Nuclear waste dumping, fish poaching and U.S.-backed proxy war drive coastal crisis. read more »

ALTAMIRA, Brazil—In this sweltering urban outpost on the banks of the Xingu River, one of the major tributaries of the Amazon River, a large official-looking billboard looms over one of the main streets downtown. Two hands are clenched in a friendly handshake, next to a colorful sketch of an unobtrusive dam traversing the crystalline waters of the river. “United For Progress,” it reads, “United for Belo Monte Dam.” Despite the cheerful propaganda, not everybody in town appears to be as optimistic. “Out Belo Monte!” and “Death to the Monster Dam!” are just a few of the slogans splashed as graffiti across the city that tell a very different story. read more »

In New York, the subprime crisis has also brought the racial disparity into stark relief. By the fall of 2007, one in four homeowners with subprime mortgages in the historically black neighborhoods of Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant were in foreclosure, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. These northern Brooklyn communities have a subprime mortgage foreclosure rate almost four times the national average. read more »

The DOE brought on the rally by slashing the citywide school budget by $180 million in mid-year, at the orders of Mayor Bloomberg. The budget cuts happened overnight, literally. read more »