The ahwas or coffee houses of Cairo have a long and significant history in modern Egypt. Reflecting political and social change throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, they became the focus for the independence movement that culminated in the ...

Kashmir is a crossroads and remains one of the great conflicted narratives of modern India. A land given, taken and fought over a thousand times. When Timur (Tamerlane) invaded India from Persia in the fifteenth century, he came with an army of 1,700...

The highest point in the tiny nation of Tuvalu is just four and a half metres above sea level. Its ten thousand people face the horrifying prospect of becoming refugees of climate change, as rising sea levels caused by global warming threaten to submerge...

A tsunami triggered by an 8.3 magnitude earthquake in the South Pacific struck Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga on the 29th of September 2009. More than 170 people were killed when waves up to 15 feet high hit the islands, destroying entire villages....

'...thought I'd let you know we made it to Melbourne last night. The fires are still close, although I believe they'll not reach the house......There are so many very sad stories. Heaps of homes lost, livestock burnt and at the moment 14 people dead and ...

The story of Kiribati is one that reflects modern life in many developing Pacific Ocean states: nations who suffer the environmental consequences of sustaining life in fragile ecosystems and find themselves treading water in the fight against rising sea ...

'El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha', Miguel de Cervantes' classic 17th century novel, is the pre-eminent work in the history of Spanish literature. The book tells the story of Don Quixote, an errant knight who embarks upon a series of ...

Morocco, a Muslim country whose culture is a blend of Arab, Berber, European and African influences, feels more than most the tension between modernity and tradition which is a feature of the Islamic world. King Mohammed VI, who came to power in 1999, ...

They've been inside for nine months, but still face a three year stretch. More than two hundred children live with their mothers in Spanish jails. The law says that they can stay in prison up to the age of three. 'The mother's unit is very different ...

Venezuela's El Sistema is one of the world's most successful community arts projects. It offers children from all backgrounds access to a classical music education in a country where many have little hope of ever escaping from poverty. Its director Jose ...

Claudette Habesch looks around the garden and points. 'Half of that tree gives lemons; the other half oranges', she says. She has returned to her childhood home in the old city of Jerusalem for the first time in over sixty years. In the 1940s, the ...

Ferran Adri started out washing dishes and went on to become the most celebrated chef in the world. The organised anarchy of his cooking led the way as a band of Spanish chefs came to dominate 21st century haute cuisine. El Bulli, Adri's ...

In 1941, Marcial Maciel founded the Legion of Christ, one of the Roman Catholic Church's most conservative orders. Born out of the anticlerical feeling of 30s and 40s Mexico, Fr. Maciel sought to mix the elitism of Opus Dei with the passionate ...

The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP), has set itself the enormous task of collecting the seeds of all the world's wild plants and preserving them for the future. The organisers are particularly concerned about the estimated 60 000 to 100 000 ...

After the first anniversaries of major uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen have come and gone and a violent, deadly summer threatens to engulf Syria in all out civil war, the Arab Spring seems to have lost none of its intensity and looks set...

Until January 2012, Mali was considered one of the most stable countries in Africa, with a succession of democratically elected presidents who ruled the country of 14.5 million since democracy was established in 1991. A growing rebellion by Tuaregs ...