September 22, 2015 – Pope Francis arrived in Washington, D.C., this afternoon, and the excitement was electric. When the pope walked off of the plane at Andrews Air Force Base, outside of Washington, D.C., President Obama, his wife and children, were there to greet him, as were Vice President Biden and numerous U.S. bishops – an unprecedented…
On the occasion of his first visit to the United States, the leadership of the Maryknoll Sisters, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, and the Maryknoll Lay Missioners offer a warm welcome to Pope Francis. We especially want to express our heartfelt gratitude to the Holy Father for Laudato Si’, the historic encyclical on the environment that…
President Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia, probably for the last time as head of state, from July 24-28.
In January, Tanzania published its Draft National Energy Policy 2015, which, despite its length, devoted little attention to the challenge of bringing electricity to the country’s roughly 11 million residents who live in poverty in rural areas.
The U.S. Department of State’s 2015 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report has received more than the usual scrutiny due to ongoing negotiations around the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) involving the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim nations, and Malaysia’s changing rank on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) compliance list, compiled by the State Department.
On August 11, the U.S. announced that it would not reinstate Bangladesh to a list of developing countries that receive trade preferences for lower or zero-duty tariffs due to labor rights and workplace safety issues.
The problem of illegal logging in forests in the developing world represents a microcosm of the phenomenon of exploitation of natural resources by corrupt governing elites that wreak environmental damage while simultaneously diverting government revenue away from public goods.
On September 2, a federal district court judge ruled in favor of Oxfam America, Earth Rights International, and a team of pro-bono lawyers who sued the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for dragging its feet on implementation of a critical piece of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reforms.
On July 31, another Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement deadline passed.
Maryknoll, Pax Christi and many other Catholic and Christian groups were deeply involved with the recent efforts to preserve the Iran nuclear agreement.
Excessive CEO pay at the 30 largest U.S. public fossil fuel corporations rewards short-term actions, with disastrous results for the world’s climate, a new report finds.
Resources published in the September-October 2015 NewsNotes.
In recent months, violence in El Salvador has spiraled, with the daily death rate now higher than during the peak of the civil war.
In an unsurprising decision, El Salvador’s Supreme Court has decreed that gangs and their “apologists” are now legally defined as terrorists under El Salvador’s Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism (LECAT).
While protesters in Guatemala City celebrated the resignation of their country’s president and vice president, their compadres in Honduras have been less successful in their efforts to bring reform and justice.
The arrest of Guatemala’s President Pérez Molina on charges of corruption on September 3 was a surprising turn of events that brings a ray of hope to a long-suffering country where Maryknoll missioners have served for decades.
In December, the UN conference on climate change in Paris will be the center of the world’s attention as 190 participating nations attempt to agree to what hopefully will be a robust agreement. From August 31-September 7, negotiators from these governments met in Bonn, Germany to lay the groundwork for a successful Paris conference.
On August 4, President Obama unveiled the final version of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), a set of national standards to reduce carbon emissions from U.S. power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by the year 2030.
