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China Central Television reported that farmers in a village in Henan Province were using wastewater from a paper mill to grow wheat. But one farmer said they would not dare to eat the wheat themselves. It is sold outside the village, perhaps ending up in cities, while the farmers grow their own wheat with well water

There is consensus now that China’s decades of double-digit economic growth exacted an enormous environmental cost. But growth remains the priority; the Communist Party’s legitimacy is based largely on rapidly expanding the economy, and China officially estimates that its G.D.P., which was $8.3 trillion in 2012, will grow at a rate of 7.5 percent this year and at an average of 7 percent in the five-year plan that runs to 2015. A Deutsche Bank report released last month said the current growth policies would lead to a continuing steep decline of the environment for the next decade, especially given the expected coal consumption and boom in automobile sales.

Libya and Algeria export much of their natural gas and oil to the EU. A third of Italy’s natural gas comes from Algeria, so it is clearly in Europe’s self-interest to prevent northern Mali from becoming the launchpad for attacks

stabilizing Mali is probably doable

Although few Europeans are aware, the EU is already present in Africa. The EU is training security forces in Niger, while the U.K., for example, is working with Mauritania on counterterrorism. An EU naval force has been in action to crush piracy off the Somali coast, while the EU is also training Somali troops in Uganda and paying for African peacekeepers in Somalia. U.K. Foreign Minister William Hague described the EU's involvement in Somalia as a model for Mali, in a BBC radio interview this morning. He added: What we don’t want in these countries like Mali is the 20 years of being a failed state that preceded all of that in Somalia.

optimistic scenario is that, having been slow off the mark, the EU, or at least European countries acting together in one combination or another, is now ready to help in Mali, recognizing that, as the U.S. pivots to Asia, Europe will need to do more to secure its own interests in Africa and the Middle East.

a minuscule island in the azure sea, ‘Ata. The island had been inhabited once, until one dark day in 1863, when a slave ship appeared on the horizon and sailed off with the natives. Since then, ‘Ata had been deserted – cursed and forgotten.

A small island, to be precise. Not a tropical paradise with waving palm trees and sandy beaches, but a hulking mass of rock, jutting up more than a thousand feet out of the ocean. These days, ‘Ata is considered uninhabitable. But “by the time we arrived,” Captain Warner wrote in his memoirs, “the boys had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination.” While the boys in Lord of the Flies come to blows over the fire, those in this real-life version tended their flame so it never went out, for more than a year.

The kids agreed to work in teams of two, drawing up a strict roster for garden, kitchen and guard duty. Sometimes they quarrelled, but whenever that happened they solved it by imposing a time-out. Their days began and ended with song and prayer. Kolo fashioned a makeshift guitar from a piece of driftwood, half a coconut shell and six steel wires salvaged from their wrecked boat – an instrument Peter has kept all these years – and played it to help lift their spirits. And their spirits needed lifting. All summer long it hardly rained, driving the boys frantic with thirst. They tried constructing a raft in order to leave the island, but it fell apart in the crashing surf. Worst of all, Stephen slipped one day, fell off a cliff and broke his leg. The other boys picked their way down after him and then helped him back up to the top. They set his leg using sticks and leaves. “Don’t worry,” Sione joked. “We’ll do your work, while you lie there like King Taufa‘ahau Tupou himself!”

They were finally rescued on Sunday 11 September 1966. The local physician later expressed astonishment at their muscled physiques and Stephen’s perfectly healed leg

While the boys of ‘Ata have been consigned to obscurity, Golding’s book is still widely read. Media historians even credit him as being the unwitting originator of one of the most popular entertainment genres on television today: reality TV. “I read and reread Lord of the Flies ,” divulged the creator of hit series Survivor in an interview.

It’s time we told a different kind of story. The real Lord of the Flies is a tale of friendship and loyalty; one that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other. After my wife took Peter’s picture, he turned to a cabinet and rummaged around for a bit, then drew out a heavy stack of papers that he laid in my hands. His memoirs, he explained, written for his children and grandchildren. I looked down at the first page. “Life has taught me a great deal,” it began, “including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people.”

he offered an angrier but less coherent denunciation of the west, more angry taxi driver than head of state. “They don’t want us to be free, they want us to be a colony; they don’t want equal partnership, they want to steal from us,”

“Putin’s speech is a set of unbelievably illiterate conspiracy cliches that 30 years ago could be read in marginal national-patriotic newspapers.“Now it has become the policy of the former superpower, which even in the days of the Soviet leaders could not afford such a discourse.”

in his March 2014 speech, Putin explicitly ruled out seizing more territory: “Don’t believe those who try to frighten you with Russia and who scream that other regions will follow after Crimea … We do not need this.”

annexation involves more than pieces of paper, and while in 2014 Russia had just carried out a swift and stealthy military operation to seize Crimea, this time things are far less clear-cut. Fighting continues in and around all four of the regions Russia is claiming, prompting the mobilisation order.

While Putin has talked for two decades about the west’s desire to destroy Russia, the intensity and repetition with which he tackled the subject on Friday suggests this is not just political theatre: he has become a true believer.

“Nobody knows. I doubt if he knows yet either, to be honest,”