Diamonds

Desperate for work, the Basotho miners of the sovereign kingdom of Lesotho grudgingly accept the daily degradations of life among the white men.

• By Will McGrath

Global Witness, the London-based resource watchdog, thinks so.

• By Marc Herman

One mine in 1919 South Africa had a foolproof way to see whether its miners were smuggling out raw diamonds: it gave them a radiation-laden scan at the end of every shift.

• By Matt Novak