The European Union’s economic alliance may be embattled and on the verge of collapse but in some parts of the world its integration model is still a beacon. Experts from both sides of the Taiwan Strait — one of the world’s potentially most explosive areas - are studying the conflict resolution experience of the European Union in the hope of taking the precarious relationship between China and Taiwan forward.

Every working day a long queue of people forms outside the State Translation Service in Thission in downtown Athens from early in the morning. Most are youngsters processing documents they need to leave Greece for study or work. Many move on to queue later outside embassies for visas.

'Please God, make my breasts disappear.' Joyce Forghab used to pray the same line every night during the month she was suffering from breast ironing. The shocking practice, carried out by a quarter of mothers in Cameroon, is meant to reverse female sexual development.

Home to a fast-growing network of farmers' markets, cooperatives and organic farms, but also the breeding ground for mammoth for-profit corporations that now hold patents to over 50 percent of the world's seeds, the United States is weathering a battle between Big Agro and a ripening movement for food justice and security.