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Tomorrow marks the third International Day of the Girl Child, designated by the U.N. to highlight the need to create a better world for adolescent girls.

It's a day when activists ramp up efforts to make the public aware of issues like child marriage, violence against girls and the lack of access to education. It's also a time for activists to push world leaders to make commitments — financial or policy-wise — to end those problems.

But these days, it seems like every other day is the International Day of this, that or the other thing. In October alone, the U.N. has designated 13 days to celebrate teachers, the eradication of poverty, even the U.N. itself.

It makes you wonder: How effective are these commemorative days? Goats and Soda asked a few scholars who specialize in global issues. Their answers were decidedly mixed.

Commemorative days have their defenders. Activists single out an issue for the public, government and private donors to focus on. "It forces a lot of governments and agencies to comment on a certain issue," says Casey Dunning, a policy analyst at the D.C.-based think tank Center for Global Development.

And it's more than just comments.

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A few years back, the challenges of girls weren't even on the agenda of world leaders, much less on the minds of the average person. The first Day of the Girl, in 2012, changed that. It focused on ending child marriage, enabling activists to bring the issue to the fore, says Lyric Thompson, a senior policy manager at the International Center for Research on Women.

That year, the U.S. State Department included child marriage in the annual Human Rights Report, putting pressure on countries to end the practice. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also announced a slew of initiatives, including tackling child marriage in Bangladesh, where rates are among the highest in the world.

Between the U.S. government and private donors, Thompson says, roughly $100 million was pledged to those initiatives.

So the day led to new commitments to help girls. But you can't prove that the day itself had any impact on the ground, says Daniel Esser, an American University professor who does research on the effectiveness of international aid.

"My concern is they don't serve the people they're intended to serve, but the agencies that invent and popularize them," he says. So the benefit may turn out to be bigger budgets and staff along with more political leverage for those agencies.

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That's good for the agencies, but what about the girls?

Esser points to a 2013 study that asked whether money that the United Kingdom invested in global development groups led to greater impact on the ground. The results, he says, are "sobering."

The British government rated the impact of agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Development Fund for Women as "poor." The World Health Organization and the United Nations Population Fund received an "adequate" score.

So does that means we should do away with dedicated days?

Dunning says you can't expect one day to spark a revolution. But that doesn't mean it's not an effective way to raise awareness.

"It plants a seed," says Thompson. "And if we're lucky, that seed's going to wiggle and grow."

child marriage

International Day of the Girl Child

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On the second story of the municipal palace in Iguala, Mexico, Mayor Jose Luis Abarca occupied the large corner office. His wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, head of the city's family welfare department, occupied the one right next door. From there, residents say, the two ruthlessly ruled over this city of 150,000 in the southern state of Guerrero. A national newspaper dubbed the duo the "imperial couple."

But on Sept. 30, their reign ended. The mayor, with his wife by his side, asked the city council for a leave of absence. Neither has been seen since.

That happened four days after 43 university students disappeared after a confrontation with police in Iguala. Twenty-eight bodies — thought to be some of the missing students — were discovered in a nearby mass grave a week ago. More mass graves were discovered Friday.

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Dubbed the "imperial couple" by a Mexican newspaper, the mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda are wanted for questioning in the case of the missing students and the mass graves found near Iguala. They are shown here in a photo taken in May. Alejandrino Gonzalez/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Alejandrino Gonzalez/AP

Dubbed the "imperial couple" by a Mexican newspaper, the mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda are wanted for questioning in the case of the missing students and the mass graves found near Iguala. They are shown here in a photo taken in May.

Alejandrino Gonzalez/AP

The case highlights the corruption and collusion between politicians and drug traffickers in many parts of rural Mexico today.

Residents say Iguala changed under the current Mayor Abarca's tenure.

"Crime has been terrible since Jose Luis Abarca took over," says Claudia Guitierrez, a 20-year-old law student. "Iguala was never like this before."

These days Mexico's new paramilitary gendarmerie patrols Iguala's streets. Twenty-two local cops are under arrest, four are fugitives, and the remainder of the force was relieved of duty.

Authorities say that on Sept. 26, officers shot at three buses of students from a poor, rural teaching college who had come into town soliciting donations. After the shooting, with six people dead, the local cops were seen corralling the surviving students into patrol cars. Reportedly some of the officers confessed to turning the students over to a local drug gang, which later killed them.

Authorities say they don't have a motive yet, but focus has centered on Iguala's mayor and his wife, who have well-known connections to traffickers.

Iguala's First Family's Open Secret

Sergio Fajardo Carillo owns a local radio station in Iguala. He says the mayoral family's connection to drug traffickers was an open secret in the town — and throughout the state.

Three brothers of Pineda, the mayor's wife, were lieutenants in the ruthless Beltran-Leyva organized crime gang, according to prosecutors and the family's own statements. Two were killed in a shootout with rivals five years ago, according to news reports.

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A third, Alberto "The Eraser" Pineda, was released from prison last year and is allegedly the head of the Guerreros Unidos gang — an offshoot from the once-powerful Beltran organization — that is attempting to take over Iguala. National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido says the cartel, which has been implicated in the students' disappearance, specializes in the transport of marijuana and heroin to Chicago.

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Clandestine graves are seen near Iguala on Monday. State officials have been unable so far to determine whether the 28 bodies found in the graves are of the students who were attacked by local police. Eduardo Verdugo/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Eduardo Verdugo/AP

Clandestine graves are seen near Iguala on Monday. State officials have been unable so far to determine whether the 28 bodies found in the graves are of the students who were attacked by local police.

Eduardo Verdugo/AP

In a video released this week, the mayor's own mother-in-law says he was on the drug gang's payroll, receiving $155,000 a month, to give the crime organization carte blanche over the city.

Few appeared to complain — Iguala's streets were paved and the budget was in the black for the first time in years.

The mayor, as in many towns throughout this troubled region of Mexico, was able to enrich himself and family members, collude with gangs and use the local police force to maintain control, according to prosecutors, rivals and even members of his own political party — including one who publicly accused the mayor of murdering her husband.

Iguala City Councilwoman Sofia Mendoza says it was the mayor who shot her husband, Arturo Hernandez, a local community organizer, last year. He and the mayor had been longtime political rivals and argued publicly at a city council meeting the day before Hernandez was killed.

She says a witness, who saw the mayor shoot her husband in the head, even gave a statement to state prosecutors, but they did nothing.

Drug Cartel Boss Dies A Second Time

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"This man had so much power, there was little I could do, I just had to take it," says Mendoza. "I couldn't bear to look at him anymore."

Abarca, the mayor, took away Mendoza's office. She holds meetings with local constituents at a plastic table on the street behind city hall.

'Embarrassment For The President'

The revelations of local corruption and crime in Guerrero have embarrassed the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

His attorney general called international journalists to a meeting earlier this week at his office to discuss the case. Jesus Murillo Karam defended his decision not to investigate Iguala's leaders earlier.

"Look, if your cousin commits a crime, that doesn't mean I can investigate you, even if it's your brother," Murillo said. "I need evidence, not suspicions."

Murillo said he knew about the murder accusations against the mayor, but homicides, he said, fall under state jurisdiction, not federal officials.

Mendoza, the Iguala city councilwoman, says authorities should have done more.

"If they had paid attention to me and what happened to my husband," she says, "this all could have been avoided."

Authorities are searching for the mayor, his wife and Iguala's police chief — who are all wanted for questioning — and for the still-missing students.

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Imagine there's no tipping. By getting rid of gratuities, a few restaurants believe they'll make life easier for customers, while providing a more stable income to servers.

"It eliminates the pressure on the guest to worry about paying our staff," says Brian Oliveira, chef at Girard, a French-style restaurant opening in Philadelphia in a few weeks that intends to offer its staff up to $13 an hour in salary, plus health benefits, but with no tips.

Successful ideas in the restaurant business always get copied. Oliveira said he and his partners were inspired by no-tipping experiments happening at a handful of restaurants in California, Texas and New York.

Those restaurants say employees are more satisfied and that service has actually improved. Moving away from tipping may never spread industrywide, but it's a model that may help answer some complaints about poor salaries.

Packhouse, a no-tip meat emporium that opened in Newport, Ky., in January, pays servers $10 an hour and gives them the chance to earn 20 percent of their total sales per shift if they hit certain targets — whichever is higher. Servers bring home the bigger amount most days.

"If it's dead all day, they don't walk out making nine bucks," says Kurt Stephens, Packhouse's general manager.

Not all servers will be better off under this type of arrangement, but lack of tipping makes for easier accounting for customers and the business itself.

Menu prices might read a bit higher, but diners will know what they'll end up paying at meal's end — probably no more than they would have at an equivalent place where they'd tip.

And lack of tips simplifies compliance for restaurateurs obligated to make up the difference between servers' base pay and the standard minimum wage, if they don't make enough in tips. Currently, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 an hour, although that baseline is higher in a majority of states.

Tipping creates winners and losers. The people who bring you your steaks at high-end restaurants are probably doing quite well off tips, but many restaurant workers can't count on bringing home big bucks, especially after slow shifts on off days. A recent study from the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute found that 17 percent of restaurant workers live in poverty.

"I'm very aware that at some establishments, people would do far better under the existing tipping model," says Bill Perry, who is about to open Public Option, a no-tipping pub in Washington, D.C. "In our category, which is much more neighborhood-oriented, we're concerned that the variability of tips may not produce a good income."

This is an idea still very much in the making. Girard and Public Option aren't even open yet. With only a few other restaurants around the country having made the move away from tipping, it's not at all clear this will be a successful alternative.

But the increasing pressure on restaurants to pay their employees more — from fast-food workers to waiters hustling for tips — is one reason outlets should consider the tip-free approach, says Dennis Lombardi, a restaurant consultant based in Columbus, Ohio.

Wage increases are bound to translate into higher menu prices. "By going to nontipping, they can pay that living wage," Lombardi says, "without having the additional cost of tipping that will determine whether the customer comes back to the restaurant."

It works in Europe. But tipping has long been a part of the American way of dining out, a tool for diners to reward good service — and, less often, to punish those who fail to satisfy. The desire to earn good tips is part of what prompts people to give good service and "promotes the spirit of hospitality," says Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research at the National Restaurant Association.

"Along with flexible work schedules, tipping is part of what makes [being] a restaurant server an attractive profession for millions of Americans," he says.

Even a labor advocate such as Saru Jayaraman, who directs the food labor research center at the University of California, Berkeley and calls the no-tip approach "a fabulous model," worries that it won't pay off for all workers. An increased base wage is a step in the right direction, she says, but she worries that salaries of $10 or $13 an hour won't be enough.

"Restaurant workers are professionals and in other countries are paid like professionals — $18 or $20 an hour," Jayaraman says.

But many restaurant workers in the U.S. don't make anything near those amounts, she concedes. So the prospect of a guaranteed income will be enticing for many who have come home with hardly anything to show after a quiet Tuesday afternoon lunch shift, suggests Perry, the D.C. restaurateur.

"Some of the folks we spoke to really cited the variability — that they never know what to expect," Perry says. "They can't wait to actually try [the no-tipping model] out."

Restaurant workers have traditionally experienced either feast or famine when it comes to their own pay packets. Some workers might be content just knowing the exact amount of take-home pay they can count on — at least, that's what the number of applicants at the new no-tipping establishments would suggest.

"We're kind of taking the risk off the server and putting it back on the business," says Stephens, the Packhouse general manager. "There's hardly any turnover, and everybody's making money."

A former NPR staffer, Alan Greenblatt is a journalist based in St. Louis.

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For about a month, Kmart says, its stores' checkout registers were "compromised by malicious software that stole customer credit and debit card information."

The company, owned by Sears, says it removed the malware from its system after it was discovered Thursday. It announced the exposure late Friday, saying that no personal data or PIN numbers were lost.

While some important customer information seems to have been protected, the breach could still allow criminals to make counterfeit versions of the exposed credit cards.

The company announced the problem on its website, along with recommendations that "If customers see any sign of suspicious activity, they should immediately contact their card issuer." The company also says customers can get more information at its website and over the phone at 888-488-5978.

The number of customers in question hasn't been announced; the vulnerability did not affect online shoppers, the company says.

Saying the breach likely began in early September, Sears announced that to protect anyone "who shopped with a credit or debit card in our Kmart stores during the month of September through yesterday (Oct. 9, 2014), Kmart will be offering free credit monitoring protection."

The data breach affected only "track 2" data, reports security expert Brian Krebs, citing a Sears spokesman who says the information "did not include customer names, email address, physical address, Social Security numbers, PINs or any other sensitive information."

With Friday's announcement, the retailer joins Target, Neiman Marcus and Home Depot on the list of large companies whose customers' data was accessed illegally in the past year.

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Kmart

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