UNITED NATIONS, October 15 (IPS) - After two years of conflict with Israel, Hamas has released the remaining 20 living hostages, while Israel has freed 250 Palestinian prisoners and over 1,700 detainees who have since returned to Gaza. Following a ceasefire agreement which took effect on October 10, Israeli forces are set to withdraw from designated areas within the Gaza Strip as humanitarian organizations mobilize to assist Palestinians in urgent need.
WASHINGTON DC, October 15 (IPS) - I moved to the United States in 2012 with great reluctance. I wasn’t sure why I should uproot myself to a country thousands of miles away from my hometown. The move reminded me of a childhood I hadn’t fully embraced—growing up in faraway countries like Russia and China, making constant adjustments, encountering racism, forging and losing friendships along the way. I had promised myself I would not impose the same cycle on my children.
Poverty is not just scarcity. It is exclusion, stigma, and invisibility. Poverty is not a personal failure. It is a systemic failure. A denial of dignity and human rights.
Read the full story, “International Day for the Eradication of Poverty”, on globalissues.org →
BANGALORE & PAKHIRALAY, India, October 15 (IPS) - Bapi Mondal’s morning routine in Bangalore is a world away from his ancestral village, Pakhiralay, in the Sundarbans, West Bengal. He wakes before dawn, navigates heavy traffic, and spends eight long hours molding plastic battery casings. It’s not the life his honey-gathering forefathers knew, but factors like extreme storms, rising seas, and deadly soil salinity forced the 40-year-old to abandon centuries of family tradition and travel miles away to work in a concrete suburban factory.