May 26, 2015
Karbala, Iraq

Video shows members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) distributing aid to Iraqi refugees from Mosul and Anbar in Karbala.
The video also includes interviews with Alwan Kamel, the spokesman of the ICRC in Iraq, Leila Zeineddin, a member of the local government of Karbala and refugees.

Kenyans work at a Khat export depot in Eastleigh. Khat is wrapped in banana leaves and sent around the world. International distribution of Khat is worth millions and run by individual Somali-Kenyan multimillionaires.

For one bunch of the best quality khat is $40 which is often shared between two people. Although for a bag of just the leaves, it can be as cheap as $1 a bag.

Local khat vendors come to Eastleigh to sell the stimulant as Somalis are their biggest customers. “I live outside, not here. Khat is more of a Somali thing, but I have to chew to show people it is not a bad thing,” says a local Kenyan trader.

Khat is also distributed within Nairobi. It is farmed in Meru and arrives in Eastleigh at 2pm everyday. It is preordered and bundled with the customers name written on their sack. Local vendors then collect their parcels and sell to local chewers.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) in the UK reports that more than 2,500 tonnes, worth about £13.8m, was imported by the UK in 2011/12, bringing in £2.8m of tax revenues. Khat is still legal in the UK, even though it has been banned by the US and other European countries. Khat is shipped to the UK four days a week from Kenya.

A beige National Guard vehicle pulls away from a makeshift food distribution center on the corner of Houston and Pitt Streets on the Lower East Side. Guardsmen were being tasked with distributing meals en masse is disaster-affected areas of the city.