million had seen their energy bills rise by £100 or more a month since April.

 5.6 million have gone without food in the past three months according to new research that reveals Britons are skipping meals “just to keep the lights on”. This included skipping meals, eating once a day or not eating at all on some days.

Joanna Elson, the charity’s chief executive, said, “Many households are already facing impossible choices, such as which meal to skip just to keep the lights on.” 

The charity found that many households had little or no wriggle room left in their budgets to cope with rising prices. It said 41% had already cut all nonessential spending, a figure which was up seven percentage points on its March poll.

The jump in energy costs meant more people were borrowing money to try to make ends meet. The charity estimates that more than 15 million people have had to use credit to pay for essentials – an increase of 2.1 million since March 2022 – while one in 10 have had to borrow money from family or friends.

Britons skipping meals ‘just to keep the lights on’, research reveals | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

Less than 10% of U.S. plastic waste is recycled annually.

 The American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry group is seeking to “change existing law so that plastics incinerators can operate without meeting the environmental and health protections of the Clean Air Act.”

“Removing existing Clean Air Act limitations on burning plastic will allow chemical manufacturers to produce and release these toxic chemicals into our communities without limitation.”

“Under the guise of offering a solution to the global plastic waste crisis, the American Chemistry Council has invented an Orwellian new name for decades-old incineration technologies,” the signers stated. “It seeks to rebrand pyrolysis and gasification incinerators as ‘advanced recycling,’ even though there is nothing advanced about them and nothing gets recycled.” 

“In reality, the plastic trash that enters pyrolysis and gasification incinerators gets burned, creating dioxins and other harmful air pollution. What’s left is toxic chemical waste that gets burned again later at hazardous waste disposal facilities or as a dirty fuel. Far from ‘recycling’ the plastic waste they get paid to accept, gasification and pyrolysis incinerators are turning plastic into highly toxic air pollutants and generating hundreds of thousands of pounds of hazardous waste.”

“Plastic contains hundreds of toxic chemicals, including heavy metals, phthalates, flame retardants, bisphenol A, and PFAS. The process of burning plastic via pyrolysis and gasification generates even more toxic pollution, including chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, and other serious health harms. Emissions include dioxins, benzene, cadmium, arsenic, lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and mercury.”

“Changing the legal definition of incineration or waste so that chemical companies can burn plastic in poor and minority communities without controlling the toxic pollution they emit is environmental injustice at its worst.” 

200+ Groups Decry ‘Orwellian’ Industry-Backed Plastic Burning Push (commondreams.org)

 India is seeing an increase in suicides among daily wage workers, according to the latest report by the National Crime Records Bureau. The report released in August revealed that the share of daily wage workers is the largest among those who die by suicide in India.

Out of 164,033 suicide cases reported in 2021, just over 42,000 suicides, or one in four, were among wage workers.

“Suicide numbers and attempts have risen significantly. The data is reflective of the trend but the numbers are likely to be even more,” Delhi-based psychiatrist Achal Bhagat told DW. “Poverty contributes to mental health problems in multiple ways.” Bhagat, who has studied the issue closely, said many wage workers are uncertain if they will be able to support themselves, and have feelings of feelings of guilt for not living up to the role of being a young man in a patriarchal society. 

Mental health professionals attribute the climb in suicides to factors including joblessness, poverty, debt and inability to cope with cuts in wages.

 “The two most important policies that could make a difference are sustainable livelihoods with social security, and access to mental health and suicide prevention services,” Bhagat said. 

About 450 million of India’s 1.3 billion plus population work in the informal economy. These include wage workers, construction workers, street vendors and landless laborers. Over half of India’s daily wager workers earn just 200-400 rupees a day (€2.5- €5, $2-$5), far below the prescribed minimum wage for unskilled workers. Many workers become indebted and are left vulnerable to exploitation.

The pandemic “led to a severe decline in earnings for the majority of workers resulting in a sudden increase in poverty. Women and younger workers have been disproportionately affected,” a recent study by the Azim Premji University in collaboration with various civil society organizations found. Most daily workers experienced an acute drop in employment, including after November 2020 and in much of early 2021. Sectors such as real estate, construction, infrastructure and urban development took time to restart projects.

“Because of the uncertainty about work and income, they [daily wage workers] had to frequently migrate, have lost safety nets, possess zero savings and are debt-ridden,” Nelson Vinod Moses, founder of the Suicide Prevention India Foundation, explained. “Many have high alcoholism rates, no health insurance, get ill-treated and work in hazardous conditions with injuries,” he added.

Tina Gupta, a psychotherapist who has studied behavioral patterns, cited a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health showing that a $1 increase in the minimum wage is linked to a fall in the suicide rate of between 3.5 and 6% among people with high school education or less. 

“This study points out how low wages are linked to high suicide risk among the vulnerable. Daily wage workers are among the poorest,” she said. “There would be a complex pattern of vulnerabilities like financial stress, lack of social and economic stability, and debt,” she added.

Daily wage workers are most often the primary breadwinners of the family, stated Anjali Nagpal, another psychiatrist in New Delhi.

“Because of their limited academic or vocational skills, if they are terminated or face financial difficulties, they’re not in a condition to adapt by changing their trade or ask for help from their friends, as they are in similar position,” she said. “On top of their work and financial woes, they often struggle with their personal life as being aware of one’s mental health issues isn’t a priority in this stratum,” she pointed out.

But without social and economic safety nets or access to mental health care, many daily wage workers continue to feel trapped.

The key to suicide prevention is “health insurance, debt assistance, social security, access to health care and a public health campaign that shows that civil society cares,” stressed Nelson Vinod Moses of the Suicide Prevention India Foundation.

India sees spike in suicides among wage workers | Asia | An in-depth look at news from across the continent | DW | 18.09.2022

 The series of right-wing attacks in 2008/2009 was the gravest set of crimes committed in Hungary’s recent history.  The perpetrators ambushed their victims, set their homes on fire and then shot them as they sought to escape the flames. Or they killed them in their sleep. In all, the neo-Nazi group killed six people, among them a small child, and injured a further 55, most seriously. The only motivation for their crimes was the fact that their victims were Roma.

The case of Hungary’s Roma murders was never entirely solved. Nevertheless, three perpetrators were handed life sentences in 2014, and an accomplice was given 13 years in prison. Still, despite ample evidence of their guilt — including DNA samples collected at various crime scenes — all of the men involved were unflinching in their claims of innocence. Only one of the four, Arpad Kiss, considered the leader of the group and the main suspect in the case, ever spoke of the crime in public, each time proclaiming his innocence. Now, some 13 years on, out of the blue, he has given a confession. 

But that wasn’t the only statement that made the interview so remarkable. For the first time, Kiss publicly confirmed what most who have followed the case long suspected: accomplices and supporters enabled the murders by providing cash, guns and logistics. In the interview, Kiss referred to two helpers: A local politician from the far-right Jobbik party, and an employee at a gun shop who apparently had access to confidential information from the Interior Ministry through a relative. Kiss did not name names, nor did he offer further information, though he claimed to have provided details on both accomplices to Hungarian investigators back in 2020. But official investigations went nowhere. 

“We were held responsible, but those two went free,” said Kiss.

Although the Roma murders represent a uniquely racist, far-right crime spree, reaction to the interview has been nonexistent. A few media outlets offered short summaries, but neither Orban or his fellow Fidesz politicians have addressed it, nor has anyone from the opposition party. Journalists have also remained silent.

“No political side in Hungary has any interest in completely investigating and solving the Roma murders, that is consensus,” filmmaker and journalist Andras B. Vagvolgyi told DW. Vagvolgyi is one of the few people who know the case inside and out. He attended the trial over the course of years, and published a book on the crimes in 2016. Vagvolgyi is convinced that a fundamental investigation into the case could prove the perpetrators had accomplices in the security and intelligence communities. He said a general lack of will to get to the bottom of the case, as well as a latent antiziganism, are both impeding closure. “Many politicians have told me that people should finally just forget about it,”

Liberal ex-politician Jozsef Gulyas, who together with friends and acquaintances helps survivors of the crimes, agrees. “Sadly, hardly anyone is still interested in the case. The victims are all but forgotten,” he told DW. Gulyas was a member of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security that investigated the case back in 2009 and 2010. “In light of Arpad Kiss’ public statements,” said Gulyas, “the most important thing now would be to open a new investigation and demand intelligence agencies turn over whatever information they have on the case.”  

Istvan Csontos, an informant for the Hungarian military’s KBH security office, also happened to be the getaway driver in the last two attacks. He reportedly informed his contact at the KBH of his role, but that information is said to have not been passed on. 

Hungary: Shocking confession in Roma murder case garners zero interest | Europe | News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 17.09.2022

 The label “foreign agent” has been applied by the Russian government to various media organisations, campaign groups and individuals openly critical of Kremlin policies.

One of Russia’s most popular singers, Alla Pugacheva, has called on the Russian authorities to declare her a “foreign agent”, in solidarity with her strongly anti-war husband Maxim Galkin. She has been a big star for decades. She is a hugely popular and well-respected artist.

 Protests have broken out at the funeral of a woman who died after being arrested by Iran’s morality police. The funeral took place in Ms Amini’s hometown, Saqez, in the western province of Kurdistan.