Choc horror
A century ago, Milton Hershey set up a chocolate factory in Pennsylvania. Since then the town has thrived - it is wealthy, there are two theme parks and a school for underprivileged children, and the whole place smells of chocolate. But if, as now seems likely, the company is sold, this candy Utopia is threatened with devastation. Oliver Burkeman reports from the 'sweetest place on earth'

These days, though, there is something else in the air in Hershey: inexplicably, astonishingly, the shadowy trust that owns the iconic chocolate firm is planning to put it up for sale. And suddenly, devastation threatens the town dreamed up by the 19th-century confectionery magnate Milton Hershey - a worker's utopia of good schools, free healthcare, affordable housing, theatres, parks and a zoo, built on profits from the ubiquitous chocolate bar and the conical, silver-wrapped Kisses. [read more]