"You hear the squeals of the pigs long before reaching a set of long buildings set in rolling hills in southern China. Feeding time produces a frenzy as the animals strain against the railings around their pens. But this is no ordinary farm. Run by a fast-growing company called BGI, this facility has become the world's largest centre for the cloning of pigs."

MINT Mexico Indonesia Nigeria Thailand

Mexico Indonesia Nigeria Turkey

"Changes to China's strict one-child policy that will allow more parents to have a second child will begin to roll out early next year, according to state media. The policy change is expected to go into force in some areas of China in the first quarter of 2014, Yang Wenzhuang, a director at the National Health and Family Planning Commission, told the official Xinhua news agency. Beijing said last month it would allow millions of families to have two children, the most radical relaxation of its strict one-child policy in nearly three decades. The move is part of a plan to raise fertility rates and ease the financial burden on China's rapidly ageing population."

"By Christmas Eve, the Philippines will have spent $1bn (£0.6bn) paying foreign debts in the seven weeks since typhoon Haiyan devastated much of the country. It will have spent a total of $8.4bn on foreign debt in 2013, and faces a further $8.8bn in 2014. While a little more than $100m has been pledged by international donors for relief work, more than 800 times that amount of money leaves the country every year to pay debts"

"After six years of negotiations, Apple has reached a multiyear deal with China Mobile, China's largest wireless carrier, to sell the tech giant's flagship iPhone device in that country. The partnership, which was expected, gives Apple much greater access to the world's largest mobile market, with an estimated 1.2 billion users. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and iPhone pricing details will be released at a later date. China Mobile is the world's largest wireless carrier with 760 million subscribers."

"At Agbogbloshie, young people scavenge for scrap metal amid the smoke from plastics fires. The health risks are obvious - but the money is too good to ignore"

"Aerial footage, filmed by a drone operated by the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation programme, shows the extent of large scale deforestation in Sumatra, Indonesia. The Tripa swamp forest once boasted 60,000 hectares of forest, which was home to 2,000 orangutans. Now most of it has been destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations. Barely 200 orangutans survive"

"SolarAid chief executive Steve Andrews hopes simple devices will be adopted as widely as mobile phones"

"Millions of tonnes of old electronic goods illegally exported to developing countries, as people dump luxury items"

"The ban on discards - the shameful practice of throwing perfectly good fish away due to quotas - is a major milestone, as is the end of the current centralised one-size-fits-all approach to decision making."

apple beat Samsung in own backyard

"Turkish hazelnuts, Malaysian palm oil, Nigerian cocoa, Brazilian sugar, French vanilla..."

"Eastern China's dangerous levels of air pollution blamed on coal burning, car exhaust, factories and weather patterns"

Cotton - one farmer a shocking number of t shirts

Hefei nesr Shanghai

farm Africa - part of the Guardian Christmas Appeal

"t has been announced today that the UK and China have agreed a £45m pig semen export deal. That's a figure not to be sniffed at. Selling our pigs' semen to the world's biggest pig producer would be a boost to British exports and good for our country's economy. What isn't touched on in coverage of the deal is the welfare aspect. What conditions will the resulting pigs be kept in, in China? It raises the ethical discussion that comes up time and time again: just because we can do something, does that mean we should?"

"Britain has won the right to export pig semen to China in a deal worth £45m a yea"

great interactive map