All orthodox Jews who live according to the Torah and Talmud should eat kosher food. But the rules are contradictory. Which fish is pure and which isn't? In America those who want to be on the safe side look out for the seal of approval given by the New ...
Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on the 17th of February 2008, thus completing a long and difficult journey towards statehood. Since the end of the war in 1999 Kosovo had been in diplomatic limbo, technically still a province of Serbia but ...
Louisiana's Angola state penitentiary, once described as 'the bloodiest prison in America' by Time magazine, is an unlikely setting for a rodeo. Home to 5,200 murderers, rapists and other violent criminals, it gained notoriety when 40 prisoners were ...
'Babies, guns, Jesus. Hot damn!'Rush Limbaugh, right-wing radio host, commenting on Sarah Palin's attributes.In a rollercoaster ride which began with her nomination as the Republican candidate for vice president at the end of August 2008, Alaska governor...
At fourteen, Tom Hanley had a part alongside Marlon Brando in 'On the Waterfront'. He played Tommy, the boy who helps Brando's Terry Malloy look after his beloved pigeons. The film's portrayal of corruption, extortion and racketeering on the Hoboken ...
On November 4th 2008, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The following is an excerpt from his acceptance speech in Grant Park, Chicago:'If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are ...
Controversial tactics used by London's Metropolitan Police during demonstrations are to be reviewed following the G20 summit held in the city in April 2009. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) received seventy complaints that officers had...
'It's easy to hide successfully when nobody wants to find you,' an associate of Radovan Karadzic explained with a wry smile. Former Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic was arrested by the Serbian authorities in July 2008 and yet his fellow fugitive, ...
The highlight of every English summer, Wimbledon has become a draw for tens of thousands of spectators over a bustling two weeks in June and July. The venue - the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club - in London's leafy southwestern suburbs, was ...
London-based artist Ben Wilson (47) has chosen a most unusual space to be his atelier, come rain or shine: the city's streets. And he doesn't need to bring his own canvasses to indulge in his passion. They are provided by friendly Londoners who are ...
The photographs shown here were taken over the course of 18 months from the windows of Andrew Testa's apartment in Muswell Hill, a leafy north London suburb. They are mostly taken on weekend nights between the hours of 1.00am to 4.00am when pubgoers...
The horrendous wars during the breakup of Yugoslavia made the Balkans a byword for ethnic fragmentation and inter-communal strife. Most recently, Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008 has seen yet another chunk break away from Serbia, formerly...
According to an Icelandic saga, Erik Thorvaldsson, a man who had been exiled from Iceland for murder around the year 982 AD, sailed West with his family and a small band of followers and established a settlement on a large island in the sea to the ...
Iceland is an odd place in many ways. A windswept land of a mere 320,000 inhabitants, each of whom would have a whole 3.1 square kilometre to themselves if they spread out evenly. Icelanders are known for the environmental conscience, producing a ...
Though his exploits take him all over the globe and to some of the most dangerous places on earth, James Bond (or 007 as he's known to his handlers back at MI6) always returns back to London to debrief, recoup, unwind and receive a new set of ...
On Canada's exposed and windswept Novia Scotia coast in small fishing communities like the town of Sambro, a few experienced fishermen are keeping alive the waning craft of fishing for swordfish using harpoons. Sambro is the home of Harold ...
In the country where he served two and a half terms as prime minister, it is hard to find anyone who has a good thing to say about him. Yet in a small corner of the Balkans, Tony Blair remains a hero to many, having played midwife to a country's slow...
During the course of the Vietnam war between 1961 and 1971 the American armed forces instituted a program of herbicidal warfare, spraying defoliants from the air in an attempt to deprive the enemy forces of shelter and hidden supply routes in the ...
There are forty four huts in the village of Dickson, and some two hundred and fifty inhabitants. The village is just seventy five kilometres along a dirt road from Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, but none of the villagers have been to the city for over ...
This project hones in on the typically anonymous civil servant who, anywhere in the world, makes up a small cog in the gigantic machinery of the state. Jan Banning and writer Will Tinnemans photographed and interviewed approximately 250 civil servants in...
In every large-scale armed conflict, women are victims of sexual violence. In most cases this is kept quiet - by victims, perpetrators and government leaders. The taboo is persistent. Jan Banning and I discovered as much during our quest to find ...
East Asia was one of the most brutal killing grounds of World War II. The conflict there destroyed millions of lives and left those who remained with legacies of grief and bitterness that in many cases lasted decades. Among the least-heard voices ...
'Down and Out in the South' is a portrait series of homeless men and women Jan Banning encountered in South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi in 2010 and 2011. The project started in September 2010, when the 701 Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in ...
Over the past few summers massive bush fires have engulfed large tracts of the Australian outback, increasingly encroaching on residential areas. Dean Sewell won a World Press Photo award for these stunning images of bush fires around Sydney and ...
'One shot, one kill, no fear.' Antonio's fighting abilities were beyond doubt; the thirteen-year-old had already killed at least three Burmese soldiers. His toothless commanding officer was clearly pleased with the teenager's discipline during ...
Rikuzentakata's seafront was once regarded as one of the most scenic in Japan, with the golden sands of its two kilometer-long beach separating the clear blue waters of the Pacific Ocean from its famous forest of an estimated seventy thousand pine ...
On Friday 11 March 2011, as the end of the working week approached, most people in Japan would have been looking forward to a late winter's weekend; many students would have been celebrating the approaching end to the academic year. Then, at 2:46 in ...
On her fifth visit to Afghanistan, Iva Zimova took a series of portraits. Her subjects were rural people: farmers, beekeepers, vendors and policemen in the country's northern provinces. We present the pictures alongside extracts from her letters ...
Christien's photo essay on the annual 'fete de crepissage', the ritual refurbishment of the Grand Mosque in Djenne is a unique record of this event. The festival has no fixed date. It is dependent on the elders of the community deciding when the mud in ...
The Ottoman Empire is long gone but its cultural legacy lives on in the hammans - Turkish baths - that Islamic architects built across its former lands. In cities such as Cairo, Budapest and, of course, Istanbul, bathgoers can luxuriate in the unique ...
An estimated 246 million children are engaged in child labour. Of those, almost three-quarters (171 million) work in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with ...
The Al-Nour wal Amal Associaton is a centre for blind women and girls. Its name translates as 'Light and Hope'. The association runs two orchestras, with roughly 35 members each, which have performed across Egypt and abroad....
'What do you dream of?' That is the question Fernando Moleres asked of the people he met and photographed in Iran as the country celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution. He sought out the young, those born after the revolution...
Known to most of the world's major religions, the idea of monasticism is characterised by a renunciation of worldly endeavours and a complete devotion to spirituality and prayer. Derived from the Greek word monos (alone), monasticism originally ...
The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is the largest Christian Church in Egypt and the Middle East and has existed as a separate entity since the council of Chalcedon in 451 AD when it diverged from the main Eastern Orthodox Church on intricate ...
For some years now, Sierra Leone has stayed off the front pages of the newspapers. People are slowly and arduously rebuilding their country after one of the most savage civil wars in living memory, infamous for the practice of amputation as a means ...