Mara Budgen
Head International Editor
Every year for a decade the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) has organised a photography competition that highlights the lives and struggles of the world’s poor. This edition’s winner, announced on the 27th of October, is Indian primary school teacher Sujan Sarka. His photo Paddy Cultivation captures the livelihood of rice paddy field
Sham is violinist Alaa Arsheed’s debut album as well as the ancient Aramaic name of the city of Damascus, the modern capital of his country, Syria. The album is an eight songs-long journey through the musician’s life, which brought him from Syria to Beirut and finally to Italy also thanks to having met Italian actor
Sandwiched between the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, Brazil is hosting the first ever World Indigenous Games. From the 23rd of October to the 1st of November 2,000 athletes from 50 ethnic groups and 23 countries compete in events ranging from football and tug of war to indigenous disciplines such as xikunahity, a football-style game
Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), in power for over fifty years, won the elections and its candidate John Magufuli is the new president of Tanzania with 68% of votes. The National Electoral Commission made the announcement on the 29th of October. The elections to decide the new head of state, as well as members of parliament
The region that includes Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and part of Turkey, where Kurds claim autonomy or even independence in the name of a greater Kurdistan, has been the focus of international attention for decades. The journalist Ferruccio de Bortoli shines a light on the issue ahead of the Turkish parliamentary elections on the 1st of
Le carni rosse lavorate entrano nella lista dei cancerogeni stilata dall’Oms. Proprio come sigarette, alcol, amianto e arsenico.
Gibe III, now almost complete, is one of Africa’s largest dams. Like its predecessors Gibe I and II it diverts the flow of the Omo River in Ethiopia, which feeds 90% of Lake Turkana in Kenya, the world’s most extensive desert lake. 260,000 indigenous people from 17 ethnic groups live in the Lower Omo Valley,
Svetlana Alexievich has been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature by the Swedish Academy “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”. The Belarusian writer and journalist is known for books that weave hundreds of real life testimonies together. Alexievich was born in Ukraine in 1948 from a
September ended with the raising of the Palestinian flag at the United Nations, yet October has seen an escalation of violence in the West Bank, which forms the bulk of Palestinian territories. Clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli military have left two Palestinian teenagers dead and almost 500 Palestinians injured. In separate incidents another two
The General Debate of the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly took place in the organisation’s headquarters in New York, USA, from the 23rd of September to the 3rd of October. The annual event brings together all 193 member states, the only one in which national leaders regularly participate. The theme chosen this
