Here are some of IPS’s most-read stories of the past week — and stories you shouldn’t go without reading:

AGRICULTURE-ETHIOPIA: Changing Mindset Over Markets
Omer Redi Ahmed interviews ELENI GABRE-MADHIN, chief executive officer of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange
ADDIS ABABA (IPS) – In 2001/2002, Ethiopia enjoyed a bumper maize harvest – so good in fact, that prices tumbled, and many farmers simply left the grain in the fields. When the rains failed the next season, famine loomed. Eleni Gabre-Madhin, a former senior economist at the World Bank and author of a book on market reforms and structural transformation in Africa, was one of many disturbed observers.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48260

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TWO-PART SERIES:

ENERGY: Pipeline Sabotage Blows Image of Stable Canada
By Chris Arsenault*
POUCE COUPE, British Columbia (IPS) – North America’s largest natural gas corporation hopes a one-million-dollar bounty will take down the saboteur who is blowing up their pipelines in northern Canada.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48242

ENERGY-CANADA: “It’s Like the Wild West Out Here”
By Chris Arsenault*
DAWSON CREEK, British Columbia (IPS) – The once serene road to Tim and Linda Ewert’s organic farm near Tomslake in northeastern British Columbia has become a mess of dust clouds, drilling rigs and hordes of pick-up trucks as the area transforms into the newest frontier of Canada’s natural gas boom.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48269

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MIDEAST: In a Rotten State
By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY (IPS) – Abu Abed can’t make a profit, and although 54 years old, he still has not married. “I can’t pay my rent, I can’t afford a wedding.”
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48264

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RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Attacks on Christians Spotlight Blasphemy Laws
By Zofeen Ebrahim
PUNJAB, Pakistan (IPS) – The death of nine people following this
month?s riot directed against a Christian colony in eastern Pakistan has
cast a pall of gloom over a nation carved out from the Indian
subcontinent in the name of religion.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48206

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RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Justice for Indigenous Leader’s Murder – 21 Years On
By Nicole Karsin*
JAMBALÓ, Colombia (IPS) – One night in February 1988 in the native Nasa territory of Jambaló, in southwest Colombia, soldiers barged into Etelvina Zapata’s home and snatched her 21-year-old son, barefoot and clad only in shorts, accusing him of working with the leftwing guerrillas.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48261

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MIDEAST: Can Final Peace Deal Overcome Settlements Roadblock?
Analysis by Helena Cobban*
WASHINGTON (IPS) – The Barack Obama administration – perhaps the president himself – will reportedly be launching a new round of authoritative Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations sometime during the upcoming U.N. General Assembly session, which is scheduled to start in New York on Sep. 15.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48253

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MOZAMBIQUE: Markets Too Far For Farmers’ Profit
By Jessie Boylan
LAGO DISTRICT, Mozambique (IPS) – August is peak tomato season in the Niassa province of northwest Mozambique, and farmers are bringing bucket-loads of tomatoes to sell to Nkwichi Lodge, one of the few buyers of local produce in the region.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48266

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TAJIKISTAN: Recalling the Good Old Soviet Union
By Zoltán Dujisin
PAMIR MOUNTAINS, Tajikistan (IPS) – The collapse of the Soviet Union has brought misery to Tajikistan’s remote eastern half. People are being driven once again to live as nomads.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48235

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BRAZIL: Music Education Opens Doors to Social Inclusion
By Mario Osava *
SÃO PAULO (IPS) – “It takes us an hour and 20 minutes to get there. We have to walk, because we can’t afford the 30-minute bus ride. But the girls never miss their music classes, not even when they have to go without lunch because they don’t have time to eat after school,” says their mother, Maria da Cruz.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48252

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LABOUR-THAILAND: Economic Crisis Hits Burmese Migrant Women
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK (IPS) – The global financial crisis is threatening to
shred the dreams of thousands of women from Burma, who have fled their
military-ruled country over the past decade for better jobs in more
prosperous Thailand, say activists.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48251

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