The boy mounted the horse barefoot, with only an ill-fitting Hello Kitty helmet to protect his head and a talisman under his clothing to give him the courage of his ancestors. The last thing Firmansyah (8) remembered about the race was being boxed in ...

LGBT people face intense discrimination and harassment in Kyrgyzstan. Homophobia is widespread and often violent. This is particularly true in Osh, Kyrgyzstans second city, which is intensely traditional and conservative. Many Kyrgyz people see ...

I moved to Prague, the 'Golden City', in 1994 to study at the Academy of Art. It was a mere five years after the Velvet Revolution and the 'City of a hundred spires' was a very different place then. Decades of communist rule still cast a long shadow over...

Britain has now been subjected to more than 10 years of austerity. While those at the top were given the biggest state-sponsored bailout in history during and after the financial crisis of 2008, the rest of society has had to pay for it. For those at the...

The price of vanilla is at an all time high. Between 2014 and 2017, it rose from USD 40 a kilogram to over USD 600. Madagascar, and especially its northeaster Sava region, is the source of around four fifth of the world's cured vanilla with an annual ...

The streets of Eritrea's capital in the run-up to the 2019 Independence Day celebrations on May 24 were unusually quiet. But cafes and restaurant were full of Eritreans from the diaspora who had traveled back to celebrate 28 years of national ...

What is the difference, nutritionally speaking, between a juicy piece of beef tenderloin and a rat's hindquarters. Not a lot, according to rodentologists, or people who study rats and other members of the rodent family. The tissue of mammals, the most ...

After almost four and a half years of war in Syria almost half of the population has now been displaced. Nearly four million people have fled across its borders to the surrounding countries of Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan, while more than six and a ...

On my first trip more than five years ago, the contrast between Iraq and Syria's Kurdish regions could not have been more apparent. In Iraq in 2012, tourism and business development were huge moneymakers in Iraq's Kurdish region, while in Syria, the ...

In 2012, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo made it mandatory for all civil servants' salaries to be paid into bank accounts. Previously, government employees had received their wages in cash from their superiors. Almost one million ...

The Northeast Passage - the sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans over the top of Norway and Russia - has for centuries fascinated intrepid seafarers in their search for a shortcut between the two oceans. Before the Suez and Panama canals,...

In 2011 South Sudan gained independence from Sudan and become the world's newest country. Yet old grievances between different communities in the new nation quickly erupted into a brutal civl war in 2013, causing thousands to seek safety across the ...

The subject of immigration has been propelled to the top of the political agenda in the United States with the arrival of Donald Trump, a strident nationalist, in the White House. His campaign slogans of "America First" and "Make America ...

One of the main reasons why girls in Uganda miss school or drop out altogether is the lack of readily available sanitary products . Shame and fear mean that three out of ten girls fail to turn up for school during their period. This exacerbates the low ...

A different take on the Brexit debate. Bread is something that unites us all. It is a symbol of peace. If you have bread you have enough to eat. It is also a word for money. Each of the 28 countries in the European Union has its own identity,...

Palm oil has been used for cooking in Africa for thousands of years. Yet more recently, it has become a highly lucrative cash crop that is used in thousands of products ranging from cleaning detergents , shampoo and cosmetics to chocolate, ice cream and ...