January 2010's Issue

One of the video-journalists who shot Oscar-nominated Burma VJ is in jail for his efforts. His colleague on the project, Ay Min Soe – himself now in exile in Thailand – talks to Joseph Allchin about the film and its repercussions.

Refugees in a Rwandian camp are finding enterprising ways to make a living, discovers Wil Morat.

Richard Swift reports from the Caribbean.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s grandsons supporting the reformers? Demonstrations in the holy city of Qom? This is a new generation of resistance, as Nasrin Alavi shows in her latest survey of the Iranian blogosphere.

Unlikely friendships grow among the vegetables at an allotment in Devon. Ruth Gidley meets a group of asylum seekers who are providing food for themselves and other refugees.

Is hell really other people? Vanessa Baird concludes with some sobering facts and reflections on equality.

How not to run an economy

A film about how far we know and trust others, and how other people make us who we are, partly through the stories we hear.

The dawn of a new decade has Maria Golia pondering the past.

China and Iran: two ways to do family planning.

The best books, music & films of 2009 as reviewed by NI.

Brazil has no specific law to deal with internet content.

The average age of the population is increasing – people are living longer. Also, women are having fewer children. But is this greying of nations really a ‘crisis’?

The Nestlé fair trade Kit Kat dilemma.

Why tiny Timor Leste is undergoing a baby boom.

Geert Wilders, the lying Dutchman.

A fictionalized account of the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign.

An elegant album, stripped bare to its poetry. Bass notes on the oud ground the songs wonderfully and Jubran’s voice is sinuous and expressive, full of colour tones.

Low whistle, hornpipes, kaval (this is a traditional Balkan flute) and practice chanter (and this a part of the Scots bagpiping set-up) are just a few of the instruments employed by Fraser Fifield on Stereocanto.