The Mexican women who kicked out the cartels

Many young Latina women live their lives in fear of gang violence. The Montgomery County Street Outreach Network rescues girls in danger and offers services to them in order to help them change their chances of success.

Corruption in Mexico is ingrained in all systems and interactions. President Vicente Fox and his administration are trying to change this. Their mentality is that for corruption to truly be fought the government needs to actively make change and implement rules to counteract it, and some of Fox's changes are now beginning to see improvements.

In California’s wildfire-prone Sierras, forest managers are turning to an ancient, if not quite intuitive, tool: more fire. In 2019, the Forest Service will manage 250,000 acres with controlled burns and “mechanical thinning,” using equipment to take out small trees. Though such plans face some hurdles, states across the country are adopting them, reducing wildfire severity while often benefiting ecosystems.

In the wake of more than 100 forest fires in Maule, Chile, hundreds of burned acres of forest are being replanted by three Border Collies named Das, Olivia, and Summer and an organization called Pewos. The dogs bound through miles of terrain with special backpacks that release native seeds to regrow the area. So far the dogs have worked in 15 forests in the region and plants are starting to come back.

In Indonesia, transferring land management rights to local residents is slow-going, but one community is setting an example for what can happen when the residents are in charge. Mandiri farmers formed a cooperative and began replacing hillsides; now, tourism to the area has increased and attitudes towards the land and community have changed.

New Jersey’s responses to police misconduct offer stark lessons in how certain failures can allow troubled officers to hop from job to job undetected. The state lacks a central database of police misconduct and remains one of only five states that cannot revoke an officer’s credentials because of performance. In one case, an officer with serial failures at nine departments, involving 16 incidents in which people he arrested got injured, the red flags that should have been raised never were, allowing him to mistreat residents of majority-Black neighborhoods despite a record indicating racism and brutality.

Arkansas’ judicial oversight agency has the staffing and persistence to hold bad judges accountable in ways that counter a nationwide pattern of weak enforcement and judicial impunity. The Arkansas Judicial Discipline & Disability Commission has a staff that’s almost three times as large as the national per-judge average and it publicly disciplines judges more than twice the national rate. It is one of the few such agencies that will investigate anonymous complaints, frequently a barrier to starting judicial misconduct probes.

A growing number of governments, companies, and nonprofit organizations are working together with new technology and data to identify fishing vessels that are breaking laws and engaging in human rights violations. Using satellite imagery and tracking signals, for example, a philanthropic company and a nonprofit worked with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime to help the Ghanian navy arrest four vessels for illegal fishing practices. Technology by itself won’t stop forced labor and unregulated ships, but it can be helpful for cash-strapped governments looking to increase oversight of their fisheries.

As a way to combat climate change, scientists are experimenting with genetically modified trees as a way to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to store in its leaves, roots, and trunk. The startup Living Carbon has genetically modified poplar and pine seeds in the ground and expect them to be ready by the end of the year. Some scientists are worried about how these trees can impact forest ecosystems, but they grow faster than normal trees, allowing them to study and assess the risks quicker.

With support from Accountability Lab and Transparency International, seven countries have held “Integrity Idol” contests to recognize their most honest and helpful public servants. Winners have become people others want to emulate. The contests help fight corruption and inspire civic participation.