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'The blast left the soldier on his back, staring at the mess of his leg'   STRUGGLING TO sit up, Frederic Couture surveyed his torn trouser leg and the bloodied strips of flesh which were all that remained of his foot. A landmine had exploded, blowing the rest of it away. "I'm 21-years-old and I've lost my foot,'' he cried. "What am I going to do now?' "You'll be fine,'' his comrades tried to reassure him, pulling hard on the tourniquet they had tied just above the ragged wound. "You'll be fine.'' But it was not true - not really.		Hope dies for Africa's lost generation   CAROL Singwoma is weaving her way through the crowd, the eyes of the men on her dirty white knitted turtle-neck top and the little skirt covering her thin legs. Her skin is a deep black, her eyes big and open, her features attractive, if not quite pretty. She is giggling, her arms folded across her small breasts, aware of the attention of the men swigging from bottles of beer and swaying to the sound of the African dance music as they spill out of the open-air bar into a darkened side street on the edge of the Zambian crossroads town of Kapiri Mposhi.
	In this cat-and-mouse war, the sniper is king   IT WAS the tank crew which spotted them first, four men in civilian clothing jumping out of the back of a pick-up truck carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the heart of Al Zubayr. Corporal Mark Harvey was the first sniper to react, dropping to his knee and fixing the man carrying the RPG in his sights. One shot, the militia man dropping like a stone, dead before he hit the ground. A clean shot to the head.
Death at a checkpoint   HIS name was Ahmed Hameed and he was 36 years old. He had taken the wrong turning up to the checkpoint on the July 14 Bridge which spans the Tigris on the south-eastern edge of what used to be known in Baghdad as the Green Zone, but which has now been renamed the International Zone. Now he lies in a body-bag a few yards away from the US army gun tower which opened fire on him as he tried to turn his moped around. Soldiers from the US Airborne surround him, those at the back peering over the shoulders of the ones in front to get a better view as the bag is unzipped. In the tower, the heavy .240-calibre machine-gun hangs limply on its mount, pointing at the ground. The gunner is leaning on the parapet, looking out across the city Ahmed's head is turned away to one side, his mouth open, the blood which streaks his face already dry. His right hand is by his side, the left curled across his stomach. The fingers stop a few inches from the inch-wide hole just above his groin. Someone has tried to stem the bleeding from another hole in the top of his chest, but there was too much blood. It has soaked his T-shirt, which is pulled up to expose the wounds, and poured down his body, mingling with his sweat, leaving pale rivulets across the skin.		Suicide and suffering grip Europe's nation of orphans   THE HEADMASTER glanced around the classroom. "Hands up, those of you with parents who are working abroad,'' he told them. A forest of arms shot up; out of a class of 21 pupils at the school in Liteni in northern Romania, only three children kept their hands on the desks. "Who do you stay with?'' the headmaster, Gheorghe Moga, asked. "My grandmother,'' replied one of the 10-year-olds with his hand in the air. "My cousin,'' said an 11-year-old. Mr Moga went around the room. Grandmother, cousin, grandmother, cousin ... Romania, a nation mired in poverty, is counting the true cost of living on the edge of western Europe. Hundreds of thousands of parents are leaving their children with friends or relatives in order to go abroad in search of work.
	The real Slumdog Millionaires     AMID a narrow warren of side streets close to the mosque that dominates the skyline on the edge of the mega-slum of Dharavi, in the heart of Mumbai, a young boy tilts his head back and stares up at the narrow strip of blue which is all that can be seen of the sky. Rickety warehouses crowd in from all sides, their high sheet-metal walls and overhanging asbestos roofs blocking out the sun, plunging the dirt streets below into a gloomy half-light, though it is nearly midday.
'He turned to the helicopter and sank to his knees, then I hit him with my rockets'   CAUGHT IN the middle of the Helmand river, the fleeing Taliban were paddling their boat back to shore for dear life. Smoke from the ambush they had just sprung on American special forces still hung in the air, but their attention was fixed on the two helicopter gunships that had appeared above them		Child victims of the battle to end a bloody civil war   LYING howling on a torn mattress, in a cot by a window overlooking the Sri Lankan ­capital, Colombo, the wounded toddler was a pitiful sight. A female relative fretted, trying to calm the girl down as the medics worked around her. The 18-month-old had been shot in the stomach in the final stages of the fighting in the north-east of the country and there was an ugly line of stitches across her abdomen where doctors had operated to remove the bullet.
	Caught in the middle as Amarah explodes   "I WANT this moving now, now, now," he screamed, and there was another burst of gunfire overhead. Then they were there, the Warriors, with their 30mm cannon and chain guns, appearing over the crest of the bridge, just as the cavalry should.	India's generation of children crippled by uranium waste   Their heads are too large or too small, their limbs too short or too bent. For some, their brains never grew, speech never came and their lives are likely to be cut short: these are the children it appears that India would rather the world did not see, the victims of a scandal with potential implications far beyond the country's borders.
Red hackles rise as the Black Watch stride out   TAM o'shanter on his head, pistol in his belt, the commanding officer of the Black Watch is striding ahead through the crowded market place in the centre of the town of Az Zubayr. Yesterday this street was thought still too dangerous to drive down in a soft-skinned Land Rover, but the CO has decided enough is enough. After days of sitting back and watching his troops come under attack from militiamen armed with mortars, AK47s and rocket propelled grenades...The order has gone out that the Black Watch is going to patrol the streets of Zubayr on foot.		Where a baby girl is a mother's awful shame   THE birth of Rekha's second daughter should have been one of the happiest days of her life. Instead, she lay on the bed of her home on the outskirts of Delhi, the newborn child on the floor, screaming in terror as her mother-in-law poured paraffin over her. This was her punishment, the older woman said, preparing to strike a match: Rekha had failed again to deliver a son and it would be better for everyone if she were dead. Suddenly the door burst open and her neighbours rushed in, roused by the frantic screaming. They bundled Rekha and her daughter out of the house, never to return.
The sisters who took on the IRA and won   THE men's toilet in Magennis's bar in central Belfast is not a large room. There is a small sink to the right of the door on the way in, a single stall to the rear of the room containing a WC, and a stainless steel trough on the same wall as the sink, with room for two people. There are a couple of adverts on the wall above the trough; below it is the obligatory puddle of urine on the floor. In the chipped brown varnish on the back of the door, the initials PIRA - standing for Provisional Irish Republican Army - have been scratched.	'We want to work in Hollywood - but God still hasn't fulfilled our dreams'   It is raining, the water dripping from roofs of tin and plastic into the pale grey ooze of the drain running down the narrow lane between the shanties that make up Bombay’s Garib Nagar slum. Rubina Ali, Slumdog Millionaire starlet and precocious 10-year-old, is skipping from one concrete slab to another, trying to avoid the stinking puddles and the filth strewn all around. It is futile: the dirt is as much a part of the slum as are its 5,000 impoverished inhabitants
	'Even the stones were destroyed'   HALAWA'S body lay on the mountainside where she fell when the bombs exploded, her womb torn open, the tiny body of her unborn baby lying by her side, the blood soaking into the soil congealing in the heat of the sun. She was nine months pregnant; her friends said she was due to give birth to her fifth child within days.	Child victims of the battle to end a bloody civil war   LYING howling on a torn mattress, in a cot by a window overlooking the Sri Lankan ­capital, Colombo, the wounded toddler was a pitiful sight. A female relative fretted, trying to calm the girl down as the medics worked around her. The 18-month-old had been shot in the stomach in the final stages of the fighting in the north-east of the country and there was an ugly line of stitches across her abdomen where doctors had operated to remove the ­bullet. Her right leg was missing a chunk of flesh and had been gashed. The little girl is one of thousands of casualties hidden away from public view in hospitals across Sri Lanka, guarded by soldiers and police who roam the wards. As soon as they are fit enough to be moved, the injured are returned to the grim internment camps that are home to approximately 300,000 people
Home thoughts that hurt as the black snow falls   WHEN the soldiers awoke it was everywhere, the oily cinders coating every surface, falling like tiny flakes of black snow. On their sleeping bags, on their skin, in their hair, breathing it in, impossible to brush off, melting into diesel-dark streaks, seeping into their pores. Overnight the wind had changed and the black clouds from the burning oil pipelines and the fire pits lit by the Iraqis, which had darkened the skyline to the north and east for days, had drifted over the camp, leaving a trail of ash and soot in its wake. Now the cloud had passed, but the black dust continued to fall, creeping into the vehicles, into the food, into the early morning cups of tea and coffee freshly brewed on the stoves dug into little pits outside every clump of tents.		The peril within   THE track ahead is blocked. For mile after mile, the trees on either side have been felled and turned into a natural roadblock. Deep pits have been dug to hinder any attempt to drive into the jungle. Someone here really does not want visitors. From the knee-high undergrowth comes the occasional hiss of a snake moving unseen. A little further on, there are two sentries, armed with bows and arrows. “Go forward and someone will meet you,” they say. Suddenly, the trees open on to a clearing and the most unexpected sight. Here, in the heart of the jungle, someone has built an imposing war memorial. And what makes it all the more extraordinary is that it does not honour the fallen of the Indian state: this memorial, the Hindi script proclaims, is to the martyrs of the Maoist Naxal insurgency.
They poured out of their Warriors and let fly with grenades, guns, everything   Just after dawn yesterday the Warrior crashed through the wall of the house tucked away down a side road in the Iraqi town of Al Zubayr, west of Basra. The first inkling those sleeping inside had that anything was wrong was when it hit the 10ft high perimeter wall, accelerating all the time. Bricks flying everywhere, it plunged on straight into the side of the house, the driver wincing as debris showered down on the metal hatch above his head. By the time those inside the house realised what was happening, it was too late.	Gordon Brown weds today: Exclusive   CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown will today end his long bachelor years and wed long -time girlfriend Sarah Macaulay. The man who has made prudence his by-word has finally decided to throw caution to the wind amid amazing secrecy. But he finally came clean last night after The Daily Record discovered the banns posted at his local registrar's office.
Burning Bright   SWAPAN Haldar had no inkling the tiger was there until it pounced, clamping its jaws around his head and dragging him backwards into the thick mangrove forest. It was the last time anyone saw him alive. “Don’t go,” his wife, Minati Haldar, had begged him. There seemed to be tigers everywhere and they were getting bolder and more aggressive. But Swapan would not be swayed. It was a Saturday morning in January when the crab fisherman set off. His companions returned with his body the following night.		Litany of rape and abuse in Darfur region   ONE man held her arms, others held her legs. They took it in turns to rape her. It lasted six hours. When the baby is born in four months time she will keep it. But a part of her will always think of it as her Janjaweed child.
Eyewitness to carnage   The young mother was standing by the side of the road, clutching her baby. The baby was dead. Damilvany Gnanakumar watched as she tried to make a decision. Around them, thousands of people were picking their way between bodies strewn across the road, desperate to escape the fighting all around them.	Convert or die, Hindu lynch mobs tell fleeing Christians   HE had been standing by the car when the men closed in around him. They left the talking to Prashant Digal, a teacher and organiser for the local VHP youth wing. ‘Why did you bring these people here?’, he demanded, punching Sudhir in the head. ‘Take the vehicle and go. Leave them here for us.’ They surrounded him, a young Hindu, and slapped him around again. No one came to his aid. ‘If you stay, we will burn you with them in the car. You will all be killed. Just leave them,’ they told him. But he did not, which was a decent thing for a frightened boy to do.
	Shallow grave is testimony to Sudan's lies   THE grave is just a mound of earth, no more than two feet high at its peak and 10ft in diameter. It lies about 50 yards from the edge of the village of Nami in North Darfur. The nine bodies buried had lain on the ground for more than a week before the Janjaweed finally left the village and the people who had escaped the killing felt brave enough to return.	As we lay blindfolded, tied hand and foot, our captors asked: 'Shall we kill them?'   "I told the men God will open this door and let us out. Half-an-hour later someone opened the door and ran away. We did not go out because we did not know if they were still there. But two hours later the army came and found us in the room. God must have given them the power to save us. It was a miracle."