Mexico passed legislation Tuesday overhauling the country's 40-year-old labor laws in a bipartisan effort that many say isn't strong enough. The far left claims the new laws favor big business over workers and that true reform has yet to come.

President Felipe Calderon, who steps down from the presidency Dec. 1 and originally proposed the legislation, has said the new law would add hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and will allow women and young people to more easily access employment while boosting productivity.

As those who have been working on the ground will tell you, Haiti’s agricultural history has been as rocky as much of its once-arable soil now is. For a country that employs over 50 percent of its population in agriculture, it is almost unfathomable that between 50 and 80 percent of its total food supply is imported.

Laos began construction last week on a multi-billion dollar hydro dam project that is opposed by other countries along the Mekong River, and activists who say the project will significantly impact the environment and the economies of four countries that rely on the river for fishing and agriculture. 

KAKUMA, Kenya —The Kakuma refugee camp is 60 miles from Sudanese border, in the uppermost reaches of the arid Turkana region of Kenya. It was opened in 1992 to house the 16,000 “lost” girls and boys fleeing the war from Sudan. These days, the overcrowded facility is home to around 100,000 people, driven there by violence not only from Sudan but also Ethiopia, Congo, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi and a handful of other nations.

Kakuma does not look like a refugee camp in the movies, with rows of canvas tents ringed by barbed wire. Or rather, structures like that do exist, but that is where the aid workers live. Most of the refugees live in handmade huts, built of sticks, mud, metal scrap, and materials salvaged from aid packaging.

At the camp’s entrance, myriad signs list Kakuma’s sponsors, which include the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR), The Lutheran World Federation, The World Food Program and Handicap International. The latter advertises a “mine risk education program.” Poisonous spiders, snakes, and scorpions abound in the area.