Mohammed was a child soldier in Afghanistan. He saw his father shot dead, witnessed savage atrocities and was seen in a Taliban martyrdom video. Now this teenager has been given the chance of a normal life - and you, our readers, can help other boys robbed of their childhood

Tomorrow, it will be 20 years since Dan Voinea helped send Nicolae Ceausescu before a Christmas Day firing squad.

But the anniversary of the climax to Romania's revolution will not bring unalloyed joy to the prosecutor, or indeed to his compatriots, as they struggle to unearth the truth of what really happened in those extraordinary days, and to discover whether it was a vengeful people or a communist clique that really toppled the Romanian dictator.

Money can't buy you love, but among China's new super-rich, it can certainly help narrow the field in the quest for affection. China's booming economy has produced 130 dollar billionaires, but it seems at least 21 men in that elite number are lonely, and find it hard to meet members of the opposite sex.

Forced to focus on building wealth during the early part of their careers, many billionaires in China simply haven't had the time to follow the advice of their parents in who to marry.

Enter an enterprising dating organisation, Golden Bachelor, which has organised the Chinese capital's most expensive party ever - a match-making ball with tickets costing 100,000 yuan (£9,000) a head.

Did our Neolithic ancestors turn to agriculture so that they could be sure of a tipple? US Archaeologist Patrick McGovern thinks so. The expert on identifying traces of alcohol in prehistoric sites reckons the thirst for a brew was enough of an incentive to start growing crops.

It turns out the fall of man probably didn't begin with an apple. More likely, it was a handful of mushy figs that first led humankind astray.

Here is how the story likely began -- a prehistoric human picked up some dropped fruit from the ground and popped it unsuspectingly into his or her mouth. The first effect was nothing more than an agreeably bittersweet flavor spreading across the palate. But as alcohol entered the bloodstream, the brain started sending out a new message -- whatever that was, I want more of it!

Rope specialists like Mr. Touchette and Mr. Haughey have long filled a range of niche jobs, such as inspecting big dams, cleaning Mount Rushmore and repairing offshore oil platforms. But as wind farms have sprouted across the United States, rope companies have quickly expanded into a new line of work -- fixing turbines so they last longer in the elements.

It's a dream job for rock-climbing types.

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Some 300 certified rope specialists like them -- called "rope access technicians" -- work on turbines in North America, and that number may triple in three years, according to Mr. Stomp. Already, he said, demand is so acute that his own rope company, WindSwain, has an eight-week waiting list.

One of the great illusions of late 20th century finance was that banks were profitable. On paper - investment, commercial and mortgage banks appeared extremely profitable. The percentage of total S&P 500 profits that was attributable to financial companies rose steadily from 1980 to 2000, and by 2007 reached 40%, depending on how you measured it. This meant that two out of every five dollars of profit generated by America's 500 largest companies came from the financial function. This, by the way, understated things, since it left out the quasi-banks like General Electric and GMAC.

The illusion comes from the fact that this paper profit was not the result of selling products that allowed businesses and consumers to be more productive and more profitable in their own right. What was really happening was that financial firms were extracting equity that had been built up over nearly a century by businesses and consumers. The financial business had become a predatory business, scavenging the land for pockets of wealth to convert into cash that would be funneled in part to the banks as fees.

It's not clear that even at the highest levels the bankers understood what they were doing, since businessmen in the heat of competitive battle do not have the time to muse over the broader social implications of what they do. This is a job for government policy wonks and business professors, most of whom spent their time enabling and cheerleading for the banks. Moreover, some of what the industry did helped their customers, such as automated bill paying, even though this was a smaller proportion of bank profits.

Since the large banks and financial companies in the U.S. have blown up - in part because the equity available for mining and extraction has dried up - we the taxpayers are being asked to save their hides. As taxpayers, we represent the last available, and largest pool of equity - the good faith and credit of the United States as represented by the government's taxing power. At this very moment, the financial oligarchs are at it again, looking for ways to convert stored-up wealth into cash for themselves. Don't you think you should know who they are and what game is going on here?