Features

  Jinyuan / AFP When he dons his flowing robes and vivid makeup, Wu Yunhong is transformed from a labourer who toils on Chinese mountains under a beating sun into an evil general commanding an army of warriors. Wu was raised in the Jinyuan Opera Company, co-founded by his grandfather in 1984. He started performing when he was only eight ...

  Hochheim am Main / AFP For 15-year-old Mustafa, the trickiest part about learning German is knowing when to use the articles der, die or das. “And the umlaut,” his classmate Majd reminds him, sending both Syrian teens groaning in mock frustration at the vowel alteration, one of the quirks of German grammar. But they’re not really complaining. Having escaped ...

  Cairo / AFP At a club in downtown Cairo, Ahmed Saleh pumps electronic beats from his laptop as Abdullah Miniawy chants to a cheering crowd, the duo part of a wave of new talent on Egypt’s underground music scene. Emerging artists are creating an eclectic selection of hip-hop, dubstep, electronic and rock music, with some influenced by traditional Egyptian ...

  Accra, Ghana / AFP Parkins Takyi-Aidoo bobs and weaves around a ragged punch bag, dancing on concrete in a rehearsal for the knockout blow that one day could secure him fame and glory. The Ghanaian is just 13 years old but by training in the Bukom neighbourhood of Accra — a hotbed for fighters — he probably has a ...

  Jakarta / AFP Some fight with machetes three-feet long, others are armed with daggers curved like the claws of big cats, while other combatants rely on only their minds. This is the world of “pencak silat”, or Indonesia’s martial arts, which are now battling for greater global recognition — having secured a place in the Asian Games, the government ...

  Bulandshahr / AFP Indian farmer Zakir Khan should be sowing his winter crops now. Instead he is stuck at home after the government’s shock move to pull high-value notes out of circulation left him with no money to pay for seeds — or feed his family. Like millions of rural Indians, Khan lives far from a bank and relies ...

  JOHANNESBURG / AP The pangolin, a scaly anteater coveted by poachers, might have a new champion: rats that will be trained to sniff out trafficked pangolin parts in shipments heading from Africa to Asia. A pilot project to turn African giant pouched rats into conservationist sleuths is literally in its infancy — the 10 to 15 rodents being reared ...

  Dakar / AFP Above the sacks of seeds and coal, three kerosene lamps gather dust in the tiny shed that Kenyan chicken farmer Bernard calls home. He prefers to use solar energy to light up his evenings, listen to the radio or watch television, after abandoning a diesel generator he said was expensive to maintain and burned fuel too ...

  Paris / AFP Cutting food waste is an appealing social goal, but experiments in France found that measures to cut the amount of food being thrown out also saved supermarkets money. Like a number of other countries, France has recently adopted legislation that forces supermarkets to donate to charities food that is unwanted or past its sell-by date but ...

  Karachi / AFP Camped on the baking concrete outside a gleaming transplant centre, Karachi’s sick have come from miles around in desperate hope for a last chance at life. There, Dr Adibul Rizvi provides free medical care to hundreds of thousands of people each year, providing a much-needed alternative to Pakistan’s public health sector, which critics dismiss as chaotic, ...