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...Spreading the Scourge Big Tobacco's footprint in Africa has been hard to miss for a while. British American markets its wares - which include Dunhill and Pall Mall - in a vast crescent sweeping from South Africa to Congo and west to Ghana, as well as throughout North Africa. In 2003 the company planted its stakes deeper, building a $150 million factory in Nigeria. Philip Morris, whose brands include Marlboro and Chesterfield, has a smaller presence on the continent. "We are a minor, minor player," says spokesman Greg Prager. But that could change. The company does no business in Nigeria...
...provinces of North and South Kivu in the eastern DRC are filled with mines of cassiterite, wolframite, coltan and gold - minerals needed to manufacture everything from lightbulbs to laptops, from MP3 players to Playstations. Over the past 12 years of armed conflict in the region, control of these valuable natural resources has allegedly become a lucrative way for warring parties to purchase munitions and fund their fighting. The Global Witness report claims to have followed the supply chain of these minerals from warring parties to middlemen to international buyers. (How the world must act on Congo...
...Those unfamiliar with the challenges of building infrastructure in harsh environmental conditions might have assumed that an advanced nation like Australia would have had a north-south transcontinental railway for some time. But the funny fact is that while the Ghan's tracks were first laid in the 1880s, the entire line wasn't fully completed (on an upgraded track) until 2004, and at a cost of nearly $1 billion. Now, luxury trains up to one kilometer long, sometimes numbering 52 carriages, crawl through the forbidding primordial stretches of Outback twice a week, like giant high-speed caterpillars...
...Making the three-day, 1,900-mile (3,000 km) journey from Darwin in the north to Adelaide in the south in this kind of comfort comes at a cost, of course - $2,100 a head in the case of the new deluxe Platinum cabins. There are Gold cabins for about $1,600, and Red Service twin share bunks - the cheapest option - for $500. The majority of the Ghan's passengers are Australians undertaking an almost ritualistic pilgrimage through their colossal backyard, and the local accent predominates in the elegant dining car, where kangaroo steaks and fine Australian wines...
...bloody criminal organization 'Ndrangheta, based in Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot, is today considered the most powerful organized-crime syndicate in Italy, surpassing the legendary Sicilian Mafia after having taken over much of the trafficking of South American cocaine into Europe. With billions in narcodollars, 'Ndrangheta is constantly on the lookout for ways to invest its ill-gotten cash in legitimate enterprises, explains Alberto Cisterna, a Rome-based magistrate who has long followed the Calabrian Mob. He says that high-profile urban centers are actually considered the best places for crooks to simultaneously hide their illicit wealth...