The conflict in Syria continues to drag on and the battle for Aleppo, Syria's commercial capital and second city, has so far failed to create the tipping point that the rebels had hoped would be a precursor to their assault on Damascus. The Assad ...

Burma's Buddhist monks have long stood for non violent resistance to the country's now retired military junta and were at the forefront of a number of protest movements that chipped away at the regime's legitimacy. Since the easing of stringent ...

In a year of extreme weather, the Typhoon that hit the east coast of the Philippines on 7 November 2013 still surprised meteorologists with its sheer ferocity and speed. Typhoon Haiyan, or Yolanda as it was known in the Philippines, was the strongest...

The state of Jharkhand is home to one of the largest Adivasi (tribal) populations in India. It is also the location of an estimated 40% of the country's deposits of coal, iron ore, uranium and other minerals considered essential for India's industrial ...

Rajasthan, one of the poorest and least developed states in India, has the second lowest literacy rate for women in the country, at 44%, and a deeply entrenched caste system. But with the help of non-governmental organisations, women are leading a rural ...

Berlin has stood at the vortex of world history several times in the past century, from the rise and fall of Nazism to the post-war division of Europe into East and West, to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism. November 9, 1989 would ...

Photographer Robert Wallis and writer Jennifer Wallace have criss-crossed the 'swing state' of Florida on the eve of the U.S. presidential elections. With its large number of electoral college votes and an almost even split between Democratic and ...

In the West mud is seen as dirt yet in rural west Africa it is the most common of building materials. It has been used for hundreds of years to build sensational structures - houses, mosques, palaces, temples, entire communities - which are repaired and ...

In the fields of Sanlucar la Mayor outside Seville, Europe's first commercial solar power station offers a startling glimpse into a future powered by renewable energy sources. The PS10 plant produces electricity with 624 heliostats (movable mirrors), ...

According to the United Nations, the beginning of 2007 marked a dramatic demographic turning point. For the first time in human history, more than half of humanity is living in cities with millions more moving from the countryside to urban areas ...

Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans risk their lives each year trying to reach the United States. The UN estimates that some 25 million of them have now immigrated to the US. Most migrants these days come from Central America where poverty, lack...

Four trips to North Korea, each with the same official, hour-by-hour itinerary as the previous visit. The birthplace of Kim Il Sung, the Triumphal Arch, the Museum of International Friendship, the Number One Shop, the tower representing 'Juche' ideology ...

Helmand Province has been the setting for some of the heaviest fighting of the Afghan war. As part of the troop surge announced by President Obama at the end of 2009, the number of US soldiers in the province was increased to 20,000 by the summer of ...

Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.The Soviet occupation of the country from 1979 until the final withdrawal in 1989 saw the urban centres controlled by Soviet troops and Soviet-backed militia, locked in constant ...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's diminutive president since 2005, is no stranger to controversy. He famously called for the State of Israel to be "wiped off the map" and has shown remarkable truculence in the face of international condemnation of the ...

Somalia has not had a functioning central government since 1991. While northern parts of the country have broken away, setting up de facto proto-states including Puntland and Somaliland, the rump of the country remains perennially riven by fighting ...