Lafayette

Vote-buying in Turkey? Price is high, satisfaction not guaranteed.

At the end of April, and despite Turkey’s economic malaise, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party authorized new twice-yearly payouts of 1,000 liras, about $225, to retirees. The payouts are part of a social benefits package worth more than $5.5 billion, widely regarded in Turkey as a transparent election ploy by the AKP ahead of a hotly contested June 24 vote. Mehmet, a pensioner with gray hair and a goatee, says he’s happy to receive the retiree bonus, but adds the “election bribe” will not erode his support for the opposition.

In immigrant detention, a role for children

Just three years ago, many Americans were in moral outrage over a particular immigration policy of President Barack Obama. Faith leaders decried it. Hillary Clinton, then a presidential contender, considered it inhumane.

Cooperative communities keep Spanish seniors cared for

Like most sons, Nemesio Rasillo Oliver loved his mother. Rasillo began dreaming of a similar setup near his home in northern Spain that would keep him out of a nursing home and free up his family. Dressed in a crisp button-down shirt, he pulls out the development plan of his brainchild, Brisa del Cantabrico, a cooperative senior community set in farmland between a mountain range and the Cantabrian Sea on Spain’s northern coast.

In Sierra Leone-UK mining case, a new attempt to measure the arm of the law

“When the police came they did not ask, they did not inform the people,” remembers Fadda Kargbo, a farmer whose village is tucked into the verdant Sula Mountains of northern Sierra Leone. On that day in November 2010, the brutal civil war had been over for eight years – ushering in a surge in foreign investment, from mining to industrial farms. Home to some of the world’s largest iron ore deposits, more than 200 square kilometers of Sierra Leone had been leased to African Minerals Limited (AML), a London-based multinational.