Link Banana

The Financial Times confirms the good new (assuming of course, that you’re not invested in corn-based ethanol):

Six of the biggest publicly traded US ethanol producers have lost more than $8.7bn in market value since the peak of the boom in mid-2006 and the beginning of this month, according to an analysis by the Financial Times. The boom followed a 2005 law requiring refiners to mix billions of gallons of the biofuel with petrol.

(via Passport)

Blake Hounshell is quite right, this is a gem. An exiting hedge fund manager — who made 866% profit last year — manages to sound like a reasonable but bitter guy until he lapses into two paragraph I’ve heard from every pothead I’ve ever known:

Lastly, while I still have an audience, I would like to bring attention to an alternative food and energy source. You won’t see it included in BP’s, “Feel good. We are working on sustainable solutions,” television commercials, nor is it mentioned in ADM’s similar commercials. But hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products. Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. …

The Financial Times recently ran an interesting story profiling seven “average” people from the country of 1.1 billion.

A generation ago, the “Indian dream” would almost certainly have involved a ticket to Vancouver, London or New York. That is less true today. Daru, like so many of her peers, thinks she can best build her future here. “India now has enough opportunities for my generation,” she says. “I have friends who have gone to the US and to the UK to earn some money, but then they come back. I see a lot of youngsters thinking of coming back to their friends and family.”

(via MeFi)

A fascinating idea is being implemented in Tanzania:

The $1.8m trial – to be launched this year – will counsel 3,000 men and women aged 15-30 in southern rural Tanzania over three years, paying them on condition that periodic laboratory test results prove they have not contracted sexually transmitted infections.

The proposed payments of $45 equate to a quarter of annual income for some participants.

The programme, jointly funded by the World Bank, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Population Reference Bureau and the Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund, marks an important step in the fight to tackle Aids, which claims 2m lives a year.

(via Passport)

More crackdowns, little outside attention, no (meaningful) outside intervention. Mr. Mugabe has thus succeeded in carrying out step three, still working on four. Also of note, Morgan Tsvangerai wrote another plea for outside help in yesterday’s Washington Post.

The opposition has announced that they’ve won, even while “official” results aren’t announced.

In a press conference at 1.30 am on Sunday morning Zimbabwe time Tendai Biti, the secretary general of the larger of the two wings of the MDC, said that preliminary results showed sweeping margins of victory across the country, even in Zanu-PF’s traditional heartland. ”We’ve won this election,” he said. ”We must savour these scenes as for the rest of our lives we’ll say we were there.”

I’m hoping this doesn’t turn out like Kenya, but I’m increasingly fearing it will.