Features

  Nairobi / AFP Africa’s best barista doesn’t drink coffee, nor even really like it, yet two-time Kenyan champ Martin Shabaya won the Africa round and next month competes at the World Barista Championships. Shabaya, 26, has only been pouring coffee for five years but his success is indicative of a country that — unlike him — is learning to ...

  Taipei / AFP Reducing errors made during surgery, bringing school books to life, enabling us to browse shops from the comfort of home — virtual reality is not just about gaming, it will change our lives, according to some tech leaders. “VR” is the buzz industry at Asia’s largest tech fair, Computex, being held in Taiwan’s capital Taipei this ...

  Bloomberg For more than a century, buyers and sellers shouted out orders for Darjeeling tea at auctions in India before they were shipped to high-end purveyors in Europe, Japan and the US. Now, the prized black tea is poised to enter the digital age, with Darjeeling trade moving online from June. India harvested 1.19 billion kilograms of leaves in ...

  Bloomberg Time is running out for the 70 acres of sugar cane and fruit that Balasaheb Pandharinath Shende farms in India’s Maharashtra state. After two years of drought, his fields are parched and his wells have dried up. Monsoon rains that usually arrive this time of year should help, but the government says they will be at least a ...

  Jakarta / AFP When HeniKarmila sought to find a doctor for her ailing mother using Indonesia’s new healthcare system, she faced a nine-hour wait in a line outside a crowded public hospital in Jakarta. “The queue at the hospital is always very long, packed with young and old people, pregnant women, people who have had accidents, those in need ...

  Caracas / AFP Julio Ribas suffers from high blood pressure. If only Venezuela’s currency were as high, he might be able to afford some medicine for it.Venezuela is short of drugs, and to buy some from abroad, Ribas needs dollars — but those are in desperately short supply too. Ribas is just one of the countless casual victims of ...

  Tel Aviv / DPA A young woman sits at a long wooden table in front of her laptop, headphones on, absorbed in her work.She’s got a single space in the sleek co-working office Mindspace, located in the centre of Tel Aviv. The Israeli business has been very successful — its co-working office fills three storeys of two buildings on ...

  Obagaji / AFP Anyebe Peter has only recently returned to his farm in central Nigeria, nearly three months after attacks by Fulani herdsmen killed seven villagers, destroyed 250 homes and forced survivors to flee. “Nothing is left for us either on our farm or in our village after the attack,” he said in Adagbo, a stone’s throw from the ...

  Yangon / AFP Gripping a monkey-faced chess piece, TheinZaw swipes his hand across the chequerboard and topples an advancing demon, demonstrating an ancient form of the game that Myanmar traditionalists are battling to revive. Sittuyin, as Myanmar’s unique chess is called, is similar to the modern game but has distinctive pieces as well as moves that echo a time ...

  The Hague / AFP Nameless migrants laid to rest in unmarked scrubland, murder victims dumped in mass graves, desperate searches for the missing after natural disasters. Around the world, millions of families wait in vain to bury their dead. “You cannot close the book on the life of a loved one if you do not know the truth, or ...