As the country’s homeless districts gentrify, the City of Angels’ has only grown more violent and squalid. What can be done?

“I think this tragic event is more a reflection of Skid Row itself than a reflection of the police or the man who was killed,” the Rev. Andy Bales tells Yahoo News. (Bales runs the Union Rescue Mission shelter and has worked on Skid Row for 10 years.) “We’re asking the LAPD to maintain peace in a horrible environment. Skid Row is full of people trapped in an untenable living situation — a Twilight Zone they can’t escape.”

If you don’t live in Los Angeles and you think you know what L.A.’s Skid Row is like, think again. Nothing anywhere else in America compares. San Francisco’s Tenderloin is tiny. Seattle’s once-destitute Skid Row is full of cool galleries and cafés. And the Bowery in New York is now home to the New Museum of Contemporary Art and a sprawling Whole Foods complete with its own craft-beer emporium.

In downtown L.A., however, as many as 54 blocks — between Third Street and Seventh Street, from Alameda to Main — are almost entirely given over to the homeless, the limbless, the drug-addicted and the mentally ill. Battered tents line the boulevards. Mountains of garbage block the sidewalks. The air smells like urine, feces and burning crack. And everywhere there are people — dazed, disheveled, disabled; stretched out on lawn chairs or sprawled on the pavement; some scoring heroin from marked tents, others injecting it between their toes in plain sight, mere blocks from some of the hippest new bars and restaurants in town.

And that’s just during the day. At night, Skid Row gets considerably hairier.

CLICK IMAGE for slideshow: A man wakes up on downtown Los Angeles' Skid Row, March 7, 2013. (REUTERS/Lucy Nich …

The shooting occurred shortly before noon Sunday in the 500 block of San Pedro. According to published accounts from the LAPD and various eyewitnesses, police were responding to a 911 call reporting a possible robbery in the area when they encountered Africa scuffling with another man inside a tent. The cops ordered Africa to come out; he refused.

A confrontation ensued. The graphic, disturbing video, which was later posted on Facebook, shows the police punching and Tasering the man before one of them appears to shout, “Drop the gun! Drop the gun!” Five shots are fired. Africa was pronounced dead at the scene.

Whenever police shoot and kill a civilian, society asks the obvious question: “How did this happen?” And rightfully so. Los Angeles’ independent inspector general and district attorney are both planning to investigate the shooting “very, very carefully,” according to Police Commission President Steve Soboroff.

But the answers they are likely to find — there are now multiple eyewitness videos circulating online, and at least two security cameras and one police body camera also captured the altercation — may be fairly clear cut: the LAPD is claiming that Africa grabbed an officer’s gun and that the cops felt compelled to use deadly force.

The more difficult questions, perhaps, are the ones that fewer Americans will ask. Why was a troubled man who reportedly spent 10 years in a mental facility living in squalor on the streets of the nation’s last dedicated homeless district? Why was he surrounded by as many as 6,000 men, women and children in similarly dire straits — 2,000 of whom sleep on the sidewalks? How can a place like this still exist? And what can be done about it?

“The idea years ago was, ‘Let’s corral everybody in this area and then turn our backs on them so we can enjoy life in the rest of this beautiful city,” Bales says. “We wound up with 2,000 people on streets and predators moving in to feed their addictions. It’s everything you can imagine. People prostituting themselves for cash. People robbing other people. Violence for uncollected debts. It has become survival of the fittest.”

Some have claimed that the situation on Skid Row improved with the arrival of former (and future) NYPD Chief Bill Bratton, whose department instituted its Safer Cities Initiative in 2006 in a broken-windows-based attempt to restore public order by making arrests for minor offenses. According to the City Journal, “In September 2006, there were 1,876 people sleeping on the street and 518 tents; in early June [2007], there were 700 people and 315 tents.” Meanwhile, “major felonies on Skid Row plummeted 42 percent in the first half of 2007, the largest decrease in all of Los Angeles. There were 241 fewer victims of violent crime in that period. In downtown as a whole, the murder rate dropped over 75 percent.”

A homeless man, left, sits among his possessions, Thursday Feb. 28, 2013 on Skid Row in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick …

But visiting Skid Row today, it’s hard to argue that the problem is any closer to being solved than it was 10 years ago. In fact, as it becomes more difficult to commit people to mental health facilities, and as California prisons release inmates early to ease overcrowding, the population of Skid Row has been inching back up. And despite the fact that Skid Row’s 107 homeless charities receive $54 million each year and nuanced community policing is now the norm — the LAPD works “in small groups that include county mental health workers and volunteers” who “ask the homeless what they need and refer them to programs and places that can help” — the neighborhood is still a dead end.

“Skid Row is a travesty as a construct. It’s a toxic environment for the homeless,” developer Tom Gilmore recently told CNN. “Nobody is going to rise up from there. It has to be unwound because it’s this Gordian knot of social neglect.”

How that knot can be undone is the most difficult question of all. The city’s Housing for Heath program, which seeks first to shelter people in “permanent supportive housing” before tackling deeper issues, is a promising start. But so far, it can only help the fortunate few. Bales believes that “we need to pull out all the stops,” calling for mobile vans to “come in and care for” residents and “dozens” of new retreats designed to “take the mentally ill out of that horrendous environment.” He also insists that L.A. must abandon its NIMBY (not in my backyard) mentality and decentralize services for the homeless so that “every region can take care of its own brothers and sisters.”

“I am hoping that something — maybe this incident — will wake us up enough to have a change of heart,” he says. “Only a big embarrassment will force us to take the action we need to take.”

Money may play a part as well. Once nearly abandoned, the area around Skid Row is rapidly gentrifying. A new artisanal cocktail bar or hipster hotel seems to open every day in downtown L.A., which GQ recently dubbed “the new capital of cool in America.” More than 50,000 new residents have moved in over the past two decades. Boosters like Gilmore believe that these changes will finally make it impossible to ignore Skid Row, for reasons both social and economic. In 2014, Mayor Eric Garcetti pledged to end veteran homelessness by the end of this year. But even that effort has made little impact on Skid Row itself.

“When it comes to policing Skid Row, it seems as if my fellow officers and I are keeping our fingers in the cracks of a dam to prevent it from breaking,” LAPD Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph recently wrote. (Joseph has patrolled the community for 17 years.) “Though many people may not realize it, we are in the throes of a mental health state of emergency.”

A sign reading Skid Row is painted on a wall next to the Los Angeles Mission, September 22, 2014 in Los Angeles, …

In the wake of Sunday’s shooting, Americans will continue to debate whether the LAPD did something wrong. As well they should. But they may also want to consider why the man known only as Africa was in the line of fire in the first place — and ask whether the time has come for Los Angeles to stop tolerating its intolerable Skid Row.

A view is seen from the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) in Sao Sebastiao do Uatuma in the middle of the Amazon forest in Amazonas state January 10, 2015. REUTERS/Bruno Kelly

By Kyle Plantz

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Satellite images suggest tropical forests from the Amazon to the Philippines are disappearing at a far more rapid pace than previously thought, a University of Maryland team of forest researchers say.

The annual rate of deforestation from 1990 to 2010 was 62 percent higher than in the previous decade, and higher than previous estimates, according to a study carried out of satellite maps covering 80 percent of the world’s tropical forests.

The new study questions the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) assessment, which suggested that the rate of deforestation actually decreased 25 percent from 1990 to 2010.

Until now, "the Forest Resource Assessment (FRA) report of the United Nation's FAO was the only one available source to estimate long term forest change and its trends," said Do-Hyung Kim, lead author of the study that is expected to be published in Geophysical Research Letters.

"However, the FAO report has been criticized for inconsistency in its survey methods and the definition of what is a forest. Our result is important in that we are providing a satellite-based alternative for the FRA," he said.

The FAO assessment has been based in large part on self reporting from tropical forest countries, Kim said. In contrast, Kim and his University of Maryland colleagues analyzed 5,444 Landsat images from 1990, 2000, 2005 and 2010 to assess how much forest was lost or gained 34 countries, which account for about 80 percent of tropical forest land in the world.

During the 1990 to 2000 time period, the annual net forest loss across all the countries was 4 million hectares (about 15,000 square miles or 40,000 square kilometers) per year, according to the study.

From 2000 to 2010, the net forest loss increased 62 percent to 6.5 million hectares (about 25,000 square miles or 65,000 square kilometers) per year – an area of forest clearing the size of Sri Lanka each year.

BIGGEST LOSSES IN LATIN AMERICA

The study found that tropical Latin America showed the largest increase annual net forest losses — 1.4 million hectares (about 5,400 square miles or 14,000 square kilometers) per year from the 1990s to the 2000s. Brazil topped the list with an annual 0.6 million-hectare loss (about 2,300 square miles or 6,000 square kilometers) per year.

Tropical Asia showed the second largest increase in deforestation with 0.8 million hectares (about 3,100 square miles or 8,000 square kilometers) lost per year, led by countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines.

Tropical Africa showed the least amount of annual net forest area loss, but still saw a steady increase due to cutting primarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar.

The U.N.’s Forest Resource Assessment reported during the same time period that there was a 25 percent decrease in deforestation in tropical forest countries.

SATELLITES OF ‘LIMITED VALUE’

However, Rodney Keenan, a University of Melbourne forest science researcher who participated in the FAO’s last forest assessment, said the agency’s report might not be as flawed as it seems.

“The Kim study uses automated remotely sensed imagery only,” he said. “This gives a picture of one aspect of forest change, while ground estimates and management information give other perspectives,” such as whether land without trees is set to be reforested.

“Most experts consider that relying on remote sensing alone, as these authors have done, is of limited value in understanding forest dynamics and management,” he said.

Keenan agreed that both approaches could be considered “complementary” and the new study presents “interesting new data”.

However, Kim said the Forest Resource Assessment missed deforestation that is obvious in satellite images. For example, the FRA reported no change of deforestation rates in 16 of 34 countries looked at in both studies, including Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The new study, however, found increasing deforestation in those countries, he said.

Drivers of increased deforestation include an increase in urban population, logging and growth of agriculture, according to research from NASA.

Deforestation contributes about 10 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming, studies suggest, which has led to a range of efforts to reduce the problem.

The UN-led Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) effort, for instance, helps channel money from richer nations to poorer tropical forest ones in exchange for efforts to protect tropical forests.

Satellite imaging is one way to hold countries more accountable for their deforestation, Kim said. He noted that “as deforestation accelerates, we can project climate change will also accelerate.”

Keenan said better understanding where and why deforestation happens can help “explore the opportunities to reduce (forest) conversion.”

“Reducing deforestation, increasing forest area and sustainably managing our forests can be an important contribution to action on climate change,” he said.

The FAO is set to issue an updated forest assessment in September at the World Forestry Congress.

(Reporting by Kyle Plantz; editing by Laurie Goering)

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif addresses the 28th Session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva March 2, 2015. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Arshad Mohammed

MONTREUX, Switzerland (Reuters) - Iran on Tuesday rejected as "unacceptable" U.S. President Barack Obama's demand that it freeze sensitive nuclear activities for at least 10 years, but said it would continue talks aimed at securing a deal, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported.

"Iran will not accept excessive and illogical demands," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying by Fars.

"Obama’s stance ... is expressed in unacceptable and threatening phrases ... ," he reportedly said, adding that negotiations underway in Switzerland would nonetheless carry on.

Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sat down for a second day of meetings hours after Obama had told Reuters that Iran must commit to a verifiable halt of at least 10 years on sensitive nuclear work for a landmark atomic deal to be reached.

The aim of the negotiations is to persuade Iran to restrain its nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions that have crippled the oil exporter's economy.

The United States and some of its allies, notably Israel, suspect Iran of using its civil nuclear program as a cover to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Iran denies this, saying it is for peaceful purposes such as generating electricity.

Kerry and Zarif met in the Swiss lakeside town of Montreux as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to criticize the diplomacy in a speech to Congress in Washington.

Despite the tough tone of Zarif's remarks quoted by Fars, the Iranian struck a more conciliatory tone when he spoke briefly to reporters after about two hours of talks with Kerry.

Asked if the two sides had reached an agreement, Zarif replied: "We'll try, that's why we are here."

"There is a seriousness that we need to move forward. As we have said all along, we need the necessary political will to understand that the only way to move forward is though negotiations," he added.

Speaking after the morning round of talks, Kerry told reporters: "We're working away. Productively."

The two sides have set a deadline of late March to reach a framework agreement and of June for a comprehensive final settlement that would curb Iran's nuclear activity to ensure it cannot be put to bomb making in return for the lifting of the economic sanctions.

Iran wants a swift end to sanctions in any deal -- one of the sticking points in the high-level negotiations.

While the United States has played the lead role in the talks with Iran, it is representing five other major powers: Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia -- a group collectively known both as the P5+1 and the E3+3.

Speaking in Geneva, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier sounded an upbeat note, saying the negotiations had made more progress in the past year than in the previous decade.

"The talks between the E3+3 and Iran are also advancing well," he told the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament. "I would even go so far as to say that in 10 years of negotiations, we never achieved as much progress as we have made this year."

(Reporting By Arshad Mohammed and Lucien Libert in Montreux, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Crispian Balmer)

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