Racial disparities in health

A new study that examines health care in West Virginia finds that disparities along races exist in health factors. Health Care For America Now says that amongst African-Americans more people with diabetes and more babies die than those with from other races. The study also has data that shows that rates of poverty are higher with ethnic minorities.

Instead of grabbing a snippet that has people talking about the possible causes, we decided to grab more stats for this post. From the Charleston Daily Mail reporter Michelle Saxton dives deeper into the report.

# West Virginia's infant mortality rate for black babies from 2003 to 2005 was 12 out of 1,000 live births, which is 60 percent higher than the 7.5 figure for white babies, the report shows.

# The life expectancy for a black person is six to 10 years shorter than that of a white person.

# The diabetes mortality rate for blacks is 85.3 deaths per 100,000 people compared to 33.3 for whites.

# The rate of annual AIDS cases for blacks is 41.8 per 100,000 compared to 3.7 for whites.

# About 32 percent of blacks live in poverty compared to 19 percent of whites.

# About 32 percent of blacks are enrolled in Medicaid compared to 17 percent of whites.

Microcredit for women in Rwanda

A microcredit effort operated by Rwanda's central bank focuses on making loans to women. Rwandan women who want to start up coffee shops, stores or agriculture business can apply at the countries banks for the loans.

The program started in early July and already some government officials say the selection process is not strict enough. With access to small loans being new in the country, some women do not have a business plan for how to repay the loan. The central bank says they will begin an education program for women to combat the problem.

For a further description on the new microcredit operation in Rwanda we turn to this snippet from IPS reporter Aimable Twahirwa.

The Rwanda central bank has established a mechanism of micro loans for all financial institutions that lend to female entrepreneurs. Loans for projects declared viable are against collateral guarantees, to be paid back over a long period.

Since the establishment of this new credit scheme early this year, at least 6,568 women have received assistance for micro- and small enterprises from the government, international donors and NGOs worth 890,000 U.S. dollars, according to the central bank.

According to Kanimba, many of these are associations that own both coffee farms and shops, for instance, in a new initiative to finance the reduction of poverty.

The associations "served as (one of) the main tools to address the multiple causes of poverty, unemployment and social exclusion especially in rural areas," minister Mujawamariya remarked. "Slowly but surely, the lives of rural women are changing following the new credit scheme," she told IPS.

But businesswoman Solange Uwimbabazi, who runs a shop at Nyabugogo market near Kigali city, insists that it is quite difficult for poor women to access credit in a situation where the process of allocation of loans by banks is far from transparent.

"There is discrimination," the entrepreneur, a mother of five, observes. "Some groups of women are excluded to benefit from loans. The wealthiest groups are considered the most," she adds.

A profile of a Poco drug user

A new drug named Poco is giving people in Buenos Aries, Argentina an escape from poverty. The use of Poco has flourished in a poor neighborhood just outside of the city, giving it's users an intense but short high. Many who give up on their hopes of providing for themselves or family turn to the drug for an escape.

Accompanying his story in the New York Times, reporter Alexel Barrionuevo has this video profiling on of Poco's users. An update on how he is doing follows the jump.



The story picks up on Mr. Eche reentry into rehab.

Mr. Eche was wasting away before his mother’s eyes in late May when the police picked him up for suspected paco possession. Mrs. Acuña intervened and got a judge to drop the criminal case on the condition that she would check him into yet another psychiatric hospital.

On June 14, Mr. Eche’s birthday, the family surprised him at the hospital. They ate cake on a patio with an unexpected visitor — Mr. Eche’s son, Enzo, 5, who was granted special permission to enter the hospital. Mr. Eche began crying when Enzo ran into his arms, Mrs. Acuña said.

She is thankful for small blessings. With swine flu raging through Buenos Aires, Mr. Eche’s stay at the hospital has kept him from sleeping on the streets and being at greater risk of catching the virus, she said.

In another month, Mr. Eche will have to leave the hospital. His mother said she hoped to get him into yet another treatment center, this one run by a church. “I have to have faith that he will recover,” she said. “I will raise my hopes yet again.”

Beyond the police raids, Mrs. Acuña said, politicians need to get to the root of what is causing paco’s spread. Oculta’s residents are starving for jobs with decent salaries to help break the cycle of hopelessness that is creating whole families of paco addicts and dealers, she said.

She and her husband said they hoped to find the money to turn the upper floor of their diner into an integrated drug-prevention center employing psychologists and professional counselors.

Ultimately, only Oculta can save itself, Mrs. Acuña said.

New report says 3 million Italians are in poverty

A new study says that three million people in Italy live in absolute poverty. The statistics service ISTAT defines absolute poverty as having less than what is deemed essential for life.

From this Agence France-Presse story that we found at News.Com.Au, we read more stats from the survey.

Absolute poverty is defined by the "incapacity to acquire goods and services necessary to attain a lifestyle held as the minimum acceptable,'' which means everything from food, clothing and education to medical care or entertainment.

The number of families falling below Italy's poverty line is 1.126 million, the institute's report said, 2.893 million individuals or 4.6 per cent of the population, although the numbers are broadly in line with 2007 figures.

In the southern Mezzogiorno region, the rate has shot up from 5.8 per cent to 7.9 per cent in the new annual results.

New initiative to help the poor in the San Francisco Bay area

A San Francisco Bay area charity has announced more money to go into programs to help the poor in the are. The Marin Community Foundation announced a five year, 15 million dollar funding for various programs. Programs include a savings program that will match the money people save. Other programs include job training skills and micro-enterprise start-ups.

From the Marin Independent Journal, reporter Richard Halstead talks to the foundation about the efforts.

"Through this new initiative," said foundation President Thomas Peters, "we'll fund efforts to help people learn new job skills, understand personal finances, benefit from financial services that meet their needs, receive support to start their own business and avoid economic crises."

Peters said Marin's high cost of living makes it difficult for the working poor to move out of poverty. According to the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services, there are nearly 23,000 families in Marin who have trouble covering such basic needs as housing, food and health care.

"A parent with two children needs an annual income of $68,000 to be regarded as fully self-sufficient," Peter said. "But since that would require the earnings equivalent of working four minimum-wage jobs, many Marin families can't reach that goal."

Peters said the foundation will spend about $3 million per year on the effort. It has already awarded $600,000 in grants to two San Francisco-based nonprofits.

Earned Assets Resource Network, which helps low-income families establish savings accounts by matching families' personal contributions with philanthropic and federal government funds, will receive a one-year, $350,000 grant from the foundation, Peters said.

Women's Initiative for Self Employment, which provides low-income women with training and ongoing support to start their own businesses, will receive a one-year $250,000 grant. WISE has a Novato training office.

"These are the kinds of efforts that help families become more stable and economically secure for the long term," Peters said.

IMF to increase lending, $14 billion through 2014

The International Monetary Fund says it will begin to increase lending to poor nations. The fund says that the world has higher financing needs due to the global recession, and the sharp rises in food and fuel prices that preceded the recession.

From this Associated Press story that we found at the Lexington Herald Leader, writer Harry Dunphy gives us more of the IMF's statement.

The IMF said it expected to provide up to $17 billion to these countries through 2014, including up to $8 billion over the next two years. In addition, the fund said low income countries would not have to pay interest on any outstanding IMF loans through 2011.

The resources to increase lending will come in part from the sale of IMF gold, the fund said.

"This is an unprecedented scaling up of IMF support for the poorest countries, in sub-Saharan Africa and all over the world," said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF.

He said the G-20 countries at their April meeting asked the IMF to respond to the global financial crisis, which has hit low income countries so hard "and we are responding with a historic set of actions in terms of support for the world's poor."

The $8 billion over the next two years exceeds the G-20 call for $6 billion in new lending to low income countries.

Strauss-Kahn said the new resources the fund was providing and new means of delivering them "should help millions of people from falling into poverty."

A new method of treating tuberculosis in South Africa

A new program started by Medecins Sans Frontieres is helping to make the treatment of tuberculosis easier on it's patients. In South Africa, those sick with TB were effectively quarantined in hospitals to prevent the spread of the virus, but once people realized that they would be locked up for a long time many did not come forward for treatment. The MSF program treats the people in their homes, but they must promise not to leave the homes.

From the New York Times, reporter Celia Dugger explains the new treatment further.

Under South Africa’s current policy, Ms. Vani would normally have been whisked away to a hospital after tuberculosis was diagnosed and isolated from the public for a grueling regimen of toxic, hard-to-tolerate pills and injections, lasting months.

In the neighboring Eastern Cape Province, patients have effectively been imprisoned in a hospital encircled by fences topped with razor wire, and dozens of them have escaped in desperate bids to reunite with their families. Both the Eastern Cape and Western Cape Provinces have sought court orders to compel the return of runaways.

But in this case, Ms. Vani is being treated in a local clinic and lives at home under a pilot program run by Doctors Without Borders and supported by both the city of Cape Town and Western Cape Province. The idea is to show that such patients can be successfully treated in an impoverished community like Khayelitsha even while they are still infectious.

For Ms. Vani to continue in the program, Ms. Beko had to ensure that the young woman could live at home during her treatment with minimal risk of infecting others. Tuberculosis spreads through the air when patients cough and sneeze, and the germs could get trapped in the tiny room where Ms. Vani lives alone.

“They may send you to the hospital, as there are no windows in the house,” Ms. Beko said with a doubtful shake of her head.

Ms. Vani, eager to avoid a long-term hospitalization, promised that she would remain alone in the house and only see friends outside in the open air. “I already told my boyfriend it would not be good for him to sleep over,” she said through a paper mask that covered her mouth.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis is a mounting global health threat. The World Health Organization reported the highest rates of it ever last year. Some 500,000 of the 9 million new cases of tuberculosis in 2007, the most recent estimates, failed to respond to the standard, inexpensive first-line drugs. About 150,000 people died of drug-resistant TB.

Video: Yes, even China needs microcredit

China has experienced great economic growth in recent years, but the growth has largely been concentrated in the cities. Rural China has experienced little if any of the economic growth. So, yes there is a need for microcredit in the country.

Two young entrepreneurs have started a microcredit venture to provide loans to the 200 million in China who are still in poverty. Wokai or "I Start" has a website that features peer-to-peer lending similar to Kiva.

From MSNBC, reporter Ed Flanagan tells us more about microcredit venture. A video with one it's founders is featured after the jump.

Founded eight months ago by 25-year-olds, Casey Wilson and Courtney McColgan, Wokai is the convergence of the pair’s shared interest in economic development and China. The pair, who met in a Chinese language program at Beijing’s Tsinghua University in 2006, created a microfinance program to help provide assistance to some of China’s estimated 228 million people who have no access to basic financial services.

Wilson and McColgan created a Web site that they’ve coined "Facebook for Farmers" – it features many of the core characteristics of Web 2.0: social networking, blogging and interactive media.

Functioning similarly to the one of the more established microfinance sites, Kiva.org, Wokai’s online system of peer-to-peer loans allows potential lenders to scan the profiles of pre-screened rural Chinese borrowers and decide for themselves who they want to loan money to.

The loans are small – the average loans is around $300 – and are mostly used by farmers to invest in simple business improvements such as adding additional livestock or buying new products for dry goods stores.

To attract loans and help develop the organization, Wokai has enlisted an army of young volunteers both in the United States and China. They have assisted in everything from website development to working directly with field partners in China to screen potential borrowers. Meanwhile, member chapters in San Francisco, Seattle and New York help drive awareness and donations through localized fund raising events.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Flaws in data make in hard to have Kids Count

As a part of the Annie E. Casey's 2009 Kids Count Report, the Foundation included a special report that talked about the lack of good poverty data. The report pointed to an outdated measurement of poverty that our government still uses that hasn't been updated since the 1960's. The Foundation says that the lack of good data hurts the cause of helping vulnerable children in the states.

From this Associated Press article that we found at Google News, reporter David Crary talked to the Casey Foundation Senior Vice President, Patrick McCarthy.

In its special report on national data, the Casey Foundation said "perhaps the single most glaring shortfall comes in our efforts to measure poverty, the key performance indicator that rises above all others in its impact on children's futures."

The poverty formula still used by the federal government, which Casey called "thoroughly outdated," was developed in the 1960s. It calculates the cost of a basic grocery budget for a given family size and multiplies the total by three because food, in the '60s, represented one-third of a typical family budget.

The formula has not been recalculated since then even though, according to Casey, food now accounts for only about one-seventh of a typical family's budget.

The formula takes no account of child care, transportation, health insurance, and certain government benefits such as food stamps and housing vouchers. Also — except for Alaska and Hawaii — it does not reflect regional differences in the cost of living.

McCarthy said the National Academy of Sciences has developed some recommendations for a new formula that would take many of these additional factors into consideration, and a bill reflecting the proposals has been introduced in Congress.

Skeptics in various camps worry that any changes might cause harm by either increasing or decreasing the number of families officially defined as poor, said McCarthy. "But the reality is, we need an accurate count."

The poverty measure — used to determine eligibility for various benefits — has been a source of concern to many advocacy groups over the years.

Kinsey Dinan, a senior policy associate with the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, said the current system potentially disadvantages families that don't receive substantial government assistance and those living in areas with high living costs.

Search continues for Haitian immigrants from boat wreckage

The search continues today for the Haitian immigrants who fled to the U.S. but didn't make it. The boat filled with over 200 passengers ran into a reef just off the coast of the Turks and Caicos Islands, the waves broke the ship a part.

So far 80 people are missing, The U.S. Coast Guard is going to continue to look, but says that the chances of finding more survivors are slim. From this Associated Press story that we found at WRAL, reporter Jennifer Kay talked to the local Coast Guard about the search.

Authorities cautioned that the outlook for more survivors wasn't bright given the long hours that had passed since the accident. Anyone still in the water would be struggling with 23 mph (37 kph) winds and 6-foot (2-meter) seas, officials said.

"We hope that there are survivors and we can get them medical attention," U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Johnson said. "However, as time goes by, it becomes less and less likely because of exposure and fatigue."

She said Coast Guard ships, airplanes and a helicopter joined local authorities and volunteers in searching a 1,600-square-mile area Tuesday.

Turks and Caicos officials were moving quickly to send the ill-fated migrants back to impoverished Haiti, saying 60 were flown home Tuesday. Fifty-eight more spent Tuesday night under blankets on cots in a gym, and an unspecified number were at another detention site or in the hospital. The bodies of the unlucky 15 lay in a makeshift morgue.

It still wasn't clear when the boat wrecked. Johnson said the accident occurred Monday afternoon, but Deputy Police Commissioner Hubert Hughes said it could have happened Sunday night. Turks and Caicos reported the disaster Monday to the Coast Guard, which patrols the area for drug traffickers and illegal migrants and helps in search and rescue efforts.

The sailboat, crowded with about 200 men, women and teenagers fleeing Haiti's deep poverty, broke up as it tried to maneuver through treacherous coral reefs and was struck by heavy swells near West Caicos. It's part of an archipelago that has proved deadly for Haitians trying to escape their homeland's misery to find a better life elsewhere.

Another analysis of Nigeria

The violence continues in Nigeria, in the latest round 80 people died after Islamic militants attached police. The oil rich country of Nigeria is also the poorest in Africa. It's people only get more frustrated as it's government only gets more corrupt.

The Associated Press today has a good analysis on the problems in Nigeria. Wrirter Michelle Faul has covered Africa for over 25 years.

The militants have carried out a string of devastating attacks on pipelines and other oil installations as well as kidnappings of petroleum company employees.

When the oil militants attacked a fuel depot in Lagos, the economic capital — for the first time striking outside the delta — the government reacted by freeing a long-jailed leader of the movement and urging negotiations.

But that fight likely will continue as long as the government fails to address decades-long grievances about the unrelenting poverty of the delta people.

In the north, governments have done little over the years beyond commissioning reports after particularly bloody bouts of violence, never acting on them because those orchestrating the violence have links to well-placed members of the elite that has controlled successive governments.

The foot soldiers are ill-educated manual workers who are easy to manipulate: one of the names of the radical sect behind the latest violence is "Boko Haram," which means "Western education is sin."

It's one of the legacies of British colonization that never has been rectified. The colonizers ruled the north of Nigeria indirectly through sultans and caliphs. In the south, they governed directly and missionaries brought Western education. The gulf remains to this day.

Corruption and inefficiency are blamed for the persisting poverty in Nigeria, the world's eighth-biggest oil exporter and fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports.

Some Nigerians were hopeful 10 years ago when decades of corrupt and brutal military rule ended, and again two years ago when they had the first handover of power from one civilian president to another.

But both former President Olusegun Obasanjo and current President Umaru Yar'Adua have links to the powerful military — and that has helped perpetuate Nigeria's cycle of corruption.

Youths starve to fight hunger

Youth from throughout Baldwin County, Alabama participated in a 30 hour fast over this past weekend. The event raised money for World Vision, and the youths also helped out at the county soup kitchen.

From the Press Register, reporter Andrew Dunning tells us what moved the youth to starve.

"This is the first time youths from St. Andrew by the Sea Community Church in Gulf Shores, Providence United Methodist Church in Spanish Fort and Christ Presbyterian Church in Daphne have teamed up to participate in the 30-hour Famine," said Sharla Berry, director of Youth Ministries at Christ Presbyterian Church.

Berry said that the kids started the 30-hour fast at 6 p.m. Friday when youths gathered to hold a candlelight service. The participants lit 600 candles — one for each child who died from hunger in that hour.

The participants got only water or other liquids for hydration during the 30 hours.

"I'm participating in the 30-hour Famine to help raise awareness about world hunger, especially in Third World countries," said Jim Hollis, 16, of St. Andrew by the Sea Community Church.

"We try and raise money by asking people for donations," Hollis said. "We tell them that $360 allows World Vision the opportunity to feed a child for one year."

Most of the youths are taking part in the famine to raise awareness of world hunger, but some participants, like 14-year-old Harrison York of Christ Presbyterian Church, have gone above and beyond to make a difference in a child's life.

York said this was his second time to participate in the 30-hour Famine event and he also sponsors a child through World Vision for $32 a month, which makes sure a child gets the food and nutrition he or she needs to survive.

2009 Kids Count Report released

The Annie E Casey Foundation has released their yearly roundup of child well being in the states, called the "2009 Kids Count Report"

The latest statistics in this report are from 2007 so most of the effects of the global recession are not yet factored into this report. However, our home state of Michigan; that basically had a one-state recession before all others joined us, had a sharp increase in children living in poverty.

From the Washington Times article on the report, writer Carol Morello breaks down the report. For all of the stats and graphs, go to the Kids Count Data Center provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

"Our take-away is that even going into the recession, the economic outlook for a lot of families was dire," said Laura Beavers, the national Kids Count coordinator. "There was a flattening of the median income, and the poverty level was creeping up year after year."

Some regional differences stood out. States in New England and the Northern Plains all scored relatively high in an overall composite of the 10 indicators. And the 10 states with the lowest rankings were all in the South or Southwest.

Both Virginia and Maryland declined in the 50-state rankings. Virginia slipped from 15th to 16th, and Maryland slid from 19th to 25th. The District was not ranked because it's a city, but it saw improvements almost across the board; the percentage of children living in poverty, for example, decreased from 30 percent in 2000 to 23 percent in 2007. The decline might be a reflection of poor families being priced out of gentrifying neighborhoods.

In an ominous harbinger of the future, states that were roiled by economic difficulties early in the decade saw the dramatic effect a worsening economy has on children.

In Michigan, for example, the rate of children living in poverty rose by more than a third, from 14 percent in 2000 to 19 percent in 2007. In Ohio, the number went up by almost a fifth in the same period, from 16 percent to 19 percent.

Ethiopia receives emergency money to fight malnutrition

The U.N.'s Emergency Response Fund has released six million dollars to Ethiopia. The country is going through severe malnutrition, due to a large shortfall in food. The rainy season in Ethiopia was not wet enough and caused the shortage in food.

From the IRIN, we read more of the emergency response.

Ethiopia is facing challenges in providing food, health, nutrition, water and sanitation, emergency shelter, agriculture and livelihoods, according to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, Fidele Sarassoro.

To counter these challenges, the UN has allocated US$6 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).

“I have directed the humanitarian community jointly to agree on priority areas in which this new money can immediately be put to use," Sarassoro said.

At the same time, the federal Disaster Risk Management and Food Security Sector (DRMFSS) has announced that rising malnutrition and food insecurity were a growing concern and likely to lead to 6.2 million Ethiopians relying on food aid, out of a population of approximately 77 million.

At present, 4.9 million people in the country benefit from relief food.

According to the DRMFSS, the country has a shortfall of 176,000T of food. However, this is likely to increase to 390,000T in the months up to December 2009.

"Because of the existing shortfall, only three of the six planned rounds of food allocations have been distributed to date," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said in a statement on 20 July.

Comment: Not "Dead Aid" but Reverse Aid

In one of the most controversial books about international aid in recient years, Dambisa Moyo says that African nations are worse off than they were 50 years ago. In her book "Dead Aid" she uses the figure of $1 trillion dollars when talking about the total amount of money that has been spent in African aid.

However in this commentary from Joy Online, Dr. Nii Moi Thompson challenges the figure and describes why it may not be entirely accurate. At the same time, Dr Thompson shows an unwanted side-effect that some aid loans have on African nations. Dr. Thompson is a development economist who lives in Ghana.

First is the exact scale of the “aid” that Moyo tells us, with irritating frequency, has been “transferred to Africa” over the past 50 years with seemingly no meaningful reciprocity. She parrots the oft-repeated claim of “US$1 trillion,” a figure whose origin and credibility remain murky, at best.

But that’s only half the problem of Dead Aid. The other (unspoken) half is the amount of money that poor countries have transferred to rich countries over the same period.

Perhaps for Moyo there is no data on this other transfer to warrant its discussion, but the case of Ghana (a poster child of the aid-underdevelopment paradox) shows why such an omission cannot be ignored for whatever reason.

In 1994 (five years before donors labeled it “heavily indebted” and “poor”), Ghana’s budget statement made the following grim disclosure about its 1993 performance: “In the second half of the year, Ghana also obtained a Compensatory and Contingency Financing Facility [from the IMF] equivalent to US$65.1 million. At the same time an amount of US$67.9 million was paid back to the IMF, thereby showing a net outflow to the IMF of US$2.8 million.” If every African country in 1993 sent out an average of US$2.8 million more to donors than it received, that would be about US$150 million in net transfers, a princely sum for a continent supposedly hard up for development finance.

Of course we cannot forget the well-known disparity between what donors publicly pledge to “transfer” (headline aid) and what they eventually give to, or for, poor countries (pipeline aid). For example, data from Ghana’s Ministry of Finance shows that between 1990 and 2006, donors promised some US$1.1 billion in aid to the education sector but actually disbursed US$766.9 million
But even here we must distinguish between “disbursements” and “transfers”. Some donors insist, as a matter of commercial policy, that a portion of disbursed aid (sometimes as high as 75%) be spent on imports, including consultancy services, from their home countries; very little money is actually “transferred” to the recipient countries.

Besides the well-known problems with such “tied aid”, poor countries also lose large amounts of their own monies to rich countries through such practices as transfer pricing (self-dealing) and invoice-tampering by unscrupulous multi-nationals, as well as the abuse of tax holidays granted to these multi-nationals ostensibly to help stimulate economic growth in poor countries. In Ghana, some multi-nationals have been known to sell off their assets to others, typically from their home countries, just as their tax holiday is about to expire for them to pay taxes. The tax holiday is effectively extended, depriving Ghana of resources for development and, paradoxically, deepening its aid dependence.

Perhaps rather than Dead Aid we should be talking about Reverse Aid.

Numbers of poor children in the UK increases

Save The Children of the U.K. says the amount of poor children in the country is increasing. The charities survey specifically says that 60% of children in Wales have neither parent employed.

From this story at Wales Online, writer Darren Devine tells us more about the survey.

Research by Save the Children shows around 192,000 youngsters across the nation live in poverty.

Save the Children says there’s been a rise in children living in workless homes in some parts of Wales compared with previous years.

Areas where the numbers of children living in workless families have increased are Bridgend, Carmarthenshire, Flintshire, Swansea and Pembrokeshire.

Workless families have to make tough choices between food, heating and transport costs.

Children from poorer families often experience ill health and delayed development, suffer accidents and become pregnant as teenagers. They also miss out on school trips, out-of-hours activities and extra tuition.

Eleri Thomas, head of Save the Children in Wales, said access to child care and well-paid jobs remain two of the most significant barriers for parents trying to overcome poverty.

She said: “Large inequalities remain in health and in educational attainment, where the narrowing of the gap between poor children and their peers has stalled and we need to address this, both on a national and local government level.

“Families should be supported into work, but they need good quality affordable child care and we need to make sure that employment is paying decent wages and offers long-term job security.”

Haitian boat escaping to the U.S. capsize and drowns

A boat full of Haitians trying to find a better life in the U.S. capsized and sank near the Turks and Caicos Islands. The U.S. Coast Guard says they have found 113 survivors, but 85 people are still missing. The boat struck a reef nearby the islands as it was trying to elude from police.

From this Assoicated Press story that we found at KSWB, San Diego, reporter Vivian Tyson gives us more on the wreck.

"Our main goal right now is just to get everybody out of the water and get medical attention for those who need it," said Petty Officer Third Class Sabrina Elgammal, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.

The shipwreck happened around 2 p.m. Monday. By late evening, Turks and Caicos authorities using small boats had rescued about 40 people stranded on a reef 2 miles (3 kilometers) southeast of West Caicos island. Many others were later found on a nearby reef, Moorlag said.

The boat carrying up to 200 Haitians had been at sea for three days when passengers saw a police vessel and accidentally steered the boat onto a reef as they tried to hide, survivor Alces Julien told The Associated Press at a hospital were some survivors were receiving treatment.

Elgammal said information from survivors indicates that between 160 and 200 people were on board when the vessel capsized near this island chain north of Haiti and southeast of the Bahamas. She said the cause of the accident is under investigation.

A Coast Guard cutter has been searching through the night for survivors, and Moorlag said a helicopter and a jet will join the search at first light. He said a C-130 aircraft was expected Tuesday morning to help in the search.

Haitians routinely take to the seas in rickety, overcrowded boats in hopes of escaping poverty in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

Task force on poverty begins in Colorado

Colorado state government has begun a task force to examine ways the state can cut it's the numbers of poor people. Members of the task force are trying to look at economic solutions as well as government assistance.

This Associated Press article that we found at Forbes.com, writer Steven K. Paulson describes the task force goals.

Rep. John Kefalas, a Democrat from Fort Collins who chairs the Economic Opportunity Reduction Task Force Committee, said the 10-member committee will look at the root causes of poverty and try to determine why some parts of the state have more poverty than others.

"We've given ourselves a year, to December of 2010, to put together a plan of action," Kefalas said.

Jodie Levin-Epstein, spokeswoman for the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit organization focused on laws and policies that affect poverty, told lawmakers that Colorado is one of the worst states in the nation when it comes to dealing with the issue.

She said people who are trying to get out of poverty are stymied by poverty measures that are based on life in the past century, when moms stayed at home and husbands were the breadwinner. She said lawmakers have failed to take into account the cost of health care, transportation and tax policies that make it difficult for families to escape poverty.

"We need to figure out ways to make work work," she told the panel.

Video Protests in South Africa

The BBC has video of another round of protests in South Africa. Garbage collectors are now striking, demanding a %15 increase in pay. The workers say that they have not been able to afford food since the large jump in food prices last year. An article from the BBC is included after the jump.



This article from the BBC has further details on the strikes.

Striking South African municipal workers have emptied piles of rubbish onto the streets during a march to demand a wage increase.

Police fired rubber bullets to disperse protesters in Limpopo Province, who police said had become "disorderly".

The ruling ANC has reportedly condemned the workers' behaviour. Recent strikes and unrest are seen as the major challenges for President Jacob Zuma.

About 150,000 workers have stopped work demanding a 15% pay rise.

Workers say they are unable to make a living from their current wages because of high food prices.

President Zuma has called for understanding from workers, but the BBC's Jonah Fisher in Johannesburg says crowd-pleasing promises he made during his election campaign are proving hard to keep.

Our correspondent says a pledge to create 500,000 new jobs has already been retracted.

A documentary on Honduras making the film festival circuit

A new documentary that focuses on Honduran poverty is making the rounds at film festivals. Blinded by Open Arms is produced by Alexie Elfmont a 24 year old recent College graduate from Miami. Elfmont and some friends traveled down to Honduras to film a fund raising video for a non-profit, but decided to stay longer and make a film.

From the Miami Herald, reporter Susana Montes-Delgado details some of the young film crews encounters.

For 17 days, the filmmakers interviewed former M-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) and M-18 gang members, drug addicts, lawyers, policemen, politicians and prison officials.

They filmed children begging on street corners, inhaling glue and sleeping on sheets of cardboard. Their stories have a common theme: extreme poverty, low education rates and broken homes. More than 50 percent of the Honduran population lives below the poverty line.

The young filmmaker took her camera into San Pedro Sula's prison, where prostitution and rapes are common. Foreigners are the most common target of kidnappings. Although there are women in the prison, it is not divided by gender, Elfmont said.

``We went inside with one policeman. I remember walking through the prison and feeling the eyes of the inmates fixated on our bodies,'' she said. ``I felt I was a piece of meat and that at any moment, something could happen to me.''

Later that night, filmmakers went out with a Honduran SWAT team that regularly patrols the streets. They came across a 13-year-old boy who appears in the film sniffing glue.

``Why are you in the street?'' Elfmont asks.

``Because I don't have a family,'' he replies.

Sabillon was impressed with the candor of those interviewed.

``Nobody does this in Honduras,'' he said, discussing the film. ``In a way, people are victims of the system and they wanted to be heard.''