While the damage done to the environment by burning coal is a hotly debated topic that has become even mere pressing with the breakneck growth of developing economies like China and India, the effect it has on people across the United States and ...

A decade after Michael Pollan wrote his landmark article 'Power Steer' it appears that not much has changed in U.S. beef production, although a movement for healthier, more ethical food has certainly grown. In the Centennial Valley, the variety of...

Timbuktu, on the south western edge of the Sahara desert, has an illustrious history as a centre of trade and learning dating back to 13th century. Tens of thousands of manuscripts covering everything from astrology to medicine have been kept in the ...

Professional European cyclists with gleaming bicycles and fully equipped back-up teams compete with locals on rickety 30-year-old bikes in Africa's best-known cycle race, the 1,300 kilometre Tour du Faso. Temperatures that can hit 40 degrees Celsius make...

Starting in the capital Dakar, the Tour du Senegal takes in much of the country, both rural and urban, in temperatures which rise as high as 47 degrees Celsius. The field is split between African entrants, many from Senegal itself, and riders from ...

Eritrea's passion for cycling is one of many lasting influences of Italian colonial rule. The country's first multi-day cycle race was staged in 1946, although locals were not allowed to enter. The Giro was resurrected fifty-five years later, a symbol of...

Italy is in turmoil. Its economic problems are symptomatic of the current crisis in the Eurozone and need to be addressed, urgently. But part of the solution needs to come from the political establishment which is very much part of the problem. On ...

'I never know, although I use the term myself occasionally, quite what people mean when they talk about multiculturalism'. Tony Blair, August 2005 'Multiculturalism: the policy or process whereby the distinctive identities of the cultural groups within ...

Behind the fashion for wearing distressed jeans lies a sorry tale of worker exploitation. The wear and tear process is outsourced to countries such as China, where cheap wages and lax environmental controls have allowed the rapid growth of a ...

If there is such a thing as being well prepared for having an autistic child then Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff were in a better position than most parents. Rupert is a human rights activist and journalist while Kristin is a developmental psychologist...

It is December 2007, and China is preparing to host the Olympic Games. At a vocational college in the Beijing suburbs, twelve hundred young women are in training to be volunteers. The competition is intense: successful applicants are required to be ...

From the ashes of the Soviet Union, Russia has again risen to world power status, with money, oil and attitude. The country has embraced capitalism, flinging its door open to all the luxuries that money can buy. Yet dark forces remain, and democracy is ...

Spring arrives in Siberia as life stirs beneath the snow that has smothered it for half a year. Lake Baikal - the world's largest body of fresh water, more voluminous than all the North American Great Lakes combined - freezes so solidly that locals ...

Two o'clock in the morning, a railway siding in Kazakhstan. The guard dogs' barking is incessant. Glaring search lights bounce off the silvery cars of an armoured train as a crane lifts its heavy cargo aboard. Spooks lurk in the shadows, gun-toting ...

Since the days of the Tsars, territorial disputes have flared between Russia and China, pitting the world's largest country by landmass against its most populous nation. Until two decades ago, the Chinese were a welcome source of low-wage ...

The Tuva Republic, in the far south of Siberia on the border with Mongolia, is a remote and inaccessible land of mountains, forest and steppe, inhabited by wolves, bears and snow leopards. Shamanism is the local religious form and the people, many of...