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AFP Photo / Indranil Mukherjee

A Bhopal steam bath

Indranil Mukherjee Tuesday 2 December 2014

Akbar Khan survived the Bhopal gas disaster 30 years ago -- but it left him with acute breathing, heart and joint problems. Steam baths are one of the Ayurvedic methods used to treat thousands like him, at a clinic in the Indian city. "It's difficult to photograph a tragedy after so many years," writes AFP's Indranil Mukherjee. "You’re trying to find an original angle and the best lighting to bring out the survivors’ emotions. But at the same time, you have to be extremely sensitive. After all, they’re having to relive the trauma of an event in which they lost a part of their life."

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AFP PHOTO/ Fayez Nureldine

Of football and friendship in Saudi Arabia

Ian Timberlake Monday 1 December 2014

For a Western journalist new to socially-conservative Saudi Arabia, football is a precious chance to see local life up close. AFP's Ian Timberlake found himself sharing spiced coffee and jokes with police officers at the Gulf Cup final, and was left "marvelling at how a football match had again brought me face to face with Saudis." "In reality, that was the main reason I had come to this match," he writes. "For me, this wasn’t really about football."

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Photo: Peter Cunliffe-Jones

Raising the cost of lies, across two continents

Peter Cunliffe-jones Tuesday 25 November 2014

Fact-checking – not simply reporting accurately what people say but investigating, and reporting on, the accuracy of what they say – has been around for a while. It is said by most to have developed as a major force in the United States in 2004 with the creation of the website Factcheck.org, followed a few years later by Politifact.com. In the recent years, it has spread to Africa and Latin America, two regions where lack of trust both in politicians to tell the truth and in traditional media to report it are endemic, writes Peter Cunliffe-Jones, founder and director of Africacheck, Africa's first fact-checking website, and deputy director of the AFP Foundation.

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AFP Photo / Francisco Leong

The Ebola dance

Anne Chaon, Celine Clery Wednesday 19 November 2014

Health workers dance in front of a severely ill Ebola patient at a treatment center run by the Red Cross Society in Kenema, Sierra Leone, on November 15, 2014. "The scene lasted two minutes", said AFP reporters Ann Chaon and Céline Cléry, who witnessed it. "A way to distract the patients — and try to bring some relief to their sorrow and fear. A moment of grace in a world hungry for it, in these dark days of Ebola. And we, too, were grateful for it."

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