Theresa Kerketa, 45 years old, poses for a picture at her residence on the outskirts of New Delhi November 2, 2012. Kerketa was working as a maid was rescued by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement), a charity which rescues victims of bonded labour. REUTERS/Mansi Thapliyal LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Some 30 million people are enslaved worldwide, trafficked into brothels, forced int ...

Just 8.4% of all the 5bn adults in the world own 83.4% of all household wealth (that’s property and financial assets, like stocks, shares and cash in the bank).  About 393 million people have net worth (that’s wealth after all debt is accounted for) of over $100,000, that’s 10% own 86% of all household wealth!  But $100,000 may not seem that much, if you own a house in any G7 country without any mortgage.  ...

Costa-Gavras joins us for the hour to discuss a nearly 50-year career that has earned him the reputation as one of the world’s greatest living political filmmakers. Born in Greece in 1933, the 80-year-old has won two Academy Awards for his films "Z" and "Missing." Other acclaimed films include "State of Siege," "Amen.," "Music Box," "The Confession," "Hanna K." and "Betrayed." For nearly five decades, Costa ...

Dimitris Kousouris is one of the first political victims of Golden Dawn attacks. On June 16th, 1998, in a café outside the courts of Athens, he was attacked brutally by a group of Golden Dawn members. He had to go through a difficult brain surgery and he barely escaped death. The attackers were identified by Kousouris and his friends. The main perpetrator was back then nr 2 in the leadership of Golden Dawn, ...

Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar's preparations to host the 2022 World Cup. ...

Austerity is destroying the free part of the Greek economy, leaving government more dysfunctional than ever. Worse news: it will need yet another bailout... Seasoned economic observers remain shocked by recent events. Greece will soon need another bailout. That’s not remotely surprising. What shocks is that there remains some semblance of an economy to bail out after 6 years of depression. Greece is bust, t ...

From housing to wages, David Harvey says examining capitalism's contradictions can point the way towards an alternative world. Five years ago next month Lehman Brothers filed for the largest bankruptcy in US history. Its collapse was to signal the beginning of the Great Recession – the most substantial world historic crisis of capitalism since the second world war. How should we understand the fundamentals ...

Financial 'investors' have already made a killing on Greek debt, but this activity isn't inevitable – such vultures can be challenged 'Vulture funds honed their skills against developing countries.' Photograph: Craig Fujii/Associated Press Not everyone is unhappy about the desperate straits of the Greek economy. A group of financial "investors" made a killing on Greek debt on Tuesday – purely by being the m ...

Paul Mason Economics editor, for bbc.co.uk The language and the time zone changes but, from Turkey and Bulgaria to Brazil, the symbolism of protest is increasingly the same. The Guy Fawkes masks, the erection of tent camps, the gas masks and helmets improvised in response to the use of tear gas as a means of collective punishment. The handwritten signs - scrawled in defiance of the state's power and the uni ...

You can find the recent report from IMF on Greece here: Link [pdf] Some read the recent IMF report on Greece as a mea culpa for its mistakes in the Greek bailout. We see it differently. You can say sorry for an unintended mistake, a miscalculation. The case we have here is not an accident. IMF’s inhumane and otherwise ineffective policies are not, as IMF asserts, the result of a methodological error, simply ...