Known to its multi-ethnic populations by different names, Transylvania, now a part of modern Romania, has long enchanted and enthralled foreign visitors and writers including Bram Stoker who captured the imagination of his Western audiences with his ...
During Soviet Times, the small Caucasian Soviet Republic of Abkhazia was part of Soviet Georgia and Joseph Stalin's favourite holiday destination where he would hold court at one of his numerous dachas in the mountains overlooking the Black Sea. As ...
'Janjaweed' is said to translate as 'devils on horseback'. Since 2003, the people of Darfur have faced a reign of terror waged by the Arab militia group, which is backed by the Sudanese government. At least 200,000 people have been killed, and over two ...
On a hilltop near the small Latvian town of Piltinkalns, around a hundred people gather each Midsummer's Eve. The women carry herbs collected from the forest, most prized of which is the mythical blooming fern, said to only flower on this day and to ...
The earthquake in Kashmir on October 8th 2005 killed more than 73,000 people, and up to five million lost their homes. Three months after the massive quake, the survivors were struggling to stay alive in the cold weather. Millions were living in tents ...
Three million people have been displaced by the violent conflict in Colombia. Yet after 40 years of civil war and with the second highest number of IDPs (internally displaced persons) in the world after Sudan, the conflict hardly merits a mention in the ...
Five years into the war in Iraq, almost five million of its citizens remained displaced. The two countries that led the invasion have largely avoided taking responsibility for the human fallout. Around 20,000 Iraqi refugees live in the US, and slightly ...
The Yangtze river supplies water to one in twelve people on the planet and supports 200 cities along its length including Chongqing, the biggest municipality in the world with 31 million residents. Mao famously swam in the river at Wuhan in July 1966, at...
They have been described as the frozen conflicts: those messy, unresolved territorial issues left over from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Early in August of 2008, two of these conflicts experienced a sudden melting.South Ossetia is home to just ...
The war in DR Congo is the most deadly conflict to have taken place anywhere on earth since World War II. Bewildering in its complexity, the war officially came to an end in 2003. And yet the killing goes on. At the beginning of 2008, as a ceasefire was ...
It's a journey of horrors, the kind you would only make if you were truly desperate. But in the failed state of Somalia there are a lot of desperate people. Up to a quarter of a million Somalis are now living in Yemen after undertaking the harrowing boat...
Strictly Come Dancing is the most watched television programme in the world, according to figures released by industry magazine Television Business International in November 2008. The show, which began in the UK in 1949, has spawned more international ...
Iran is a country divided. Following the disputed election held in June 2009, that division was symbolised by a single street: Vali asr Avenue, the spine of Tehran. At one end, supporters of incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have rallied in his ...
Standing in mud that reaches up to their knees, hundreds of men form a human chain that snakes to the horizon. They are trying to rebuild a flood barrier with their bare hands. There are no excavators or trucks, no cement or iron. Everything here is ...
A stricken oil tanker sits in a slick of 200 tons of diesel, 100 miles south of Norway's capital city, Oslo. The usually picturesque landscapes of Sastein and Langesund, site of wildlife sanctuaries and tourist beaches, saw thousands of birds slaughtered...
The smell gets in your clothes and stays. The sun barely shines through the windows. Walls that were once white are now black. The streets are covered in a dirty layer of ash, and the horizon is dominated by factory chimneys and slag heaps that are ...