Kekeletso Lekaota spends her work days nurturing rows of cannabis plants for harvest. Pruning a few yellowed leaves from stems with thick, flowering heads, she says the job requires a soft touch and delicate hands.

It’s a crop Lekaota had no experience with 18 months ago, when she saw an advertisement for a grower in her local newspaper. Now, the 27-year-old trains others how to cultivate the plants for MG Health Ltd., a supplier of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products, at a farm and oil extraction facility in Lesotho, the tiny, mountainous kingdom bordered on all sides by South Africa.

“I didn’t know what cannabis was—it was only when I was applying for this job that I realized it’s dagga,” Lekaota said, using a word for weed derived from the local Khoisan languages, as she readied the greenhouses for their required 12 hours of darkness.

Marijuana has been widely cultivated across Lesotho, one of Africa’s poorest countries, since time immemorial—long used as medicine by the nativ..

The executioners used a government-owned backhoe to dig shallow graves on a rugged hilltop. When authorities in the small town in the southern Philippines arrived at the scene, they used the same backhoe to dig up 57 bullet-riddled corpses, including those of 32 journalists and media workers.

The men and women had been en route to register an opposition candidate for an impending election—or, in the case of the journalists, to report on the politician’s candidacy. But before they made it to the election office they were stopped by a group of armed men, forced out of their vehicles, lined up and shot.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called it the single deadliest attack on the press in history.

On Thursday, more than 10 years after the massacre, a court in the Philippines found several members of a powerful political clan guilty in the attack.

The court in Quezon City outside Manila gave verdicts for almost 200 defendants charged with murder and other crimes. Former mayor..

For centuries, Star Street in Bethlehem—believed to be the path taken by Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to the Church of the Nativity—was a bustling hub for craftsmen, workshops, and souvenir stores. It was the center of Palestine’s mother-of-pearl industry in the late 19th century until it crumbled a century later amid a tide of global economic stagnation. Star Street fell into decline, particularly after Bethlehem, a small town of 25,000 in the West Bank, was besieged by Israeli troops at the height of the Second Intifada (or Palestinian uprising) in 2002.

But now Star Street is being restored—and with Christmas just around the corner, Palestinians are hoping that visitors and pilgrims will make their way in large numbers to celebrate Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Christmas is the most popular time for visitors; this season alone, the city’s mayor expects 1.4 million tourists in Bethlehem. “I have been mayor for 2.5 years. I have celebrated Christmas for three seasons and each season, ..