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As seen in: Metro.co.uk, Oxford Mail, Sunday Mirror, Daily Mail, MyLondon, Daily Star, The Sun, Lancashire Telegraph, Bolton Journal, Dorset Echo, Hackney Gazette, The Know Media 

Metro •

Blow to European far-right after win for abortion rights

‘Should women’s access to safe abortion depend on geography, wealth and luck?’
The European Parliament approved a proposal by ‘My Voice, My Choice’, a citizen-led campaign that has forced abortion access on the EU’s political agenda for the first time.
Spearheaded by a small group of activists and now backed by more than 1.1 million signatures, it calls for a financial mechanism that would cover abortion care across the continent.
The final decision on whether to adopt the initiative will be tak...
Metro •

Unexploded bombs and poisoned crops: on the frontline of olive farming

Hiba Ghandour and her husband had been having the same argument for days.
At stake was the modest olive grove she inherited in Lebanon’s village of Arnoun, in Nabatieh governorate, which is at the centre of renewed Israeli attacks that are flouting the one-year-old ceasefire.
Their 10 trees will barely produce more than a few bottles of oil, but for the family, they hold roots deeper than their harvest.
With the fruit hanging heavy on the branches – and only a few days left until it would spoil...
Metro •

'I joined teams sweeping for bombs that have left so many dead'

Ahmad Mustafa’s hands are trembling. Standing in the middle of an olive grove in the village of Kfarmelki, he holds out a row of his own disfigured fingers – memories from a cluster bomb that tore through his body after the 2006 Lebanon War.
‘During my recovery in hospital, I heard about a lot of accidents happening,’ he tells Metro, just metres away from where a large ‘demining site’ sign has been propped up in the ground.
‘Many children were maimed or killed by cluster munitions. So this was m...
Metro •

How a chess club took on a refugee camp's darkest forces - and won

Metro’s foreign correspondent Gergana Krasteva reports from Lebanon
When Mahmoud Hashem witnessed two boys fighting in Shatila Refugee Camp, in Beirut’s southern suburbs – one of them threatening to stab the other with a knife – his only solution was to invite them over to his house for a game of chess.
Now, 15 years later, Metro travelled to Lebanon to follow the steps of that incident.
Shatila itself – and its reputation shaped by a history of massacres, scarce resources and exponential growth...
Metro •

Gaza's 'perfect storm of hazards' amid thousands of tonnes of unexploded bombs

After the ceasefire in Gaza, Israel has left behind a silent killer – tens of thousands of unexploded bombs buried deep in the wreckage of homes, hospitals, schools and streets.
One in 10 of the missiles, grenades, shells and mortars fired into the Gaza Strip over the past two years are estimated to have failed, turning the area into one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Greg Crowther, director of programmes for British-based charity, the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), said that about 200,...
Metro •

UK Muay Thai fighters lash out at Zara McDermott's 'ignorant' documentary

‘Benidorm on steroids: cheap, cheerful, full of women.’
That’s how Thailand is described in Zara McDermott’s ‘The Dark Side of Paradise’, a new BBC documentary that has been criticised for showing only one side of the country — the ‘drugs and cheap sex’.
Nicole Wilson, a public servant who is half-Thai, half-British, told Metro the programme is not representative of her culture and that Zara comes across as ‘really out of touch’.
‘If anything, it’s indicative of the poor behaviour of British peo...
Metro •

Zimbabwe's climate crisis: Child marriage and boys forced into illegal mining

Metro’s foreign correspondent Gergana Krasteva reports from Zimbabwe
The last time I see Madeline Mgwabi, she is peering through the gates of her crumbling home in western Zimbabwe.
The grandmother-of-three is clutching a single orange that our driver had slipped to her – leftover from the hotel breakfast.
The fruit will have to be split four ways – between her and her grandsons – one of them still a toddler – all of whom she is raising on her own in this godforsaken area in the southern part o...
Metro •

Inside Zimbabwe's gold mines where men risk being buried alive for a few dollars

Metro’s foreign correspondent Gergana Krasteva reports from Zimbabwe
Beads of sweat drip down Gilbert Nuovu’s forehead as the memories of working in one of Zimbabwe’s gold mines rush back in.
Over a year ago, the dad-of-two deserted his job after a colleague was killed when the walls of the pit caved in, burying him alive. 
‘A friend of mine died on the spot. I was afraid for my life, so I went back home,’ he tells Metro.
The road into Matabeleland North, 150 miles from the city of Bulawayo, is...
Metro •

I was ordered out of a swimming pool just for being a migrant

The uncomfortable looks came first. As Jane Tiozen, a domestic worker from the Philippines, dipped her feet in the swimming pool of an upscale beach club in Lebanon, she could feel the disapproving eyes of guests on her.
That is when the lifeguard ordered the 33-year-old to exit the pool as ‘the help is not allowed to swim in it.’
Jane, who has worked as a nanny for a family in Beirut for eight years, told Metro: ‘I could sense something was off.
‘Then the lifeguard approached me and told me to...
Metro •

Gaza becomes 'most expensive place to eat in the world'

‘Where in the world is food more expensive than London, Dubai, and New York?’ It sounds like a setup to a cheap joke but the harrowing answer is Gaza.
Under a suffocating Israeli blockade, food, fuel and humanitarian aid have become luxuries for Palestinians.
The result? People are starving. Not metaphorically, not gradually – literally. What little food remains has been pushed to black-market extremities, as shown by prices shared with Metro by Christian Aid workers on the ground.
A 25kg sack o...
Metro •

'I am lucky because I found two of my son's bones in the Srebrenica massacre'

On Nermin Subašić’s 16th birthday, war engulfed his hometown in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina.
His mother, Munira, said a neighbour gave him a slice of bread and cup of tea as a birthday present as food was in short supply.
Nearly two years later, just before his 18th birthday, Nermin was dead.
Despite his untimely death, his mother refuses to let her memories be overshadowed by war.
‘When I see a slice of bread and a cup of tea, I always think of him,’ Munira said.
Nermin was among the 8,372 B...
Metro •

The 'memeification' of World War Three reveals a troubling truth about society

Everything is content — even the existential fear of World War Three.
As the Israel–Iran ceasefire shows signs of breaking, and famine looms in Gaza, where more than 400 Palestinians have been killed while queueing for food since May 26, people have been flooding social media with a new and troubling trend.
‘Pre-draft’ shopping hauls, hot takes on ‘Why I cannot be drafted into WW3’ and jokes about a ‘nuclear summer’ are just some of the videos circulating on TikTok, all styled for maximum engage...
Metro •

Top UN general warns 'hunger used as weapon of war' to starve Palestinians

Ten weeks into a ‘fabricated, man-made and politically motivated famine’, Palestinians in Gaza are starving.
With United Nations food distribution centres shut down, bakeries bombed and humanitarian access throttled by Israel, people are resorting to eating animal feed, scraps and even turtles captured in the Mediterranean Sea to delay their death.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of UNRWA, the UN agency, which supports Palestinian refugees, told Metro that hunger is being used as a weap...
Metro •

Top secret military unit to guard skies above Rome during Pope Francis's funeral

A secretive military unit specialising in drone warfare will be deployed to monitor the sky over Rome and the Vatican during the funeral procession of Pope Francis.
As thousands of mourners descend on St Peter’s Square, Italian authorities are enacting one of the most complex operations in recent Vatican history.
The threat level has quietly been elevated – though not officially – which has prompted a series of heightened security measures across the capital.
Among them is a special unit trained...
Metro •

Europe has spent £22,304,000,000 on weapons in 2025 amid growing Putin threat

Europe is rearming at a pace not seen in decades.
More than £22 billion have been poured into military defence contracts so far this year – an urgent response to Russia’s preparations to wage a ‘large-scale war’ on the continent within five years.
Budgets appear to have swollen as governments are rushing to boost their borders, something resembling a real-world battlefield from Call of Duty.
Metro has been tracking military contracts issued to private manufacturers since January 1, including by...
Metro •

Russian anti-war activists reveal what it's like being 'de facto stateless'

‘Home’ has been a far away concept for Aleksei* after he fled Moscow at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The anti-war activist had been living in Georgia for two years – and had planned to make it his permanent residency – when protests against Georgian’s pro-Kremlin government engulfed the capital Tbilisi. 
He originally fled Russia in 2022 to avoid conscription. Since then, he is among the hundreds of people who have been arrested in Georgia during the ongoing protests, wh...
Metro •

Metro joins troops for Nato's 'most intense' war drills on Putin's doorstep

Fighter jets streak over the barren fields of eastern Romania, unleashing precision strikes on targets ahead. Underneath, tanks advance in a tight formation across the frozen soil firing near combat trenches.
It may sound like a war zone – but it is not one, just yet.
Metro travelled to Smârdan, Nato’s Romanian military base, just a handful of miles from the borders of neighbouring Ukraine and Moldova, to witness drills for a possible invasion by Russia.
This is where 10,000 military personnel f...
Metro •

Putin critic who survived gulag reveals one memory that plays in his head

Sitting in the lobby of a central London hotel, Vladimir Kara-Murza is in a valiant mood.
It’s been six months since he was released from the IK-6 colony in Omsk, Siberia, a maximum security prison roughly 2,800 miles away.
The 43-year-old was locked up for two-and-a-half years, where he was, according to Amnesty International, ‘repeatedly subjected to arbitrary disciplinary punishments and other ill-treatment, including multiple placements in SHIZO (penalty isolation cell).’
His sentence came a...
Metro •

'I refused to join the Israel Defence Forces - here is what happened'

Tal Mitnick seems different from his pictures – for one, his hair has been buzzed off.
The teenager is wearing a black T-shirt that reads ‘Public Enemy.’ He also carries an air of maturity, way beyond his years, as if life’s challenges have left a mark on him already.
This is what six months in one of Israel’s prisons will do to young men who refuse to serve in the military over the massacre in Gaza.
Tal, 19, is the first Israeli citizen to be imprisoned as a conscientious objector in the war....
Metro •

TikTok videos about Russian men's chivalry hide domestic abuse problem

‘Бьёт – значит любит,’ translating to ‘If he beats you, he loves you’ – it is a proverb that women across Russia have been seeking solace in for years.
Originating from the 16th-century set of household rules, called Domostroy, it explains how domestic violence is masked by ‘traditional family values’ in the country to this day.
Under Vladimir Putin’s rule, abusers at home are thriving, only encouraged by his weaponisation of these values in recent years, Human Rights Watch told Metro.
But on Ti...
Metro •

Only one airline still flies to bomb-scarred Beirut: 'the hero of the sky'

Smoke rising from crumbling buildings scattered like scars across Beirut -this is the view from the windows of Middle East Airline (MEA) planes.
Since the start of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in its war against Hezbollah, airlines – one by one – suspended flights to the capital. But not MEA.
Lebanon’s national carrier has emerged as a ‘hero of the sky,’ continuing to evacuate people.
For Captain Mohammed Aziz, who was a pilot during the country’s Civil War, this is not true – it is just part of...
Metro •

Inside Europe's 'zone of fear' where people face kidnap and death

Inside Georgia’s ‘zone of fear’ on the border of the occupied region of South Ossetia, residents fall victim to Russia’s aggressive process of ‘borderisation’.
Metro travelled to the region as volunteers from Lifeline.ge, the Georgian project founded by David Katsarava and Egor Koruptev, delivered humanitarian aid to half a dozen families.
Since Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008, after which the then-president Dmitry Medvedev recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a...
Metro •

'I'm putting smiles on the faces of young kids in a warzone and this is how'

On her days off, Kristie Rahal straps on the leather shear holder, packed with clippers and combs, before heading to Beirut’s waterfront known as Corniche.
This is where dozens of displaced Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian families have scrambled to safety after Israel started bombing Lebanon’s capital as it launched a ground invasion of the south as part of its war on Hezbollah.
‘It takes nothing to make someone happy,’ Kristie said after shaving a thin line in the eyebrow of a young boy.
It wa...
Metro •

Gaza one year on: 'My children's hunger is a knife that cuts through me'

Like all children of Gaza, Hala Yahya Abu Saleem wakes at dawn to queue for bread, water and gas.
The 16-year-old, who lives in a ‘scorching’ tent with eight family members in the city of Deir al Balah, spends at least half a day every day trying to gather food.
Hala says no nourishing food is available ‘to strengthen our frail bodies’.
‘Sometimes our food consists of canned goods that we receive at times and buy at others. Occasionally, we witness a drop in vegetable prices, but it is for a sho...
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