A former industrial region in the heart of Germany is slowly reinventing itself for the 21st century, offering urban planning lessons for Detroit and beyond.
The Great Mosque of Mosul - with its iconic leaning minaret - appeared on one of Iraq’s banknotes. Its destruction by the Islamic State is an act of great symbolic importance.
A crackdown on the beef and leather trades has put hundreds of thousands of Indian Muslims and Dalits out of work, vexing already-tense religious relations and hurting India’s economy.
In some places, the dismal labour conditions of young academics have spurred them to unionise. Not so in the Czech Republic, where students and intellectuals lead lives of “state-ordered poverty”.
Apartheid was to officially end in 1994. So was the fashion of wearing hats as the formalities of business, church and leisure gave way to the informality of urban equality.
South Africa’s democracy is in trouble. But the challenge is less about who should control state institutions, and more about how they can be refashioned to deliver to the poor.
There are refugees, there are migrants and then there are the millions of people who live in legal limbo because they defy easy categorisation. But everyone is just looking for a place to call home.
Martin Plaut, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Qatar withdrawing its troops has reignited tensions between Eritrea and Djibouti which the UN and African Union are trying to mediate. This comes as Eritrea is also embroiled in the Yemen civil war.
New Zealand just conferred personhood upon the Whanganui River, giving it standing to legally defend its rights. Can this novel strategy save the environment?
Professor in Practice on Environmental Innovation, School of Social and Environmental Sustainability, University of Glasgow, UK, National University of Singapore