“ It’s a big worry for us out there; every day of course you know there’s a risk it could get you,” Bwambale Julies, 34, says gesturing to the vast, flat expanse of water. But he’s not talking about one of the shape-shifting pods of hidden hippos lurking in the lake. It’s something far harder to spot coming: Ebola, among the world’s most deadly viruses. “It’s like a ghost. You can’t see it, but it’s there. It can inhabit you and come home with you and spread to your wife and children without ever being seen, not until it’s too late,” he continues”

“Per gram, rhino horn is worth more than cocaine or gold. Six tonnes of it is enough to make you a millionaire, many times over. But John Hume, owner of the world’s largest rhino ranch and a six-tonne stash of harvested horn, is far from rich. In fact, he’s about to go bust”

“At first glance Buffalo Dream Ranch could be mistaken for a scene from Jurassic Park. As far as the eye can see, hundreds of prehistoric-looking creatures are converging on the flat grasslands around us. ”

“On the warm, sunny morning of 8th August 1998 Nicky Verstappen boarded a bus along with 36 other children in the village of Heibloem in the Dutch province of Limburg. It was a big day for the freckle-faced 11-year-old boy. The year before, anxious he would get homesick, he had not attended the annual local summer camp. This time he had decided to go. As the packed bus pulled away, the children pressed their faces against the windows and waved goodbye to their families. It was the last time Nicky’s parents would see him alive.”

“In woodland on the border between Hungary and Croatia, soldiers wearing heavy-duty gloves unspool coils of jagged razor wire in the pouring rain. “This phase is near complete,” one officer explains, “but the expectation is that small groups will still try and break though the defenses, so army patrols will remain vigilant in these border areas to catch illegal entries.… we’ll do what we need to to prevent people passing.””

“Ilovaisk was once a small, sleepy town in eastern Ukraine. Locals grew vegetables in their backyards, children played on the streets until sundown, neighbors gossiped over front yard fences. In summer 2014 all that changed. Fierce fighting between pro-Russia rebels and Ukrainian forces broke out in the surrounding villages and countryside. People retreated to there basements. Instead of playing games children learnt to recognize different types of artillery fire. War was knocking at the door.”

“Elisa Jorge clung to the tree for dear life. All around her she could hear babies crying and parents calling for their children. In the darkness she thought she could feel snakes and insects crawling over her skin, but to let go of the branches and swat them away would have meant falling to her death in the raging waters below.”

““The factory is closed! No one is here,” shouted a large, peroxide-blond woman in military fatigues, to anyone who approaches the firmly closed metal gate. Inside the rebel-commandeered ice cream refrigeration complex in Donetsk, behind a stack of wooden crates medics in green scrubs were at work preparing disfigured corpses for their final journey home. Some had to be pieced back together.”

“The train stops and starts as artillery fire echoes in the distance across the fields. Large craters pot the fields. Aside from fleeing across Ukraine’s porous border into Russia, this is last, route in and out of the besieged city of Luhansk. Here, tens of thousands of citizens are living without running water, electricity, and telecommunications under a daily gauntlet of deadly artillery fire as pro-Russia rebels and Ukrainian forces battle for control of the country’s east.”