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...

In another comprehensive rethink of the country's economic trajectory the Chinese leadership has decided that for the economy to continue to grow at its present rate it needs to move 250 million rural dwellers into newly constructed urban ...

Do we have an idea of what teenage girls want from life? What do they like and dislike about their lives? What are their hopes for the future? Karen Robinson's project in association with Newcastle's Side Gallery is an attempt to get beneath the skin of...

The world's largest convention of computer enthusiasts, simply called 'The Gathering', takes place in Norway. Over five thousand young people come together each Easter, some travelling long distances, each carrying their own computer equipment to the ...

According to the UN's Human Development Index, Norway is the best place to live on the planet. It certainly seems to be one of the best places to be a baby. In contrast to most European countries, the Norwegian birth rate is a healthy 1.9. Norway's ...

The shout was 'Azadi' - 'freedom!' In August 2009, hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris took to the streets in the largest popular protests in nearly two decades. Frustrated with the bloody, brutal stalemate between the Indian army and militants local and ...