It's not difficult to see why Joseph Stalin liked Borjomi. Nestled along a curve in a deep river gorge and surrounded by lush, forested mountains, this Georgian spa town was the dictator's favourite summer retreat in the 1930s. Accompanied by hundreds of Soviet officials, Stalin would descend by steam train from Moscow and spend weeks taking the waters, lolling beside the Kura River and enjoying his native Georgian cuisine.

Borjomi's [...]

The sound is deafening: a low roar as if the sky is being ripped apart by some unseen celestial force. B-52s fly without illumination, but each night in Diyarbakir, a roughshod city of more than a million Kurds in this remote corner of south-eastern Turkey, the noise is unmistakable as they thunder towards targets in Iraq.

The sound provides a backdrop to the growing tension in the area. For the [...]