Tough Guy claims to be the world's most demanding one-day survival ordeal and it has been widely described as 'the toughest race in the world', with up to one-third of the starters failing to finish in a typical year. It markets itself as 'the safest...

As part of a long term project looking at masculinity in its various forms, Espen Rasmussen met some of the competitors at two extreme sport events in the minutes after they finished and photographed them and their feet. The first race, Den Store ...

Greenland's vast natural resources, ranging from oil and gas to uranium, rare earth and iron ore, have remained largely inaccessible under thick layers of ice, making them too difficult and expensive to extract. But with a receding ice sheet and new ...

Since November 2013, Ukraine has been gripped by the most serious political crisis since its independence in 1991. What started as public demonstrations protesting against a decision by the government of Viktor Yanukovych, the president, to pull out ...

When does the pain start? Norwegian runner Bernt Arne Tvedt (34) starts to feel it 3 km into gruelling 254 km Amazon Jungle Marathon in Brazil. It starts with a cramp in one leg, then cramps in the other. By the time he is able to stop and stretch, ...

The Norseman xtreme triathlon is an annual endurance race which starts at the Hardangerfjord south of Bergen. Limited to 250 participants for safety reasons, the race is regarded as one of the toughest in the world. The runners are 'unsupported' so ...

Five year old Jonathan Yala died of malaria, not because of a lack of medicine or equipment but because neither of the two health workers at his local clinic had the training necessary to diagnose and treat his illness in time.The sad story of Jonathan's...

For centuries, Europe's Romani people have traversed the continent, sometimes taking root and becoming sedentary, at other times staying on the move, true to their peripatetic tradition. Rarely socially integrated, usually ostracised and viewed with ...

Although Yemen is a very conservative country, women have more rights than in any other country in the region. Unlike their neighbours in Saudi Arabia, Yemeni women are allowed to drive and vote, while many work in the professions as teachers, nurses, ...

There is another side to the Land of Smiles. In Thailand's deep south, only 150 miles from its tourist-filled beaches, 1.8 million people are living under martial law. Bombs, disappearances, torture and murder are everyday events. The Thai government now...

The shocking, hidden lives of refused asylum seekers whose bids for sanctuary have been rejected by the British government are revealed in a new exhibition and multimedia presentation commissioned by Panos Pictures.Abbie Trayler-Smith has photographed ...

Tinginaput is an ordinary village in remote rural India: two rows of neat mud houses, a couple of water pumps, a mango tree where people gather to talk. But there is something very modern perched on the tiles of each roof: a solar panel the size of a ...

Working on assignment for an NGO in Kabul this summer, I found out what it means to work under the auspices of a security-conscious international organisation in times of conflict and unrest. My task was to document the lives of a number of inspiring ...

The Afghan Women's Boxing Club - the only such organisation in the country - boasts 20 members, mostly girls in their late teens, who share a passion for a sport that even in less conservative countries might be deemed inappropriate for young women....

What do Adele, Leona Lewis, Katie Melua and the late Amy Winehouse have in common other than their talent and extraordinary success over the past years? They're all alumni of the London School for Performing Arts & Technology, more commonly known as ...

Charities try to help people in less affluent parts of the world with a variety of donations, from food and monetary payments to sending their staff to care for people without access to medical services. But Oxfam's latest campaign - "The Big Bra ...

Like much of the Sahel, Chad's Guera region is experiencing another bout of an all too familiar phenomenon: severe drought, food shortages, hunger and chronic malnutrition. Up to 18 million people across the Sahel are facing a severe food crisis and ...

Despite the fact that they were in the vanguard of the revolution which toppled the country's long serving strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh in February 2012, Yemen's women have yet to see any meaningful improvement in their daily lives. Not only are a ...

The Rev George Buannie is a powerfully built man, with a voice to match. And in the dirt-poor village of Binkolo, in northern Sierra Leone, he's talking serious stuff to a local farmer. Not about how tough it is to survive in one of the poorest ...

'We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X. How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun?' Robert Mugabe, June 2008. Zimbabwe's electoral commission, derided for its procrastination following the first round of the presidential election in ...

Basamae The last thing Basamae Maombi would see was the face of the man raping her. She had recognised him and called out his name, hoping the pain and indignity of the attack would stop. But it only made things worse. He held her down, pulled out his...

Zimbabweans are facing a ferocious cholera epidemic which has affected more than 90,000 people since August 2008 and killed at least 4,100. In April 2009 the charity Merlin reported that the situation remained grave: 'The scarcity of trained health ...

A bloody denouement to 26 years of civil war has left Sri Lanka's minority Tamil population facing an uncertain future. Following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, up to 270,000 Tamils were held in camps under the control of victorious government forces. ...

Amid the bleakly beautiful mountainscape of eastern Zimbabwe, a vast new diamond field was discovered in 2006. These 400 square miles of scrubland around Marange promised to bring untold wealth to this bankrupt nation, but for the people living ...

Clutching her mop and standing in a pool of dirty water, Laukaziemma Koko stands apart. For most of her life she lived in the shadows, working as a cleaner at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein for a wage of 70 pence an hour. She was ...

'Dear God, how many can there be?' whispered the captain of the Libyan coastguard vessel to his deckhand. As the rescue ship drew closer its searchlight picked out the corpses floating around the wrecked fishing boat. Even for experienced mariners, ...

Exhausted and caked in mud, they plough wearily on searching toxic water for traces of gold. Some look west from where they fled, across the border to Zimbabwe; towards home. There, the life of miners are even harder. Here in Mozambique, at least, ...

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in three Somalis suffers from some kind of mental illness. Wars, famines and natural disasters not only leave the dead to be buried but also the survivors who need to go on living. While many will...

Some groups either affected by or suffering from HIV/AIDS do not have access to proper care. These include injecting drug users, sex workers and homosexuals, many of whom are excluded because of what they are or what they do. They are more vulnerable...

The West is accustomed to tales of barbarism committed in third world countries by military regimes led by ill-educated thugs in uniform - Bokassa, Amin, Pol Pot. But it has been flummoxed by Mugabe. He is a highly educated, suave and eloquent man ...

Nigeria's Niger Delta region, where the Niger river flows into the Gulf of Guinea, has been a source of great wealth for the past five centuries. In the 18th century, slaves were taken across the Atlantic from the coast of West Africa. Later, palm ...

Twic county has suffered the worst excesses of conflict. Located on the border between north and south Sudan, for much of the last 25 years it was at the epicentre of a brutal civil war. Massacres of civilians were frequent, while women and children were...

The rise of Al Jazeera has been nothing if not meteoric. From its launch in 1996 as an Arab language news and current affair channel, the channel has become one of the most widely watched and respected global 24-hour news broadcasters. The Qatar ...

When a regime bombs and shells its own people - in hospitals, bakeries, schools, apartment blocks and places of worship - it knows it is losing the battle. Aleppo is as brutal a place as anywhere on earth - neighbourhoods laid to waste, bodies lying ...

Britain has experienced the wettest January since 1767 and overflowing rivers are bursting their banks, adding to standing water on sodden fields that has nowhere to flow. The village of Muchelney on the Somerset Levels has been particularly badly ...

In February 2002, Jonas Savimbi, leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) was shot dead in a gun battle with the Angolan Army. His demise brought about a quick end to the civil war that had raged between UNITA and the...