Pontianak / AFP A striking bird with monochrome plumage and a formidable “beak”, the helmeted hornbill is being hunted to extinction, one of the latest victims of a thriving global trade in exotic wildlife. For decades poachers in Borneo’s western forests focused on capturing orangutans and sun bears, but in the past few years a surge in demand for …

  Harare / AFP They sleep outside banks, skimp on meals and sell flowers in hospitals. After long years of work, Zimbabwe’s pensioners are struggling to survive old age as the country’s economy collapses. With banks short of cash to pay out pensions, 80-year-old Gift Kaondera-Shava, a former truck driver, bus conductor and factory supervisor, now scrambles to feed himself …

CAIRO / AP For two weeks now, the shelf once piled with bags of sugar — for better or worse Egypt’s most loved commodity — has stood empty at this grocery store in bustling downtown Cairo. “This is nothing — they’re missing even more things in my village,” said Mahmoud Sulayman, a former army conscript from the Nile Delta now …