Features

  Frankfurt / DPA It’s too soon to sound the all clear, but international conservation organizations have recorded a modest rise in the number of mountain gorillas in the volcanic mountains of central Africa. Estimates put the number in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda at 800. This means that they are still highly endangered, but the population has risen from just ...

  Cologne / DPA Dietmar is one of the bestsellers today. The youths listen spellbound as he tells them how 35 years ago he robbed a bank — because he needed money so he could marry his girlfriend. He almost got away with it, escaping for a whole year before he was arrested, charged and sentenced to four years in ...

  Havana / DPA When Cuban boxer Julio Cesar de la Cruz bit into his gold medal as he celebrated his triumph at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics earlier this year, Namibia Flores watched enviously on television at home in Cuba. Even though Cuba is a boxing powerhouse and has won more Olympic gold medals than any other country, competitive ...

  Berlin / DPA Isaiah Lopaz lets his photos speaks for themselves. “And when do you go back?” reads one of the plain white T-shirts the 36-year-old American wears for his portrait series. “Where do you really come from?” is another. It’s a question the Afro-American hears all the time in his everyday life in his adopted home city of ...

  Dresden / DPA When his royal palace in Dresden was badly damaged by fire in 1701, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland seized his chance: Out with the original romanesque architecture and in with a glamourous new-fangled style: baroque. Over the next three decades, August II (1670-1733) oversaw a major refurbishing of the Dresden Royal Palace, creating ...

  Tokyo / DPA Otochika Ichikawa is a friendly, elderly man, who smiles and is good at making eye-contact as he speaks. The 70-year-old Japanese enjoys conversation. He knows, from bitter experience, how important social contact is. “When my daughter was 14 she refused to go to school,” Ichikawa says. His daughter spent hours leafing through the pages of all ...

  Singen / DPA Visit Alexander Fluegler at his house in Germany and you can’t help noticing one thing straight away — family and his Yenish ethnicity are vital to him. The walls of his home office are covered in photographs; Fluegler with his wife, Fluegler with his children, Fluegler with relatives, friends, elderly people, and young people. All beam ...

  DPA Coach Christa Osman wraps a tape measure around the player’s considerable girth and pronounces: “Dave Jones, waist size 14 centimetres less than three months ago.” It’s part of the pre-match ritual in the English town of Colchester, about a two-hour drive north-east of London. Ten shorts-and-jersey-clad men, ranging in build from very stocky to heavily overweight, have gathered ...

  Schwarzenbruck / DPA When Tanya Markova was just 12 years old, her life changed literally overnight when a rare disease of the spinal cord left her completely paralysed. “I woke up one day, wanted to get dressed and go to school,” says the Bulgarian-born student, who’s now 24. But suddenly she felt a sharp pain in her back and ...

  Beijing / DPA Sunday is market day at the Temple of Heaven Park in central Beijing, with lots of haggling and touting of wares. “Woman, born 1988, 168 centimetres tall, 55 kilograms, nurse,” reads one notice among a row of other A4 sheets laid out on the paved ground. One man who looks to be in his mid-50s appears ...