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Articles on Organized crime

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Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a news conference after former President Donald Trump’s Aug. 15 indictment. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

RICO is often used to target the mob and cartels − but Trump and his associates aren’t the first outside those worlds to face charges

Federal and state RICO charges, which target racketeering, have been applied to a wide range of crimes committed by politicians and business people over the past few decades.
A satellite captured large and small deforestation patches in Amazonas State in 2015. The forest loss has escalated since then. USGS/NASA Landsat data/Orbital Horizon/Gallo Images/Getty Images

The great Amazon land grab – how Brazil’s government is clearing the way for deforestation

Land grabs spearheaded by wealthy interests are accelerating deforestation, and Brazil’s National Congress is working to legitimize them.
Dancing with danger. West Side Story/Amblin

‘West Side Story’ may be timeless – but life in gangs today differs drastically from when the Jets and Sharks ruled the streets

Gangs have changed in the decades since ‘West Side Story’ first came out – they are deadlier, and their demographics are different – as are the means law enforcement use to control them.
Chilean police clash with anti-government demonstrators during a protest in Santiago, Chile, Nov. 12, 2019. Santiago is one of a dozen cities worldwide to see mass unrest in recent months. AP Photo/Esteban Felix

Urban unrest propels global wave of protests

From Santiago and La Paz to Beirut and Jakarta, many of the cities now gripped by protest share a common problem: They’ve grown too much, too fast.
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador with the families of the 43 students who went missing in 2014 in Guerrero state. He has ordered a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance. Reuters/Edgard Garrido

Mexico is bleeding. Can its new president stop the violence?

President López Obrador campaigned on some outside-the-box ideas to ‘pacify’ Mexico after 12 years of extreme violence. But so far his government has emphasized traditional law-and-order policies.
Italian policemen examined the charred car of Judge Paolo Borsellino, a day after a bomb attack killed him and his security detail in Palermo, July 20, 1992. Reuters/Tony Gentile

How the mafia uses violence to control politics

Italy saw 1,191 attacks on politicians from 2013 to 2015. A new study reveals, for the first time, the destructive effect this strategic political violence has on the nation’s political life.
Brazil’s jailhouse preachers may not explicitly condone violence against people of other faiths, but they’ve remained largely silent as their well-armed followers wage a holy war. Reuters/Ricardo Moraes

In Brazil, religious gang leaders say they’re waging a holy war

As hard-line Pentecostalism spreads across Brazil, some drug traffickers in gang-controlled areas of Rio de Janeiro are using religion as an excuse to attack nonbelievers.
Victims of violence by U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti say that the agency has neither investigated nor offered recompense for deaths and injuries that occurred during anti-gang raids. Daniel Aguilar/Reuters

Sent to Haiti to keep the peace, departing UN troops leave a damaged nation in their wake

On the eve of its departure from Haiti after a 13-year stabilization effort, the UN faces accusations that its troops used excessive force to fight gangs, killing innocent bystanders.
Sand for use in hydraulic fracturing operations at a processing plant in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin in 2011. AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)

The world is facing a global sand crisis

Overuse of sand for construction and industry is harming the environment and fueling violence around the world. Scientists explain why we need international rules to regulate sand mining and use.
Ngwe Thein says he was forced to work on a fishing trawler with inadequate food and little or no pay. APTN, Esther Htusan/AP Photo

Data science can help us fight human trafficking

July 30 marks the United Nations’ World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. How can computer scientists help combat this problem?

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