National / International News

Iain Duncan Smith says he is "relaxed" over the question of whether well-off pensioners should pay back some of their state benefits.

Botswana President Ian Khama has received stitches after a caged cheetah hurt him in a "freak accident" at an army barracks, officials say.

Police Scotland name a 54-year-old man who was found murdered in his flat in Dumfries on Friday.

Some of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's relatives have alleged that a mysterious man may have turned him toward radical Islam. That man — known as Misha — has told a writer for The New York Review of Books that he'd had no contact with the bombing suspect for three years and that "I wasn't his teacher."

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While a bell signals the end of the day for most high schoolers, students outside Norman Thomas High School in New York City line up outside a bright blue truck to hear their cellphones ring.

“All right, basically, when we come in the morning, we come to this truck and they hold our phones until we get out of school," says Aaron Neil, a high school student who uses the truck. "And when we get out of school, we just come with a ticket that has our number, and we come and give the ticket in and then they give us our phone back.”

Ever since New York City banned electronic devices in public schools, a cottage industry has emerged: Charging kids a dollar a day to hold their phones during class. There are at least 11 storage trucks like this in the city.

“They have these trucks all around, all around New York, so they’ve got more than a thousand students going to this truck and they make mad money," says student Randy Campbell.

The trucks frequent schools with metal detectors and strict enforcement of the cellphone rule. Some complain that unfairly takes money from lower-income kids. Others call them sitting ducks for robbery.

Edison Bardowell runs the nonprofit, Legacy Youth Corp, which owns two phone trucks. He’s trying to introduce a spirit of corporate responsibility to the industry.

“We feel it’s best to take a good percentage ­-- 60 percent, 70 percent of the funds -- and reinvest it into the school.  The school needs help," says Bardowell. "The school needs extra funding for the programs, or the activities, or the training for the teachers.”

So far, Bardowell has raised $29,000 and hopes others will follow suit.

LG starts taking orders for the world's first curved OLED television and plans to begin deliveries next month.

Sheridan Smith and Broadchurch actress Olivia Colman are to play rivals for the affections of The Walking Dead star David Morrissey in a new BBC One drama.

Twenty-four hours of news photos: 29 April

Up to 40 people have been injured following a large explosion in the centre of the Czech capital Prague.

A Dutch man accused of mounting one of the biggest cyber-attacks was able to target networks from the back of a van, police say.

Santander's chief executive Alfredo Saenz steps down after a legal battle, and is replaced by Javier Marin.

At least 18 people are killed and dozens injured as five car bombs hit Shia-majority provinces in southern Iraq, officials say.

Also: Photographing the library at Guantanamo Bay; authors annotating their own work; and the best books coming out this week.

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A video of an unfortunate woman trying to parallel park her car in Belfast becomes an internet sensation.

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee question whether the government's £310bn infrastructure spending plans are 'credible'.

David Beckham was sent off just six minutes after coming on as a sub in Paris St-Germain's 1-0 win at Evian.

The explosion in the center of the Czech capital heavily damaged one building and shattered windows in nearby structures. There were fears that at least a few people might be trapped in rubble.

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In this special podcast, we go behind the scenes with ProPublica’s Michael Grabell and Marketplace's Jeff Tyler to hear the backstory of their reporting in Chicago’s Little Village, the largest Mexican community in the Midwest.  In Little Village, a network of so-called "raiteros" find and hire immigrants, many undocumented, but often charge those workers fees that push their pay below minimum wage.

Marketplace and ProPublica’s joint investigation, Taken for a Ride: Temp Agencies and 'Raiteros' in Immigrant Chicago, examines how some of America's best known companies are benefitting from this underworld of labor brokers.

FEATURE: Going for a ride with Chicago's 'raiteros'
In Chicago some of America’s best-known companies and largest temp agencies benefit from an underworld of labor brokers, known as "raiteros." Those raiteros charge workers fees, pushing their pay below minimum wage. Marketplace's Jeff Tyler Reports. Read more

"The biggest surprise was seeing the big well-known brand-name companies that were benefiting from this system," Grabell says in our 15-minute podcast interview. "We heard workers going to Ty Inc., the people who make Beanie Baby stuffed animals. We saw people going to work and cut vegetables for Fresh Express. We heard from workers who said they were packing products with labels for Frito Lay, Sony, on behalf WalMart."

"These are big-name companies," he added. "This wasn't fly-by-night temp agencies. It wasn’t your small, mom-and-pop factory that was doing this. These are the companies that really represent the American economy."

ProPublica and Marketplace contacted all of the companies identified in the investigation. None responded with comments.

On the challenges of finding sources for the story

After dozens of interviews and months of reporting, ProPublica approached Marketplace to help tell the story on the radio.

"I got involved in this story when ProPublica and Michael came to us and asked to collaborate with us," Tyler says. "Michael had already done a ton of research."

But telling the story on radio came with some unexpected challenges in Chicago, he says.

"For one thing, people get a lot more shy when they see a big microphone come out and a lot of people got skittish," Tyler says. "So even though I had lined up some interviews with people that Michael had already spoken to, a lot of those folks decided that they didn’t want to do another interview with a radio reporter." 

"I ended up working with a local person from the Chicago Workers Collaborative, and we went out in the Little Village neighborhood … and we just went up and down the street asking everybody that we saw ‘hey have you ever worked with these guys, do you know anybody who has and would like to speak with us’ and we found a number of good sources that way."

To hear more from Grabell and Tyler about their interviews and reporting on the ground in Chicago, click to listen.

Read the investigative report from ProPublica's Michael Grabell, and explore more features and background from his reporting on ProPublica.org. Read more from this investigation.

CHICAGO — Ty Inc. became one of the world’s largest manufacturers of stuffed animals thanks to the Beanie Babies craze in the 1990s.

But it has stayed on top partly by using an underworld of labor brokers known as raiteros, who pick up workers from Chicago’s street corners and shuttle them to Ty’s warehouse on behalf of one of the nation’s largest temp agencies.

The system provides just-in-time labor at the lowest possible cost to large companies — but also effectively pushes workers’ pay far below the minimum wage.

Continue reading this story on Propublica.org

RELATED: Marketplace teamed up with ProPublica for a special joint investigation to examine the active "raitero" system in Chicago’s Little Village, the largest Mexican community in the Midwest. Follow more coverage in our series Taken for a Ride: Temp Agencies and ‘Raiteros’ in Immigrant Chicago.

FEATURE: Going for a ride with Chicago's 'raiteros'
In Chicago some of America’s best-known companies and largest temp agencies benefit from an underworld of labor brokers, known as "raiteros." Those raiteros charge workers fees, pushing their pay below minimum wage. Marketplace's Jeff Tyler Reports. Read more

LISTEN: The Backstory
Marketplace reporter Jeff Tyler and ProPublica's Michael Grabell answer questions about their investigation, finding sources and reporting in this special Marketplace podcast. Listen

Nickel and dimed
Imagine paying a fee to work. Paying a fee to get your paycheck cashed. In one neighborhood in Chicago, workers face financial hurdles because of a system of labor brokers. Marketplace’s Jeff Tyler reports. Read more

The business risks of subcontracting (coming Tuesday)
Subcontracting is nothing new in the economy. In Chicago, some companies contract with temp firms, which then subcontract with underground labor brokers to recruit workers. How do these middlemen save money for their employers? Marketplace's Jeff Tyler reports.

Ten years on, no end in sight to Sudan conflict