TAIPEI, Nov 20 – Hourly wages below a dollar. Firings with no notice. Indifferent bosses. Labour brokers that leech away months of a worker’s hard-earned wages. A corporate shell game that leaves no one responsible.

Such conditions are widespread at the contract factories cranking out some of the most popular gadgets on the holiday season’s gift lists, according to labour rights activists and workers interviewed by GlobalPost.

Whether it’s your cherished iPhone, Nokia cell phone or Dell keyboard, it was likely made and assembled in Asia by workers who have few rights, and often toil under sweatshop-like conditions, activists say.

NEW YORK, Nov 20 — The competitors stood nervously on stage, awaiting the judges’ decisions. As each name was called the crowd cheered, and the winner stepped forward to claim a prize, bowing his or her head to accept a medal.

“Wow, that was a miracle,” said Kyoko Katsura, the winner in the women’s division of the New York Regional Yoga Championship.

Yoga championship?

SHONGA (Nigeria), Nov 20 — When white Zimbabwean farmer Irvin Reid arrived in Nigeria almost five years ago, he was given a set of grid references in the remote bush and told to find water and build a new farm.

His dairy farm now has 300 Jersey cows, some of among 800 imported from South Africa to start cattle farms in the region. It's a sharp contrast to things back in Zimbabwe, where campaigners say farmers face their worst year ever.

WASHINGTON, Nov 19 — In nearly a dozen recent terrorism cases in the United States, Britain and Canada, investigators discovered the suspects had something in common: a devotion to the message of Anwar al-Awlaki, an eloquent Muslim cleric who has turned the Web into a tool for extremist indoctrination.

Awlaki, 38, the son of a former agriculture minister and university president in Yemen, has never been accused of planting explosives himself. But experts on terrorism believe his persuasive endorsement of violence as a religious duty, in colloquial, American-accented English, has helped push a series of Western Muslims into terrorism.

PETTAH (India), Nov 18 — As he approaches his first tree of the day, S. Mohan presses his calloused palms together and bows his head.

“Oh God, I am climbing the coconut tree,” he whispers. “Protect me from harm.”

With no safety gear beyond a strap of palm frond tied around his ankles, he launches himself onto the tree’s arcing trunk, which rises dozens of feet into the air. With a swift series of spider-like manoeuvres, he is at the top of the tree within seconds, slicing the nuts from their stems with a heavy blade he carries tucked into his loincloth.

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 16 — Stowed away on cargo ships and unsure where their dangerous journeys will take them, increasing numbers of African immigrants are arriving in Latin America as European countries tighten border controls.

Some head to Mexico and Guatemala as a stepping stone to the United States, others land in the ports of Argentina and Brazil. Though many arrive in Latin America by chance, once in the region they find governments that are more welcoming than in Europe.

“One night I went to the seaport. I was thinking I was going to Europe. Later I found out I was in Argentina,” said Sierra Leone immigrant Ibrahim Abdoul Rahman, a former child soldier who said he escaped his country’s civil war by sneaking onto a cargo ship for a 35-day voyage.

BANDUNG, Nov 14 — At the age of 24, Basyiroh Cut Mutia received a marriage proposal — from her prospective groom’s first wife.

Thirteen years later, she and his three other wives say they all still live happily together with Dr Abdurahman Riesdam Efendi, an entrepreneur who is now 45.

In fact, all four women say they have always believed that polygamy is good for a family. Read More...

SINGAPORE, Nov 14 — The days of inexpensive food are coming to an end. Because of rising populations, incomes and urbanisation, food demand is expected to grow, and the composition of that demand will change towards higher value and more resource-intensive items, such as meat products. Meanwhile, supply will be constrained by a shortage of land, decelerating yield growth, competition from biofuels, water scarcity and climate change.

To keep prices from soaring out of control and to reverse the rise in global hunger, governments and businesses worldwide will have to find innovative and sustainable ways to boost agricultural output. It is possible to get an idea of what’s on the horizon by looking at the trend in food prices over the past decade. Prices are up almost 80 per cent since their lows in mid-2002.

The United Nations estimates global population is likely to grow by around 35 per cent from the current 6.8 billion by 2050. That means that a 70 per cent increase in food production from 2005-07 levels would be required. Read More...

JOHANNESBURG, Nov 13 — For centuries, farmers like Berhanu Gudina have eked out a living in Ethiopia’s central lowlands, tending tiny plots of maize, wheat or barley amid the vastness of the lush green plains.

Now, they find themselves working cheek by jowl with high-tech commercial farms stretching over thousands of hectares tilled by state-of-the-art tractors — and owned and operated by foreigners.

ST. LOUIS, Nov 12 — Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, had only months to live when he received a visit from an old friend, Rob Fraley, chief of technology for Monsanto Co.

Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work increasing food production in starving areas of the globe, welcomed Fraley to his Dallas home, where the two men sipped coffee and tea and discussed a subject dear to their hearts: the future of agriculture and the latest challenges of feeding the human race.

Fraley, who first met Borlaug 20 years earlier, when they served as founding board members for an agricultural group that works with developing nations, said he showed his friend photos of new types of corn that Monsanto was developing. Using biotechnology and genetic transfers, Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, hoped to create a corn variety that could grow well in dry conditions, even in drought-prone Africa, helping to alleviate hunger and poverty ? and fatten its bottom line.