Long Reads

A Million Steps for Love: Exhibition captures moments from a documentary on pilgrimage of 'love' to Jerusalem

The documentary takes the audience on a journey through the beautiful and barren landscape of Palestine and shares the message of love.

After pandemic year, a weary world looks back, and forward

A year later, some are dreaming of a return to normal, thanks to vaccines that seemed to materialise as if by magic. Others live in places where the magic seems to be reserved for wealthier worlds.

Once denounced as forgery, fragments of old Biblical manuscript earn credibility, a scholarly article claims

In a just-published scholarly article and companion book, Idan Dershowitz, a 38-year-old Israeli American scholar at the University of Potsdam in Germany, marshals a range of archival, linguistic and literary evidence to argue that the manuscript was an authentic ancient artefact.

A decade after Japan's 2011 earthquake, many still hope for 'recovery' from trauma

More than 30 trillion yen (US$ 280 billion) has been spent on reconstruction so far in Japan. But while the government has charged ahead with new buildings, it has invested less in helping people to rebuild their lives, for instance, by offering mental health services for trauma.

Indian artists design comic strips to raise awareness about water consumption in the fashion industry

With their works, these seven artists have tried to showcase the absurdity of the fast fashion industry, with the hope that viewers will take note, lend a thought to the cause and thus make responsible decisions.

In Brazil, world's largest tree-borne fruit is either danger or delight: Journey of the jackfruit in southern hemisphere

Jackfruit is abundant during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, but many Brazilians are loath to eat it. Historically, it has been consumed more by the poor or enslaved; in barbecue-mad Brazil, the idea of fruit substituting for meat is viewed with suspicion.

Medical teams in Turkey travel to remote mountain villages as part of vaccination drive against coronavirus

After traveling snow and ice covered roads, medical workers arrived in the small settlement of 350 people some 140 miles (230 kilometres) from the provincial capital, to vaccinate older villagers.

In Bangladesh, a fishing community lives in a boat village, dissociated from mainland, government assistance

The locals consider them to be lower caste people. The land dwellers are the main customers of these fishers, as they do business with the ‘Babaija’. It is a relation of monetary transactions, not one of kinship.

Central to disaster relief efforts in Pakistan's mountain villages, women scale heights with rescue teams

Dedicated teams of women volunteers are an important part of working with communities in effective ways during disaster relief operations.

In photos: The story of Nepal's first, and now nearly forgotten, hydropower project

This was only 30 years after the installation of the world’s first hydropower plant on Fox river of Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1882, and a year before China built its first hydropower plant in 1912 in Yunnan province.