Albania, one of the poorest countries in Europe with a per capita income of just $4,500, has a subsoil rich in crude oil, estimated at over 5.3 billion barrels. During the communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha the country was largely isolated from the ...


Clubfoot is among the world's most common birth defects, affecting one in every 800 babies, yet it is a condition that many in the West have never seen. This is because, in countries with advanced health systems, it is quickly and easily treated soon ...


Over the past three years, a modern-day diamond rush has been playing out in the deserts of Namaqualand, South Africa. Driven by poverty and unemployment at home, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, increasing numbers of ...


Just outside the city of A Coruna on Spain's wild Galician coastline, lie the headquarters of the world's biggest fashion retailer Zara, whose parent company Inditex sits atop the 'fast fashion' industry it helped create. This constantly expanding ...


Although still deemed as insufficiently documented to be included in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder Fifth Edition (DSM-5-TR), problematic or pathological internet use constitutes a global - and...


In February 1995, during the holy month of Ramadan, a collective panic caused by the presumed presence of a shape-shifting spirit took hold of the island of Zanzibar. In local folklore 'popobawa', or bat wing in Swahili, is an evil spirit that descends ...


Japan is facing a unique demographic challenge. Not only does it have, along with a number of other developed countries, one of the lowest birth rates in the world. For reasons that remain intriguing to researchers in the field, Japanese people live ...


Numbering around 35 million, the Fulani, also known as Fula or Peul, are spread across 15 countries in the Sahel region stretching from the Atlantic seaboard in the West to the Red Sea in the East. Around a third of Fulani are pastoralists, making them ...


Banknotes are generally issued by governments or national banks and their imagery is intended to represent the reliability of these banks and of the economic and political system. Of course, their designs are also influenced by other countries' ...


When Covid struck, they found themselves on the frontline of the UK response. Three years on from the first lockdown, scientists and experts reflect on the highs and lows of the crisis - and reveal how they decompressed in quieter moments. For full ...


On 29th October 1923, a modern nation rose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder and first President of the Turkish republic, declared Turkey to be a secular republic based on the separation of the powers of state and ...


The Yanomami people are living through an unprecedented crisis due to the invasion of some 20,000 illegal gold miners who have descended on their lands which straddle the border between Brazil and Venezuela. Their predicament has been made worse by the ...


Since the financial crisis in the 1990s, many young women have left the Faroe Islands, a small nation in the North Atlantic Ocean which is nominally part of Denmark, but governs its own affairs. Most leave to study in Copenhagen or other European cities....


It's the most tranquil and magnificent backdrop to our planet's climate catastrophe, and the ramifications for Greenland, as well as its perspective on climate change, are as unique as its landscape. In contrast to elsewhere, Greenland officially ...


There is a tradition in Barentsburg. When you go to the mainland, you hug a tree because there are none here. The Russian enclave on Spitsbergen in the Arctic is so remote that you only reach it by helicopter, snowmobile, or ship. Because of the danger ...


With a population of just over 10,000, Poienile de sub Munte is the largest village in Romania, most of whose inhabitants are part of Romanias Ukrainian minority. Unlike the rest of the country, and especially rural areas which have seen a falling ...