CHISINAU, June 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Laura was barely 18 when a palm reader told her she could make $180 a month working in beetroot farms in Russia – an attractive sum for a girl struggling to make a living in the town of Drochia, in Moldova’s impoverished north. That she had no passport, the fortune teller said, was not a problem. Her future employers would help her cross the border. “They gave me a (fake) birth certificate stating I was 14,” Laura, who declined to give her real...

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Moldova, Europe’s poorest country, is looking to use blockchain, the digital tool behind the cryptocurrency bitcoin, to stamp out child trafficking with help from United Nations experts, a government official said on Wednesday. Digital identification experts from the U.N. Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and other agencies were in Chisinau this week to discuss possible ways of using the technology to protect children from exploitation. Every year,...

ROME, June 21 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Thousands of Syrian refugees in Jordan's Azraq camp don't pay for their food with cash but by a scan of their eyes. Purchases are then recorded on a computing platform based on blockchain - the technology behind bitcoin. Iris recognition devices at the checkouts of the camp's supermarket authenticate customers' identities and deduct what they spend from sums they receive as aid from the World Food Programme (WFP). The U.N. agency launched the...