Rural Areas
Violence in Rural Mexico Ensnares Doctors, Causing Worker Shortages
“They forget about a patient’s primary right, which is to be cared for wherever they are, and it’s because of this that we needed to resort to contracting foreigners,” Dr. Jorge Alcocer Varela, Mexico’s secretary of health, told reporters at a recent news conference. The announcement about the Cuban doctors provoked outrage among many Mexican […]
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Afghanistan Tries to Stamp Out Opium Again
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — For years, opium has been the monster too big to slay. One Afghan government after another has pledged to stamp out opium production and trafficking, only to prove unable to resist billions of dollars in illicit profits. The Taliban government of the 1990s ultimately managed to reduce opium cultivation. But after the […]
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In Search of Panama’s Elusive Spider Monkeys
For a brief moment, as hundreds of blue morpho butterflies floated gracefully around us, the green hues of the tropical forest were transformed into a neon blue. But the dreamlike scene, reminiscent of something out of James Cameron’s “Avatar,” was interrupted by a series of loud chirps from the canopy above. Straining my eyes to […]
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Why Small Towns Are Attracting More Newcomers
Research by Rebecca Diamond, an economist at Stanford University, and Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, explains the attraction. They worked out how costs affect living standards in various parts of the country. Workers without a four-year college degree earn little in the Cookeville commuting zone — their income puts them […]
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As Its Population Soars to 40, Rum Isle Glimpses a Future in the Mist
With four new families recently arriving, the remote and rainy island in the Hebrides is experiencing its version of a population surge, although residents new and old concede living here isn’t easy. ISLE OF RUM, Scotland — No doctors. No restaurants. No churches. And worst of all for some: no pubs. Life on a remote […]
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In 2021, We Were There: The Year’s 14 Most Popular Dispatches
As the world reopened cautiously in 2021, our correspondents seized the chance to venture out in search of stories that would astonish, delight, provoke and enlighten. We went from the heights of a Himalayan ski slope to the ocean depths off the Philippines where amiable giants dive, and from a rugged island where a whistling […]
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India’s Modi Brings Tap Water to Millions as Supplies Shrink
IMLIDOL, India — The pipes are laid, the taps installed and the village tank is under construction — all promising signs that, come spring, Girja Ahriwar will get water at her doorstep and finally shed a lifelong burden. “I go out and put the jerrycans in the queue at around 5 a.m. and wait there […]
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Rural Health Care Providers Get $7.5 Billion in Relief Funds
The Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday that it had begun distributing billions of dollars to rural health care providers to ease the financial pressures brought by the coronavirus pandemic and to help hospitals stay open. The agency is doling out $7.5 billion to more than 40,000 health care providers in every […]
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