200 snakes, 1,000 ducks, 700 chicken and a tonne of pork. This is the weekly meat order for the West Lake Restaurant in Changsha in China's central Hunan province, the world's biggest Chinese restaurant seating 5,000 over a vast 88,000 square metre ...

According to the latest UN figures, 2,000,000 refugees how now fled over Syria's borders to escape the ongoing civil war engulfing the country. Half of those refugees are children. The sprawling Zaatari camp, situated 12 kms from the Syria border, is ...

On 17 December 2010, a 26 year old street vendor called Mohamed Bouazizi stood in the middle of passing traffic in front of the governor's office in his home town of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia, poured a canister of petrol over himself and set himself on ...

Since November 2013, Ukraine has been gripped by the most serious political crisis since independence in 1991. What started as public demonstrations protesting against a decision by the government of Viktor Yanukovych, the now deposed president, to ...

Since November 2013, Ukraine has been gripped by the most serious political upheaval since independence in 1991. What started as demonstrations against an incompetent and kleptocratic government in Kiev has developed into a nationwide crisis. From ...

With a surface area of 2,166,086 square kilometres, three quarters of which is permanently covered by an ice sheet, and a population of just 57,000, Greenland would seem like a cold, distant and insignificant appendage, anachronistically linked to ...

North Korea is a perplexing, and often intimidating, place at the best of times. Ruled since its establishment in 1948 with an iron fist by the Kim family, the only family dynasty to have emerged out of the communist world, the Democratic People's ...

The tsunami that swept in from the Pacific Ocean following the massive magnintude 9 underwater earthquake that struck some 70 kilometres off the northeastern coast of the Japanese island of Honshu left a vast corridor of devastation in its wake, all ...

In Kyrgyzstan, almost two thirds of all marriages are thought to be the result of ala kachuu ('grab and run'), or bride kidnapping. Around 15,000 women a year are thought to be the target of abductions by their suitors. Though illegal since 1994, the...

The soul of Russia should be located somewhere along the banks of its rivers - the Volga, the Neva, the Oka - since Russia's development was so closely linked to the waterways. For centuries, the great rivers were the main trade arteries, whether it ...

When Guy Martin went to Libya in April 2011, he was aware of the dangers facing journalists on the ground. The situation along the frontline was fast-moving and impossibly fluid. Having covered the unpredictable frontline in the West of the country, ...

After 21 days of protests, the 32-year regime of Egypt's ageing president Hosni Mubarak finally came to an end on the evening of 11 February 2011. The roots of the revolution lay with a small group of educated internet bloggers using facebook ...

The photographs of these Libyan men adorn the walls of the courthouse and justice rooms on Benghazi's breezy seafront. They were shot in March and April 2011. Over the course of the uprising and revolution in Libya, from its early days in February...

Napoleon is thought to have said: "Give me 20,000 Cossacks and I will conquer the whole of Europe and even the world". Now Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin are enlisting the help of the Cossack ethnic minority to keep order in ...

The town of Taranto on the heel of Italy lies in a region known for its picturesque baroque towns, stone cottages and olive groves. But this southern port city with its crumbling old town perched on an island at the entrance to a lagoon, is a dark ...

Ramallah, the de-facto capital of the Occupied Palestinian West Bank, is home to a growing, educated and secular youth. After years of economic stagnation, Israeli military incursions and poor infrastructure, this once occupied city is coming back to...