Associated British Foods accused of Zambia tax avoidance after sending massive profits abroad

great interactive

What is it about London? Population growth is slowing across most of Europe - people are having fewer children and, it could be argued, steps are being taken to try to reduce social inequalities. But London is unusual. London continues growing, and London is becoming more youthful. The middle aged and those who are poor, but not desperately poor, are being squeezed out. Graduates from the rest of Britain and the rest of the world flow in ever greater numbers and require ever higher degrees of optimism. Many fail to achieve their aspirations. Above them a few are becoming ever richer. Below them, as private rents and social housing becomes too expensive for huge numbers of lowly paid families and many leave, a new poor may be growing, less well documented, less well protected, with even less to lose.

The number of older people using day care centres in England has fallen by nearly a quarter in three years, charity Age UK has said. Age UK found the number using services such as lunch clubs had fallen from 88,498 in 2009-10 to 68,160 in 2011-12, and blamed councils' funding pressures.

Chinalco has built a new town to rehouse thousands of displaced people - but some are determined to stay in doomed Morococha

From January 2013, Tanzania will start restricting the size of land that single large-scale foreign and local investors can "lease" for agricultural use. The decision follows both local and international criticism that major investors are grabbing large chunks of land here, often displacing small-scale farmers and local communities.

International Migration from ONS

A US intelligence portrait of the world in 2030 predicts that China will be the largest economic power, climate change will create instability by contributing to water and food shortages, and there will be a "tectonic shift" with the rise of a global middle class.

"SOMETIME in 2013 Lagos will overtake Cairo to become Africa's largest city. This is confirmation of a decisive shift away from the ends of the continent and towards its tropical middle. Within a decade Lagos will have 16m people; Kinshasa, in Congo, will have 15m. The standard view of cities as generators of wealth, diversity and ideas will be challenged in Africa. To become liveable, cities will have to improve public transport, address rising violent crime and generate opportunities for young Africans. In 2013, over half of all city-dwellers will be under 18 and every African election will be decided, statistically at least, by first-time voters. What is certain is that African cities will be the most informal economies in the world in 2013. Some 70% of workers will live on their wits, relying on day labour to make enough to eat, pay rent and send their children to school. That will make cities dynamic and mobile, but also combustible. See full article."

"WHAT EXACTLY IS THE GIRL EFFECT? The girl effect is a movement. It's about leveraging the unique potential of adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves, their families, their communities, their countries and the world. It's about making girls visible and changing their social and economic dynamics by providing them with specific, powerful and relevant resources. Created by the Nike Foundation in collaboration with the NoVo Foundation, United Nations Foundation and Coalition for Adolescent Girls, the girl effect is fuelled by hundreds of thousands of girl champions who recognise the untapped potential of adolescent girls living in poverty."

What were the defining issues of this year in development? Land grabs dominated headlines as investors bought up swaths of Africa, Britain controversially decided to stop sending aid to India and the Rio+20 conference on sustainability caused widespread frustration. Click on the pictures to explore the issues and revisit this year's major topics

Since its first franchise opening in Des Plains, Illinois, in 1955, McDonalds has expanded to well over 30,000 locations worldwide. This animation chronicles the spread of McDonalds across the globe.The data used for this animation were taken from mcdonalds.com and mcspotlight.org, and were current up to the year 2000.

. It cites a very lengthy list, but some of them are: Home to major stock exchanges and indexes Influential in international political affairs Home to world-renowned cultural institutions Service a major media hub Large mass transit networks Home to a large international airport Having a prominent skyline

Roman Abramovich gains control of world's biggest nickel mine Kremlin appears to endorse deal that hands biggest voting share in $30bn Norilsk Nickel to Chelsea owner

"Syria has disappeared from the internet. That's not an exaggeration either, nearly the entire Middle Eastern country has been cut off from the web. A post from research company Renesys reveals that what effectively amounts to all of Syria's internet connectivity shut down earlier today: Starting at 10:26 UTC (12:26pm in Damascus), Syria's international Internet connectivity shut down. In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet. We are investigating the dynamics of the outage and will post updates as they become available. A more detailed post reveals that 77 networks, representing 92% of the routed networks in the country experienced an outage. The outage comes among increasing violence in the country. According to the Daily Star, the government cut off internet as well as cell phone activity amid increasingly fierce clashes between government troops and rebels."