Protectors of the Amazon
In 2003, an oil company entered the indigenous Sarayaku community’s territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon in search of oil. Neither the government nor the firm had consulted the community beforehand.The ...
6 Okt 20239min
The Amoco Cadiz oil spill
In 1978, the Amoco Cadiz tanker ran aground off the coast of France.The supertanker split, releasing more than 220,000 tonnes of crude oil into the sea. It was the largest oil spill caused by a tanker...
5 Okt 20239min
Nigeria strikes oil
In 1956 commercial quantities of oil were discovered in the Nigerian village Oloibiri.It marked the start of a huge oil industry for Nigeria but came at a cost for villages in the Niger Delta.Chief Su...
4 Okt 20238min
The oilfield that changed Kazakhstan
In the wake of the USSR breaking up, Kazakhstan was wrestling with the challenges of independence; hyperinflation, the economy collapsing and food shortages.But three-and-a-half kilometres underground...
3 Okt 20239min
The oil crisis of 1973
In October 1973, Arab nations protested the American support of Israel in its war against Egypt and Syria by slashing oil production, causing prices to sky rocket.Dr Fadhil Chalabi was deputy secretar...
2 Okt 20238min
The first cat cafe
The world's first cat cafe opened in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1998. It started with just five street cats.For the first few months they hardly had any visitors. Then a film crew made a TV programme about th...
29 Sep 202310min
The Lampedusa shipwreck tragedy
On 3 October 2013, a fishing boat taking more than 500 migrants from Libya sank 800 metres off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost island.It was one of the worst migrant shipwrecks on the Med...
28 Sep 20239min
Kassandra: The peacekeeping telenovela in Bosnia
In the early 1990s, the soap opera or telenovela craze was sweeping the world. One of the most popular was Kassandra made in Venezuela, about a girl switched at birth and raised in a travelling circus...
27 Sep 202310min
