Features

Toilet champions are not so rare a breed as you’d think. Here are some distinguished exemplars.

2008 is the International Year of Sanitation. Or, asks Maggie Black, is it the International Year of Silence and Embarrassment?

To save Yasuní, the oil must stay in the ground.

Adam Ma’anit navigates the snakepits of global carbon trading in the context of Yasuní.

Calm the panic or delay the inevitable?

The five oil concession regions in Yasuní National Park

No-one said oil was clean. But Ecuador’s experience of extracting fossil fuels is about as bad as it gets, reports David Ransom.

People from the Ecuadorian rainforest tell Fabrício Guamán what they think of their Government’s proposal to leave petroleum in the ground.

Is Ecuador’s bold proposal not to exploit a billion barrels of oil in the Yasuní National Park a serious option for combating climate change? If so, the world is going to have to move fast, warns Vanessa Baird.

Pakistani physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy explores his country’s rocky relationship with nukes.

David Ransom finds a likeness between the addictions of gambling and the speculative impulses of capitalism.

Anti-nuke action across the world

From the Manhattan Project and Hiroshima, to the Cold War, North Korea and beyond, nuclear fission has changed everything.

What are the West’s weapons actually for? asks Paul Rogers.

Activist Angie Zelter celebrates a year-long blockade of Britain’s weapons of mass destruction.

Wayward warheads, mid-air collisions and dangerous detonations.

There are over 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Thousands are deployed on land, at sea and in the air, posing the constant threat of nuclear war and radioactive contamination.

With nuclear weapons multiplying again, now is the time to seize the moment and ban them, argues Jess Worth.

Since completing this article, Asfaw Yemiru has finalised plans for putting his new educational ideas into practice. Alex Brodie describes the "Moya" which Asfaw and his pupils will soon begin building.

The author of this article, Asfaw Yemiru, is one of Africa's most extraordinary men. At the age of 10, he was an illiterate beggar-boy on the streets of Addis Ababa. Today, aged 28, he is headmaster of a free school for over 3,000 poor children. Not content with this achievement, Asfaw is now moving his school towards a new concept of education which could have significance not just for Ethiopia but for many other parts of both the developing and the developed world.