Workmen are still building this site and these are some of Hamburg's newest refugee homes, with room for just over 200 people. All around are converted shipping containers: functional metal boxes painted red and stacked two storeys high. New tenants are already moving in. A family invites us inside. Yusef is an energetic young man who introduces his wife, a shy pregnant woman in a bright pink headscarf, and his little girl. "I didn't like life in Iraq," he tells me. "Maybe I'm killed, maybe my children are killed, maybe my wife is killed. In the markets there are car bombers, in the hospital there are car bombers." The family is waiting to hear whether Germany will give them a home for the long term. It can take up to five months for an asylum application to be processed, although the government has promised to reduce the average waiting time to three months. For now, Yusef and his family live in a single room and share a kitchen and bathroom with the other tenants. His oldest child is now in a German school. He hopes to learn German then get a job. As Yusef makes tentative plans for the future, the authorities in Hamburg are struggling. It's estimated that about 400 refugees and migrants arrive here every day.

[1] I am a child of the Americas,

A light-skinned mestiza of the Caribbean,

A child of many diaspora, born into this continent at a crossroads.

I am a U.S.Puerto Rican Jew,

[5] A product of the getthos of New York I have never known.

An immigrant and the daughter and the granddraughter of immigrants.

I speak English with passion: it’s the tongue of my consciousness,

A flashing knife blade, my tool, my craft.

I am a Caribeña, island grown, Spanish is in my flesh,

[10] Ripples from my tongue, lodges in my hips:

The language of garlic and mangoes,

The singing in my poetry, the flying gestures of my hands.

I am of Latinoamerica, rooted in the history of my continent:

I speak from that body.

[15] I am not African. Africa is in me, but I cannot return.

I am not taína. Taíno is in me, but there is no way back.

I am not European. Europe lives in me, but I have no home there.

I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish.

I was born at the crossroads

[20] And I am whole.

N.R.: Taínos were the Indian tribe indigenous to Puerto Rico

Indigenous people and global warming

Forests on indigenous lands hold 37.7 billion tons

of CO2 worldwide. If they were destroyed, the carbon

released into the air would surpass global emissions of

vehicles for 29 years. Luckily, the Indians have been more

[5] effective than any other human group in combating

deforestation. These numbers are from a report released

by NGOs WRI (World Resources Institute) and RRI

(Rights and Resources Initiative).

Researchers of the two entities crossed forest

[10] preservation numbers from indigenous and traditional

people with data from the FAO (United Nations Food

and Agriculture) on forest biomass. Research was done

in 2013. According to the report, about one-eighth of the

tropical forests area today is within these areas.

[15] Compared to forests that are outside the Indigenous

jurisdiction, the land not in that area has displayed a

weak protection rate.

In the Brazilian Amazon, forests not in the

indigenous land have a deforestation rate 11 times higher.

[20] In the Guatemalan forests, home to Mayans

descendants, the protection rate is 20 times higher, and

in the rest of the Yucatan is 350 times higher —

Indigenous people are virtually the only type of protection

there. Part of the reason for this is that developing

[25] countries, home to most of the preserved forests, often

lack the resources to implement surveillance against

illegal deforestation, whether within or outside protected

areas.

It is often better to recognize the right of indigenous

[30] communities to land and give them autonomy to manage

an area than turn it into an ecological reserve and hire

guards. However, the report does not comment on the

proposed constitutional amendment 215, being debated

in the Brazilian Congress, providing the legislative power

[35] the right to demarcate indigenous lands, complicating

the process.

“There are several problems associated with immigration in European countries and we need to analyse these issues,” Mr. Abe told parliament.

His aids point to modest changes, such as relaxing visa requirements for skilled workers and letting some foreign trainees stay an extra two years, but they say his administration isn’t likely to throw the door wide open.

By Rachel Swalin

Citizen Kane may be considered one of the greatest films ever made, yet this Orson Welles grand tale of a newspaper magnate‘s rise and fall lost out on Best Picture in 1942. Instead, the prize went to How Green Was My Valley, a drama depicting the struggles of a Welsh mining family. As director, co-author, producer, and star, Welles had every hand in the making of Citizen Kane, but his controversial film, thought to be based on media mogul William Randolph Hearst, managed to alienate him from Hollywood. How Green Was My Valley, from director John Ford, proved to be a more sentimental favorite of the time.

More than a dozen US states say Syrian refugees are no longer welcome due to security fears after the Paris attacks.

Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan said he was suspending the acceptance of new arrivals until after a review.

Alabama, Texas and several other states issued similar statements but a State Department spokesman said the legality of this action was still unclear.

President Barack Obama has urged the US to “step up and do its part” to help those fleeing the civil war. “Slamming the door in their faces would be a betrayal of our values,” he said. […]

Disponível em: . Acesso em: 18 nov. 2015.

In the 1990s, Nike came under fire for the rock-bottom wages, abusive conditions and use of child labor at its overseas factories. Sales plummeted as angry customers held protests and boycotts. If Nike wanted to stay in business, it had to make big changes-and it did. Nike took stock of its behavior and today it has a team that monitors conditions in its factories. Inspection reports are made public online. Nike was also one of the first companies to publish the names and adresses of every overseas factory that makes its products.