Until June this year, the only bypass I knew had to do with heart surgery. But I discovered another kind of bypass when the Mozambican government authorized the Mozal smelter to emit its fumes and dust directly into the air (bypassing filters) during four months.

Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika had just returned home from New York where he had been attending a UN heads of state summit to review the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), making a detour through Havana—a city known more for its cigars than for its pies.

As is customary, he held a press conference when he touched down at Chileka International Airport and used the occasion to flay his critics for complaining that his numerous foreign trips were draining the national treasury.

Editors Note: Knight Fellow Edem Djokotoe investigates the fishing industry in Malawi

The future of Malawi’s agriculture could lie in the hands of people like Heinrich Sitima, a 14-year-old school boy I met during a farm visit in Chiradzulu, a rural district some 30 minutes’ drive from Blantyre. He lives with his parents on Wambeu Farm, a 10-hectare sprawl with pigs, goats, cows, fish, bananas, cabbages, tomatoes, onions and a animal feed enterprise.
   Heinrich Sitima at Wambeu Farm in Chiradzulu Heinrich wants to be a farmer when he grows up.

Six officers from New York City were standing around the tent camp in Haiti. Several questions later, the reporter I was working with had his first scoop.I generally reserve Tuesday mornings to work with Louis-Jean Olivier, a young journalist with the Haiti Press Network. Although Olivier had been studying journalism at the State University, he didn’t start working as a reporter until after the January earthquake, when on a fluke he ended up filing a story for HPN. He so impressed HPN’s owner that he was hired on the spot and has been working for the agency ever since.