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The anti-poverty group Oxfam is asking Pepsi's shareholders to approve a resolution that, if passed, would force the company to disclose its sugar suppliers and investigate whether those suppliers are implicated in "land grabs" that unfairly take land from the poor.

Pepsi's archrival has already announced its own anti-land-grab initiative. Earlier this month, Coca-Cola announced a new effort "to use our influence to help protect the land rights of local communities." The company revealed its top three sugar suppliers and promised to launch an independent review of its operations in Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, India, the Philippines, Thailand and South Africa.

It's a major success for a campaign that Oxfam launched earlier this year called "Behind the Brands." The campaign attempts to embarrass, cajole and threaten the world's biggest food companies into protecting the environment and treating workers or local communities more fairly.

Oxfam has taken particular aim at the sugar industry, with a report on land disputes involving large-scale sugar producers in Brazil and Cambodia. In these cases, impoverished local communities blame large sugar producers for forcing them from their traditional lands.

There have been many reports of such "land grabs" in recent years, as rising food prices have increased investor interest in land around the world. The problem is especially acute in places where people don't have clear legal rights to the land that they depend on for their livelihoods, including many countries in Africa.

According to Oxfam, the three agricultural crops most often implicated in land grabs are sugar, soybeans and palm oil. Of the three, sugar production accounts for the most land — 75 million acres, an area the size of Italy.

In the U.S., Pepsi and Coke don't rely heavily on sugar, since corn-derived sweeteners are cheaper. But in the rest of the world, sugar remains the sweetener of choice.

Some of the sanctions against Iran will be eased under an agreement reached between Iran and six world powers over the weekend. In return, Iran promises to temporarily curb part of its nuclear program.

There's widespread agreement that sanctions have worked, squeezing Iran financially and bringing its leaders to the negotiating table. Iran's economy is, by any measure, in terrible shape.

When Barbara Slavin visited Teheran in August, she was struck by the rapid deterioration of the economy. As an Iran analyst with the Atlantic Council, it was her ninth trip to the country.

"The cost of living has gone up so fast for Iranians that they are absolutely stunned, and people are simply not able to maintain the middle-class lifestyles that they used to," Slavin says.

Iran's official inflation rate is about 40 percent. By comparison, inflation in the U.S. is less than 2 percent, and many outsiders believe prices are rising even faster in Iran than the government says, especially for food.

"You see that people are not buying meat as much as they used to because it's expensive, so they're subsisting more on rice and vegetables," Slavin says. "Even vegetables and fruits are expensive in some parts of town."

Iran has struggled with inflation on and off for decades, but the massive plunge in the value of Iran's currency — the rial — over the past two years, has made inflation more pernicious. Because the rial is so weak, Iranians have to pay a lot more for imported goods. And oil, Iran's main export and the heart of its economy, is being sidelined by sanctions. Last year, the European Union joined the U.S. in an embargo on Iranian oil.

"That really had a devastating effect," says Danielle Pletka, who tracks the Middle East for the American Enterprise Institute. She says when it was just the U.S. refusing to buy, the Iranians could easily sell its oil elsewhere in the global market.

"[But] when the Europeans came on board and decided not to buy, it had a huge impact and it cut by more than half Iran's ability to sell," she says.

Those EU sanctions last year didn't just ban Iranian oil sales. They blocked Iran from the global clearing system used by banks to process financial transactions, and Danielle Pletka says that added to the pain.

"Iran is a part of the global trading environment and they live economically through the sale of natural resources," she says. "So when you go after their banks, systematically you destroy their ability to get money."

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Consider how many synonyms there are for tedium: boredom, monotony, uniformity, dreariness, ennui, listlessness, each with its own subtle nuances. Perhaps it says something about our society that we must differentiate between the boredom of the office cubicle and of the traffic jam.

None of the authors below set out to write a book about tedium, but hovering always just behind the scenes is that debilitating affliction, sluggish and repetitious, playing a central role in their lives.

Public transit vehicles may be the key to China's success in the U.S. auto market. Chinese company BYD, based in Shenzhen, is manufacturing electric buses. It's an appealing option for a place like California, where emission standards are strict.

At BYD's North American headquarters in Los Angeles, one of the 40-foot electric K9 buses sits on display. BYD Fleet Sales Manager James Holtz sits in the driver's seat and pushes the power button on the dashboard.

Unlike a grumbling diesel engine, this electric bus is quiet. Holtz walks out to the rear of the vehicle and opens the back hatch to reveal its electric components.

"Because it's non-internal combustion, you don't have the moving parts," says Holtz. "You don't have the belts, you don't have the soot, you don't have all the oil. It's a lot cleaner."

This bus can run up to 155 miles on a single charge. It's equipped with huge battery packs located inside the bus columns, behind the rear wheels and mounted on top of the bus.

"It takes about five hours to fully charge our bus from zero state of charge to 100 percent," says Holtz.

BYD already has buses running at Denver International Airport and Disneyworld in Orlando. Fla. Just last month, Los Angeles Metro purchased five buses and nearby Long Beach Transit bought 10.

"It offers opportunities to implement and evaluate a new technology," says Richard Hunt, general manager of Metro's Transit Capital Programs. "They call this the cutting edge or the bleeding edge and we want to be cutting, we don't want to be bleeding. So we're going to evaluate these vehicles very carefully."

Those buses LA bought will be manufactured up the road in Lancaster, Calif., next year. Micheal Austin, vice president of BYD America, says it's a huge step for China's auto industry.

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