Kokpar, an ancient equestrian sport in which horse-mounted players attempt to advance a headless goat carcass towards the opposing team's goal, is said to have originated with Genghis Khan's 13th century mounted raiders, though it might be older still. ...
For over two centuries, the small Cumbrian town of Appleby-in-Westmorland has been the site of an annual fair where local farmers and breeders have sold their sheep, cattle and horses. Held in June on Gallows Hill, the site of a former execution ground, ...
Along the LA Wash in Los Angeles there is a hole in the fence called the 'rabbit hole'. It leads to a territory where trees and shrubs eclipse the endless concrete of the LA River, forming a natural hide-away for the people society does not want to see....
On a rainy Sunday evening the area around the Convention Centre in Sejong, where my guesthouse is located, is deserted. For miles around, there are no shops, no restaurants, nothing moving on the streets. The loud croaking of bullfrogs can be heard from ...
Cairo, Egypt's capital, is a sprawling metropolis of over 22 million people that traces its roots back to the 7th century following the Arab conquests. Yet a much older association - the pyramids of Giza - are located just across the Nile and connect the...
Asian elephants have had a special place in Thai culture for centuries and play a central role in the local tourism industry. With the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020, however, and the ensuing travel restrictions that prevented tourists from visiting...
Lima, Peru's capital, is one of the largest cities in the world located in the middle of a desert and gets less than an inch of rain a year. Recent migration from the countryside has started putting severe strain on its limited water resources. Of Peru's...
Development is an ambition of most societies, present since the appearance of our species. This is expressed in human efforts to adapt the environment, transforming habitats to ensure the survival of the group. Development is usually geared toward an ...
At the time of her birth in Guizhou province, during the height of Chairman Mao's reign, Mother Wu's family laboured futilely during the disastrous Great Leap Forward. A drive to boost agricultural productivity through quasi-science devastated crops for ...
The world population hit the 8 billion landmark this year driven by better medicine, sanitation and food production according to the United Nations. Yet China, which for millennia has been the most populous on earth, for the first time will see its ...
With a population of 200 million, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa. About a tenth of people live in the former capital city of Lagos. To relieve it the overcrowded metropolis and to establish a national capital in a country deeply divided ...
The women had fled into the sprawling camps of Goma hoping they would find safety. As the M23 rebel group has swept his part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it has been accused of murders, rapes and kidnappings. Hundreds of thousands have left...
On 24th June 2022, the US Supreme Court surprised and shocked many when it upheld the ruling in Dobbs vs Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case brought in Mississippi which sought to ban all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In upholding the ...
From low lying island nations to desiccated parts of Africa and the Middle East, climate change is affecting the way people farm, work and live their lives across the world. In Peru's high Andes, too, melting glaciers and rising temperatures are playing ...
Peru is eighth on the list of countries with the most water, but the capital Lima, where a third of the population live, is located in a coastal desert and over a million people have no access to drinking water. Collecting and storing water is a daily ...
'I am sacrificing myself living here. I have to get out' says a 47 year old man, one of the few remaining inhabitants in a community near the town of Coata in Peru on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world - 4000 metres ...
In Sierra Leone, the Chinese have stepped into the void left by the British, plundering natural resources and threatening livelihoods The Hill Station Club in Freetown was once the beating heart of Britain's colonial community. It was here that ...
For generations, the indigenous Khoisan people of South Africa's rugged Cederberg Mountains harvested the leaves of wild rooibos plants to brew tea and make herbal medicines. Once considered a 'poor man's drink', theantioxidant-rich, caffeine-free ...
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 ...
New Gleisarena campus of the Fernfachhochschule Schweiz in Zurich, Switzerland ...
Artist in Residence – Mario documented daily life at the Swiss boarding school, finding new visual approaches to show the school both internally and externally. ...
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 ...