Reza's story

Forty years after Chernobyl, Poland aims to open its first nuclear power plant. Shortly after the disaster, only 30% of Poles supported nuclear power. In 2022, the support hit a record 75%, almost doubling just from the year before, according to public opinion polls. Poland’s nuc ...  Show more

Late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe died in 2019, but in the years before and since his death, his three children with his former wife, Grace, consistenly made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In April 2026 Bellarmine Mugabe pled guilty to a firearms offence in South Afri ...  Show more

When Taliban forces seized control of Kabul last year, many Afghans faced life-changing choices. One family's decision led to a harrowing journey for a young woman and her sister. Related Links Bushra Seddique wrote about her escape from the Taliban for the September 2022 issue A ...  Show more

Today, an update on a story from the Kerning Cultures vault.Elie was a journalist looking for her next story when she met Ziad at a party in Istanbul. Ziad was a Syrian refugee hoping to travel to Europe and apply for asylum. Elie asked Ziad if she could follow him to Norway, his ...  Show more

C’est un fait divers qui a défrayé la chronique en Tunisie en 2015 : le départ de Tunisie de deux adolescentes ayant rejoint Daech pour faire le jihad. Leur mère, Olfa Hamrouni, avait remué ciel et terre et mobilisé les médias pour retrouver ses deux filles aînées. La réalisatric ...  Show more

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Turkish writer Elif Shafak. Elif Shafak has published ten novels and several volumes of non-fiction and her work is translated into 47 languages. She is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey today.Born in 1971, she was raised by a ...  Show more