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West Oakland is pinned between the Bay Area’s largest, busiest port and two major commuter freeways, and is home to decades of legacy pollution, making this marginalized but determined community a hotspot for childhood asthma and other illnesses. Photo & Audio: Kim Komenich
News of the written word’s demise has been greatly exaggerated — though it may not turn up as often on your parents’ printed, paper pages. Literature is going online — making works great (and not-so-great) available via text messages, Twitter, RSS feeds, and e-mailed in serialized installments. Photo: Lin Pernille
A bike-sharing program in Paris will scatter tens of thousands of two-wheelers (right) throughout the City of Lights for quick jaunts and rentals. It’s the latest in a global trend towards more bicycle infrastructure, driven by hard economic times and fears of climate change. Photo: ktylerconk
Diesel exhaust from trucks serving the Port of Oakland brought confrontational protests to a May 2 public meeting (right). Our latest collaboration with SPOT.US takes a multimedia look at the conflict, in the first part of a series on pollution and communities. Photo: Kim Komenich for Newsdesk.org
Brazil’s African-descended citizens now have a .2 percent majority nationwide, but lack proportional access to education and food. This includes almost four times the rate of illiteracy and longer work hours compared to their European-descended countrymen. Photo: Brazilian child/Carf
Moldova’s April 5 poll saw the Communist Party re-elected with appeals to family and security (right), but young protesters say the vote was rigged, and stormed the national parliament building. It’s just more freezing wind for democracy in the former East Bloc. Photo: Dittaeva
With reservoirs at record lows, millions of Mexico City residents are experiencing water shortages and even cutoffs. Drought is to blame, but also leaky pipes, which lose as much as 40 percent of the water destined for the world’s largest city.Photo: Mexico City fountain/Tinou Bao
Women in the developing world are at the climate-change frontlines. From Nicaragua to Mozambique (right), women must travel further for water due to drought and ecological decline, competing with wild animals, and disrupting their family’s welfare. Photo: Stig Nygaard
A new United Nations atlas reveals that half the world’s 6,700 languages are endangered and could disappear. The 2009 edition of the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger finds that India has the most endangered languages, with the United States in second place. The BBC reported the 192 indigenous languages in the United States are all considered “unsafe,” such as Navajo, with only 120,000 speakers; “endangered,” with just a handful of speakers; or already extinct. Alaska’s Eyak language became extinct last year when the last native speaker died, while Hawaii’s native language is considered endangered because only 1,000 people speak it, although that may change due to an increase in immersion schools. In Massachusetts, a member of the Wampanoag tribe revived her dead language by studying its grammar, then teaching it to her daughter, who is now the first native speaker in six generations.
A new study finds that extreme weather, possibly caused by climate change, is damaging underfunded Superfund toxic waste sites. In Summitville, Colorado, critics say one such site is leaking polluted water into a river used for agriculture, livestock and recreation.Photo: Sprol