Burkina Faso country profile - Overview. A poor country even by West African standards, landlocked Burkina Faso has suffered from recurring droughts and military coups.
A popular uprising forced long-term leader Blaise Compaore from office in October 2014. An interim administration was put in place for a year, after which elections are to be held. Burkina Faso has significant reserves of gold, but cotton is the economic mainstay for many Burkinabes. This industry is vulnerable to changes in world prices. Image copyright Getty Images A former French colony, it gained independence as Upper Volta in 1960. In 1983 Capt Thomas Sankara seized power and adopted radical left-wing policies. He renamed the country Burkina Faso, which translates as "land of honest men". In 1987 Mr Sankara was overthrown and killed in a coup by his erstwhile colleague Blaise Compaore, who went on to re-introduce a multi-party system.
Image copyright AFP. Travel - The lake at the end of the world. “We have a saying here in Slovenia,” said Grega Silc, a Hike & Bike Slovenia tour guide, as we cycled around the riotous green of the ridge.
Slumbering lions win top wildlife photo prize. A stark image of lions resting on a rock outcrop in the Serengeti has won the 2014 Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) Award.
A classic WPY winner in the 50th anniversary year of the competition Michael "Nick" Nichols tracked the pride of big cats for six months before capturing this stunning shot, which stretches all the way to the horizon and includes a dramatic African sky. The great sense of depth is enhanced by the use of infrared, which cuts through the haze. WPY is 50 years old this year. Supported from the outset by the BBC, it has grown into one of the world's foremost photo competitions. Strong narrative Judge Magdalena Herrera is director of photography at GEO France, as well as being a veteran of National Geographic France. She said American Nichols' composition had all the elements of a perfect picture. "It tells you about behaviour, about the photographic techniques today, and it shows you the relationship of the animal to its environment," she told BBC News. Female force. The Sicilians who can't escape the Mafia.
27 September 2014Last updated at 19:19 ET By Antonia Quirke Italy For many, life in Sicily is played out against the backdrop of corruption.
The Mafia, if not as pervasive as it once was, still exerts considerable influence over the island. Giovanni Spadoro spends his days mending saucepans and fixing old shower heads, smelting metal inside a tiny, charred-walled cave which has served as his workshop since 1947 on the edge of the town of Scicli, Sicily. Now 85 years old, surely he must be considering retirement, I suggest, as I sit with him over the course of a weekday afternoon, during which time not a single person stops to buy a pan. Spadoro shakes his head.
The hills around us are dotted with hundreds of caves like this one. More recently, the stylish Milanese have been buying and renovating the caves as novelty residences. Google Maps adds Great Britain public transport data. 13 May 2014Last updated at 19:05 ET By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor Google said this was the single largest transit update that it had made to its Maps service Google has added coast-to-coast public transport information for the whole of Great Britain to its Maps app.
It said the data included departure times and routes for buses, ferries, trains and trams in England, Scotland and Wales. It is not the first app to do so. Rome2Rio's UK Transport Search app already provided similar coverage. But the body supplying the data said that the huge popularity of Google's service meant its move was significant. "It's an amazing shop window for our operators' services," said Julie Williams, chief executive of Traveline - a partnership of Great Britain's transport operators and local authorities.
Medjugorje. The name Međugorje literally means "between mountains".
At an altitude of 200 m (660 ft) above sea level it has a mild Mediterranean climate. The town consists of an ethnically homogeneous Croat population of over 4,000. The Roman Catholic parish (local administrative and religious area) consists of five neighbouring villages: Medjugorje, Bijakovići, Vionica, Miletina and Šurmanci. English language 'originated in Turkey' Modern Indo-European languages - which include English - originated in Turkey about 9,000 years ago, researchers say.
Their findings differ from conventional theory that these languages originated 5,000 years ago in south-west Russia. The New Zealand researchers used methods developed to study virus epidemics to create family trees of ancient and modern Indo-European tongues to pinpoint where and when the language family first arose. Their study is reported in Science.
A language family is a group of languages that arose from a common ancestor, known as the proto-language. Linguists identify these families by trawling through modern languages for words of similar sound that often describe the same thing, like water and wasser (German). According to the Ethnologue database, more than 100 language families exist. The Indo-European family is one of the largest families - more than 400 languages spoken in at least 60 countries - and its origins are unclear. Indijas dārgumi - airtour - Ceļojumu aģentūra. Individuālais / grupas ceļojums pa Radžastānas senajām pilsētām.
Laipni aicināti Radžastānā – pārpilnības zemē! Viss šeit ir nedaudz lielāks, impozantāks, skaistāks un pārsteidzošāks nekā jebkur citur Indijā.