International report

Thai flavours are being exported around the world in many different packages. Whether it’s the thai restaurant in your city, or the packaged sauces or dried fruits at your local supermarket. Thailand is working very hard to promote itself as a destination through its culinary offerings as Emmanuelle Landais reports in this series on Thailand.

Using the principle of "Nature cures nature", Thailand’s late King Bhumibol set up several initiatives to preserve natural resources, known as Royal Projects, up and down the country. Today one of them, a wastewater and organic solid waste plant, is touted as a tourist attraction. Aside from treating sewage it surprisingly offers a lot more, as Emmanuelle Landais found out from one of the centre’s environmental experts in this second report on a series on Thailand.

Once a year in Bangkok elephants and their handlers retired from the now defunct logging industry are hired for a three day elephant-polo competition. Organizers say the event helps to raise money for elephant welfare in Thailand. But animal protection groups say the event is exploitation and accuse the handlers of abusing the elephants. In a five part series looking at aspects of life in Thailand, Emmanuelle Landais has this report.

The revolution of 2011 in Egypt began with high hopes and a future full of democracy and economic prosperity. Fast forward seven years, and the enthusiasm for the future is not as palpable among Egyptians as RFI’s Anne-Marie Bissada reports.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi was officially re-elected for a second term at the start of this month.

During his first term, he initiated many infrastructure projects and economic reforms which many are hoping will eventually stabilize the country both financially and socially.

But in one neglected area of Cairo, the work of the residents and ngos has been the driving force behind its improvement.

The Zabaleen area, or garbage city is 90 percent coptic after many christians moved to the city during the 1930s and 40s from the poorer areas in the south.

To make ends meet, they continued their tradition of raising pigs and other animals.

They soon discovered that they could actually make some money in collecting and organizing the waste---things of value could be resold while organic waste could be used as food for their animals.

But by 1969, under the presidency of Gamal Abd el-Nasser, the zabaleen living in the city were rounded up and forcibly brought to live in a remote part of the capital...so they could raise their pigs in peace.

What grew from that point is a slum which has been neglected by both the government and social organizations for many years until only recently.

Rfi's Anne-Marie Bissada has this report:

Just outside the small town of White, in the southern state of Georgia in the USA, there is a junkyard like no other. 'Old Car City' as it has become known, is an area of forest land which is now home to over 4,000 vintage and classic cars.

The junkyard started as a general store in 1931 and over the years has become renowned internationally for its strange and compelling beauty.

Photographers and Instagrammers travell from far and wide to capture the rawness of the trees and vegetation overgrowing the cars.

Our reporter Colm Flynn went to Georgia and to Old Car City to meet its owner and founder, Dean Walter Lewis.

The British government has upped the ante in its attempt to find a suitable underground burial site for its nuclear waste. After the first attempt in 2013 was blocked by residents in a rural area of Northwest England, ministers are offering up to 5 million pounds a year to any local community that agrees to house the radioactive tomb.

France has faced similar opposition to its plans to build a geological disposal facility between Paris and Strasbourg, despite experts insisting it’s the safest way to allow the waste to break down.

Nik Martin has this report on where the UK’s high level nuclear waste could be buried.

In this final report, Filip Warwick looks at what drives members of the Aquarius SOS-MSF (Médecins sans frontières) to do this kind of work.

Operating in international waters between Italy and Libya the SOS Méditerranée NGO rescue ship Aquarius, in partnership with Médecins Sans Frontières, has saved more than 27,000 people over the past two years. The MSF medical team on board the ship treats rescued people for dehydration, hypothermia and chemical burns to skin as a result of fuel mixing with sea water in boats. Filip Warwick has this report from aboard the Aquarius

During the last weekend of March, at around 10:30am, the SOS-MSF search and rescue ship Aquarius along with the Libyan coast guard, was alerted by the Italian Rescue Maritime Coordination Centre (IMRCC) that a rubber boat was in distress in international waters. In this third report, Filip Warwick follows the situation as it unfolds in the Aquarius bridge.