What Matters - Digital Journalist

Early child labor at a U.S. cotton mill, 1909. Some boys and girls were so small that they had to climb up to the spinning frame to work on broken threads and empty bobbins. Bibb Mill No. 1, Macon, Ga.

MELTDOWN

A Global Warming Travelogue

Chicago, 1995, when an urban heat wave killed more than 700 people. This -- and scientific predictions of global warming effects -- foreshadowed the overwhelming heat of August 2003, when more than 20,000 deaths occurred across Europe, and the Northern Hemisphere heat wave of 2006.

Disintegrating Müller Ice Shelf on Antarctic Peninsula, April 2000, seen from the National Science Foundation research icebreaker Nathanel B. Palmer, on the scene to study global warming and climate.

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After years of drought, the water level at the Lake Powell reservoir in Utah and Arizona has dropped drastically to 46 percent. 2005.

ECONOMIC MIRACLE, ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER

Liu Tianheng looks at his X-ray at the Shenqiu County Hospital in Henan province, China. Liu has stomach cancer and brought his X-ray along with his medical records to meet with the head of the cancer unit at the hospital, Dr. Wang Yong Zeng.

THIRSTY WORLD

The Desperate Everyday Quest for Safe Water

A 4-year-old girl child fetches water for her family and will walk 4 kilometres (nearly 3 miles) back with the heavy pail. She makes this trip on average twice a day. Water is the responsibility of women and children in Africa. Many women and young girls live lives which revolve around an endless cycle of walking for water. In many cases this is something which takes up hours of every day and precludes women from education, quality of life and private enterprise. February 2003.

A woman in Northern Ghana poses with the new well in her village, made possible with the support of UK NGO Water-Aid, in February 2003. The well has meant that the women of the village no longer have to walk long distances for water and can focus on private enterprise, education and involvement in the running of the village.

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Ghana: An 11-year-old girl helps her blind mother and brother to fetch water from a swamp. The mother and brother both lost their sight due to Trachoma, a bacterial infection of the eyelids linked to poor hygiene due to a lack of clean water. It is the leading cause of blindness in Africa and Asia. The swamp is the closest water source for this family and is located 5 kilometers from their home. The girl has looked after her family in this manner since she was 5 years old and it is her sole role in life. February 2003.

FALLOUT

The Enduring Tragedy of Chernobyl

The Children's Home in Vesnovo, Belarus, receives support from international aid organizations for young victims of Chernobyl, including abandoned and orphaned children with mental and physical disabilities.

Workers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant enter the so-called diarator stack, where they drill holes in the concrete to install support beams that are supposed to stabilize the outward-leaning Western wall which is in danger of collapsing. Their dark workspace is located close to the center of the 1986 Chernobyl explosion and is still, more than 20 years later, so highly contaminated that they can only work in 15-minute shifts despite wearing highly protective gear and respirators.

Generally without means of transportation, none of the nearly 400 elderly living in the Chernobyl zone (formerly called illegal residents) have easy access to medical care. To ensure basic health care, a team of doctors from the Chernobyl hospital make their rounds to different villages, paying a visit to each of them about once every month. 2005.

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Post-op department of the Children’s Cardiological Center in Minsk, Belarus. Here, local and international doctors treat children born with a defect often referred to as Chernobyl heart. In Belarus, only 15 to 20 percent of babies are born healthy.

IMAGES OF GENOCIDE

How Should We Respond

Rwanda. 1994.

CAMBODIA. 1996: Between 1975 and 1979 Cambodia was governed by a totalitarian regime led by the Khmer Rouges under the direction of Pol Pot. Over half a million people died under the regime. An American research team from Yale University, the Cambodian Research Program, has begun to search for those who took part in the genocide operation.

THE SCORCHED EARTH OF DARFUR

The Twenty-First Century's First Genocide

Multinational force soldiers gather water after repelling an attack on Adre, in Eastern Chad, for the second time in a week.

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A child on the streets of Adre, a border town in Eastern Chad, the scene of much fighting in recent weeks where scores have been injured and killed.

Displaced Sudanese take refuge under a tree in Disa, Northern Darfur, out of the heat of the day and out of view of government Antanov planes responsible for bombings. There are estimated to be 800,000 displaced in Darfur who are trapped on the east, west and south by government troops and in the north by the desert wasteland which will certainly claim the lives of their livestock and weaker members of their family.

GLOBAL JIHAD

Before and After 9/11

A hawker sells posters of terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden during a rally protesting against airstrikes on Afghanistan, in Lahore, Pakistan, Oct. 19, 2001. The U.S. and British forces continue their bombardment of selected targets in neighboring Afghanistan.

Palestinian gunmen, who identified themselves as members of the Islamic Jihad group, shoot a man in a public square in the West Bank town of Jenin, Aug. 13, 2006. The man, who was executed in front of hundreds of people, was accused by the gunmen of giving information to Israeli authorities, helping them to kill two militants in a targeted attack, said witnesses and Islamic Jihad members. The victim was identified as Bassem Malah, 22, who worked in the Israeli-Arab town of Umm al Fahm.

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Bombing victims in body bags lay on the ground at the scene of a suicide bombing of a city bus, seen background right, in Jerusalem, Nov. 21, 2002. A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a crowded bus during morning rush hour, killing at least 10 passengers and wounding dozens.

Paul Dadge, right, helps injured subway passenger Davinia Turrell away from Edgware Road tube station in London following an explosion, July 7, 2005.

An Iraqi soldier shouts while showing family pictures retrieved from a minibus that was blown up by a suicide bomber in Baghdad, Iraq, Sept. 23, 2005. A suicide bomber riding on a small public bus set off hidden explosives in a bustling open-air bus terminal Friday, the Muslim day of worship, killing at least five people and wounding eight, police said.

BITTER FRUIT

Behind The Scenes, America Buries
Its War Dead

USA. East Orange, New Jersey. April 3, 2004. Funeral service for Spc. Bruce Miller, who was killed in Iraq.

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USA. Haverstraw, New York. April 2005. Funeral services for U.S. Army Spc. Manuel "Manny" Lopez III, who was killed in Iraq after his vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, according to military officials.

USA. Springfield, Vermont. Nov. 22, 2003. Funeral service for Sgt. Scot Rose, who was killed in Iraq.

SHOP TILL WE DROP

Consumer Culture in the New Gilded Age

Versace collectors at a private event at the Versace store in Beverly Hills honoring the Versace Group at the Rodeo Drive Walk of Style.

Aya, 16, in her basement bedroom, looks for an outfit to wear to school in San Francisco, Calif. The body has become a primary expression of individual identity for women and girls in contemporary American culture.

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Leah Robertson, 18, Sasha Grumman, 18, and Katie Kepner, 18, seniors from Newport High School in Orange County, Calif. (the OC), socialize in the party bus taking them to their senior prom.

S.W. Lam, owner of 3-D Gold, is photographed on the world’s most expensive toilet.

CHILDREN OF THE BLACK DUST

Child Labor in Bangladesh

A woman holds her child, blackened by carbon dust. His nose bleeds due to infections caused by exposure to dust and pollution while playing in the battery recycling workshop in Korar Ghat by the Buriganga River on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Shehnaz (3 years old) sits on the window of a battery recycling workshop. She cleans carbon rods that come out of the center of D-size dry cell batteries in a workshop in Ayena Ghat by the Buriganga River on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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LOST GIRLS

The Child Brides of Afghanistan, Nepal and Ethiopia

Portrait of soon-to-be-wed Faiz Mohammed, 40, and Ghulam Haider, 11, at her home in a rural village of Damarda in Afghanistan's Ghor province.

Portrait of Mohammed Fazal, 45, with his two wives (L-R) Majabin, 13, and Zalayha, 29, in their village on the outskirts of Mazar Al Sharif, Afghanistan. Fazal was offered Majabin as a debt settlement when a fellow farmer could not pay after a night of playing cards. They have been married for six months.

Female family members mourn the over the body of Shakila Ramani, who self-immolated and burned 95 percent of her body during a fight with her husband and in-laws. She left two young children behind. Herat, Afghanistan.

THE PRICE OF OUR OIL ADDICTION

Scenes from the Niger River Delta (for more pictures from this series, see BLACK GOLD by Ed Kashi at http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0808/kashi-intro.html)

Trans Amadi Slaughter is the largest abattior in the Niger Delta. They kill thousands of animals a day, roast them, cut them up and prepare the meat for sale throughout Rivers State and the rest of the delta. Nearly all of the workers here, especially the meat handlers, are Hausa and Yoruba, mostly Muslim too. In the delta fish was traditionally the main source of protein, but as fish stocks have dwindled due to pollution from oil and overfishing, meat is becoming more common in the Niger Delta.

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THE GREATEST MIGRATION

The Third World Moves to the City

A pipeline carrying drinking water to more prosperous districts of Mumbai passes through the shantytown of Mahim, India.

With Mumbai sprawling down a 25-mile (40-km) peninsula, many residents depend on trains for transportation. Every day, half of Mumbai's population commutes from distant suburbs to downtown offices, banks, factories and mills. There are not enough trains to go around, and during rush hour many passengers are forced to hang on to the outside of cars.

INFECTED OR AFFECTED

Curing AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa

The body of 8-year-old James Banda lies in a morgue in Zambia. The boy lived in a very poor community called Freedom about 10km from Lusaka, and was one of an estimated 7,000 people who succumb every day to HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Feb. 2002.

The family of Beauty Makwete mourns her death from AIDS during her funeral at Mapepe Cemetery, near Lusaka, Zambia. 2002.

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A congregation prays for a cure to HIV/AIDS at God's Power Church in Nairobi, Kenya. One in 14 Kenyans are HIV positive; in the capital, Nairobi, the figure rises to 1 in 7. Kenya. 2002.

THE END OF MALARIA?

Rolling Back a Killer

Hundreds of thousands of people line up in small villages across Madagascar to receive their measles shots and long-lasting insecticide-treated nets during Mother and Child Health Week. Here on the second day of the campaign, people have walked for up to eight hours to reach the centers to receive free nets and treatment. The line started to form at sunrise for the 9 a.m. opening of this mobile health center.

To repel malarial mosquitoes, the Mora people of South America's Amazon Basin wear a natural insect repellant made by mixing two fruits together that stains the skin for several weeks.