Kenya’s slum football team kicks poverty to the curb

Extreme poverty is set to rise this year for the first time in more than two decades, with coronavirus expected to push up to 115 million people into that category, the World Bank has said.

French charity Secours Catholique recently published its annual report on poverty. The NGO, which helped around 1.4 million people in 2019, estimates that their median income is €537 per month, well below the poverty line in France. Due to the Covid-19 crisis, people across job sectors have been left with little or no work, with many households slipping into poverty as a result. Our colleagues at France 2 report, with FRANCE 24's James Vasina.

The year 2020 should have been marked by a further reduction in poverty around the world, but instead the Covid-19 pandemic has reversed decades of progress. According to estimates by the World Bank, up to 115 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty in 2020 as a result of Covid-19.

When the coronavirus pandemic shuttered restaurants in California, Aleida Ramirez lost her job as a waitress, plunging her - along with many other single mothers - into a vicious cycle of poverty, unpaid bills and reliance on food banks. Marisol Gonzales and Maria Lara have faced similar struggles on the other side of the country, in New York and Washington. The pandemic has been particularly hard on women who work in the service sector, which has been crippled by the economic crisis.

Spain's struggling economy had been showing improvement when the coronavirus pandemic hit the country hard, throwing it into a tailspin. Food banks have become essential in helping people with no foreseeable job prospects feed their families.

Lawyer Shadrack Wambui has turned to boxing to help young people in poor Nairobi neighbourhoods, combining his passion for the sport with informal lessons on the law and legal clinics to resolve marital disputes.

Food parcels are distributed by charity groups in Tokyo to help the the growing number of Japanese pushed into poverty by the coronavirus pandemic.

Local authorities in China's Hunan province designated farmer Liu Qingyou's family as impoverished in 2014 as Xi ramped up a "targeted poverty relief" strategy that sent officials door-to-door to assess poorer households. But from his vantage point, Liu and his family of five still live modestly, and he worries for their future -- despite being counted as lifted from poverty.

Rights activists and medical experts have urged the government to take concrete actions to prevent underage marriages. Activists say poverty is one of the biggest push factors behind child marriage in Pakistan.

Here are a few reasons to pick up a copy of The Guardian on Thursday. Find these stories and much more when you grab a copy of The Guardian on Thursday.⁣

The Federal Executive Council has approved the National Poverty Reduction With Growth Strategy submitted by the Presidential Economic Advisory Council.

Police fired tear gas canisters at DW's East Africa correspondent Mariel Müller while she was covering a protest in Nairobi. Amnesty International and the Foreign Press Association of Africa have condemned the attack.