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Three months ago, a train carrying American crude oil derailed and exploded in the heart of Lac-Mgantic, Quebec, killing 47 people.

Local leaders now say recovering from the disaster will take much more time, effort, and money than they expected.

Industry experts say the accident could change the way oil and other dangerous chemicals are transported on trains in North America.

An Empty Village

"It's been left for weeks, everybody quit so fast," says Robert Mercier, head of Lac-Mgantic's environment department, as he walks down his town's main street.

He grew up here. In a normal year, he says, the street cafes and tourist shops would have been busy with visitors who come to see the colorful fall leaves. Now, it's a ghost town.

People fled in the early morning of July 6 as massive fireballs rolled into the sky. Mercier says he was sleeping in an apartment nearby when the first tank car erupted in flames.

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Arunachalam Muruganantham had his light bulb moment when he was 29 years old, and holding a sanitary napkin for the first time.

Examining the cotton pads he was buying as a gift for his new wife, the Indian entrepreneur realized that the multinational company that produced them was probably spending cents on raw materials, and making a huge profit.

Women in Muruganantham's village in Tamil Nadu, including his wife, would often forego these expensive pads for rags they used repeatedly through their cycles. Even more uncomfortably, sometimes they utilized husks or leaves during menstruation.

The exorbitant cost of the foreign-made pads cut into their families' meal budget. Given a choice between fresh pads and fresh milk, they chose the latter.

A new movie, Menstrual Man, documents how, at great personal cost, Muruganantham created a cheap machine to address persistent menstrual hygiene challenges for rural women on the subcontinent. But, as director Amit Virani points out, the product's traction may have more to do with social entrepreneurship than with health concerns.

Women whose self-help groups buy Muruganantham's machine can make more than a dollar a day — close to a global poverty line — selling the pads.

Sanitary napkins from global companies are in Indian stores for about $1.50 for an eight-pack. The ones from Murugantham's machine wholesale at about 25 cents for an eight-pack; the women's groups can sell them at whatever retail price they choose, retaining the profit. The cost of the machines ranges from about $1,200 to $6,000, depending on the features.

"The primary impulse when people are struggling to make a living is either, 'How can I make more money?,' or 'How can I save more money?'," Virani said. "If you address those needs, your innovation stands a better chance to be adopted, to spread."

The Picture Show

Rural Indian School Profits Off Another Kind Of I-Pad

New Yorkers who love a good bargain missed a golden opportunity Saturday, when the artist and provocateur Banksy, whose sly graffiti art adorns collectors' walls, opened a sidewalk kiosk in Central Park to sell his work for $60 apiece.

With original signed art works zip-tied to the wire walls of his kiosk, Banksy set up shop next to stenciled signs reading, "Spray Art" and $60." A video of the art sale shows the stall of Banksy's work being staffed by a gray-haired man who yawns as he sits in a chair, being ignored.

His first sale came hours after opening, when a woman bought two canvases for her children. She negotiated a 50 percent discount on the pieces, according to the website of the anonymous artist who has sought to keep his appearance and identity a secret.

The offerings included small and large canvases, including a version of "Love Is in the Air." A limited edition of that work sold for $249,000 at auction this summer.

The U.S. and its Western allies have not been able to win the nuclear concessions they have sought from Iran. But they have been able to inflict considerable economic pain through sanctions.

But now, Iran's call for a nuclear agreement and an end to sanctions has raised hopes among Iranians that better economic times may be ahead. The Iranian currency has stabilized somewhat since the election of President Hassan Rouhani, although inflation and unemployment remain high.

But Rouhani's economic team is already warning that ending sanctions on the banking and oil sectors, a difficult task in itself, won't end the country's economic woes.

"To think that sanctions will be lifted in the near future and all problems will be solved is a false alarm," says Economy Minister Ali Tayyebnia, according to Iranian media. He added that the Islamic Republic still needs to deal with "inappropriate economic policies and ineffective economic models."

Rouhani's early tenure has been marked by a new candor in assessing Iran's economy, including analysis of mismanagement and institutional flaws that have nothing to do with the sanctions.

Criticism Of Past Policies

A revealing example was a half-hour documentary aired by English-language Press TV shortly before Rouhani's inauguration. It gave outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ample time to defend his policies, but his critics were also given free rein to make unusually blunt observations.

In response to one of the good-news announcements Ahmadinejad made near the end of his term, the clearing of a $30 billion debt owed to Iran's Central Bank, lawmaker Alireza Mahjoub was contemptuous.

He pointed out that the so-called "payment" was canceled by Parliament because it would have used the central bank's own profits from currency trading.

"The administration has made an artificial loan, as well as an artificial debt, and paid it with a fake income," snapped Mahjoub, "while this $30 billion was a real debt."

Admittedly, Ahmadinejad's relations with the parliament were frosty at best, but economists are equally withering.

Economist Mohammad Khoshchehreh ridiculed the government's efforts to combat Iran's double-digit unemployment.

"Officials have always showed their interest in job creating, but methods used to create jobs have never been compatible with the objectives," Khoshchehreh said. "Our officials adopted simple-minded approaches to solve the problem."

Another Iranian economist interviewed for the documentary, Vahid Shaghaghi, said the government failed to weed out non-productive sectors of the economy and its well-intended effort to reduce the country's expensive regime of subsidies was implemented badly.

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