On the island of Sumbawa in central Indonesia, thousands of artisanal miners have been digging up gold in dangerous, informal mines, sunk into jungle hillsides, for generations. The Indonesian government licenses large international mining corporations...
Brazil has one of the the world's highest rates of Covid-19 infections, at over 5 million, and some 148,000 people are thought to have died of the disease (as of 8 October 2020). In March, care homes across the country closed their doors to all visitors,...
It feels like the end of an era - not just the end of festivities - the trees, so recently adorned and surrounded by presents, now cast out, forlorn on the streets, waiting to be taken away. Once they were viewed as a curiosity, sometimes a touch ...
140,000 people die worldwide from snakebites every year. Another 400,000 are severely injured, often needing to have arms or legs amputated or losing their sight. Those worst affected are the rural poor in Africa, Asia and South America. The ...
One of the many side effects of the Trump presidency in the United States has been a steep increase in the number of asylum seekers attempting to enter Canada from the US. The Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) is now recording the highest number of ...
Grace Kudzu has sickle cell disease, a genetic disorder that makes her red blood cells sickle-shaped and rigid, rather than the usual flexible doughnut form. They block her capillaries and cause excruciating vasco-occlusive crises that last for days at a...
Ninety per cent of the world's most highly prized rubies, called 'pigeon's blood' for their deep hue and intensity of colour, come from the hills near the town in Mogok, 200 kms north of Mandalay, Myanmar's second city. The two most precious rubies found...
Abbie used her own experience of being an overweight teenager to connect with six young men who struggle with their weight. "This is an intimate study of how it feels to be overweight as a young man in today's world. I was a fat teenager myself ...
In the middle of the night, villagers wade through shallow enclosures 100 metres offshore, looking for small, sausage-like creatures in the dark waters. Prized as a delicacy in the Far East, sea cucumbers are a godsend for this small village in one of ...
In Chile's Torres del Paine National Park, the stunning beauty of glacial ice and mountain lakes hides a worrying environmental phenomenon unfolding in slow motion. The glaciers in this remote part of South America are melting at an alarming rate. As ...
After the fifth election in five years - three general elections and two referendums - the UK is no closer to healing the divisions that emerged during the EU referendum. The English nationalist project, otherwise known as Brexit, has unleashed a level ...
The two islands of Mayotte and Anjouan are separated by only 40 miles of sea. They share same language, faith and ethnicity, and their populations have been intertwined through family links for hundreds of years. But in 1974, the colonial power, France, ...
Or rather it doesnt. The World Trade Organization (OMC in French) is in crisis. While it is supposed to regulate 98% of international trade, between its 164 country members, i.e. just about all countries, it has totally failed to update rules mostly ...
11 December 2019 marks the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the First Chechen War. Though by no means the only conflict to beset the imploding Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the War in Chechnya came to epitomise the chaos and wanton destruction of ...
Every country has its favourite sport. In England, football is the undisputed leader. In India, a huge home audience, running into the hundreds of thousands, is obsessed with cricket. America calls its annual baseball championship the World Series even ...
The Tour du Faso is one of the world's great cycle races. It covers 1,306 kilometres across Burkina Faso every October and has been won 15 out of the past 32 times by local Burkinab teams since its inception in 1987. Until 1998 it was reserved for ...