Currents

Growing pains
Africa’s great biofuel land grab continues

Yasuní RIP?
President Correa sends shockwaves around the world

Top of the class
Rome is bucking the school dinner trend, providing its students with wholesome, organic fare.

Learning while earning
Cairo’s ‘garbage people’ are improving their standard of living

Caught in the net
Brazil has no specific law to deal with internet content.

Mine hero
The struggle to eradicate landmines continues

To buy or not to buy
The Nestlé fair trade Kit Kat dilemma.

Victory looms
Transatlantic student boycott forces clothing company to reopen factory

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

Naked Emperors
It’s time to ask some very basic questions, like: What are banks for? What are houses for? What’s credit for? What’s the economy for? Or, for that matter, what’s the environment for? Vanessa Baird suggests a 10-point economic detox programme.

A brief history of Afghanistan
The fighting, the pain and the hunger for change

Plastic plants
As oil supplies dwindle, the plastic industry is pinning its hopes on biomass. Not a great idea, reasons Jim Thomas.

Too late for Martha
Denied treatment while pregnant, she died in agony after her child was born. Jens Erik Gould tells a tragic story that changed the law on abortion in Colombia.

The banks are made of marble
The true owners of the silver in the vaults.

The fourth generation
Iran is young, vibrant and diverse, despite the repression, as Nasrin Alavi explains.