Carrying The Torch For London's Last Gas Lamps
In the United Kingdom, British Gas employs 30,000 workers. Five of them could be said to carry a torch that has been burning for two centuries. They are the lamplighters, tending to gas lamps that...
View ArticleRussian Threats Expose Europe's Military Cutbacks
An international cat-and-mouse game played out in the waters of Stockholm a few months ago.The "mouse" was a foreign submarine — Russia is the main suspect — that got away.And as Russia's military...
View ArticleGroup Urges Swedes To Evade Subway Fares, And Even Insures Against Fines
Every city that has public transportation struggles with fare jumpers — people who sneak onto the subway or the bus without buying a ticket. In Sweden, fare-dodging is a brazen movement in which the...
View ArticleAn Arctic Institution, Sweden's Ice Hotel Turns 25
This year marks 25 years of the original Ice Hotel, carved from snow and ice bricks in far northern Sweden. This story originally aired on All Things Considered on Jan. 29, 2015.Copyright 2015 NPR.
View ArticleSurströmming Revisited: Eating Sweden's Famously Stinky Fish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxSknrMLz-A
View ArticleIn Sweden, Remote-Control Airport Is A Reality
As our plane touches down in Sundsvall, Sweden, the horizon is all snow and ice. A small air traffic control tower sticks out above the white horizon.But this airport actually has two air traffic...
View ArticleCash Is Definitely Not King For Card-Carrying Swedes
Peter Fredell carries an unusual wallet. It feels a bit like leather, but the material is pale and thin. He pulls it out on a street corner in Stockholm."I actually made it myself," he says. "It's an...
View ArticleRemote-Controlled Airport A Reality In Sweden
Sweden is the first country in the world to get a remote-controlled airport. That means flights are guided by operators sitting miles away.This piece originally aired on Morning Edition on Feb. 1,...
View ArticleSweden's Immigrant Influx Unleashes A Backlash
In the 1990s, the face of immigration to Sweden was someone like Robert Acker. His family emigrated from Bosnia when he was 6 years old."I got along with the Swedes early on," he says in...
View ArticleNot Too Much, Not Too Little: Sweden, In A Font
Nearly every country has a national flag, a national anthem, a national bird.
View ArticleIn A Somber Homecoming, Yazidis Grieve And Watch Over Their Dead
As you drive through northern Iraq near the border with Syria, you pass checkpoints every few miles or so. Manning these roadblocks are Kurdish fighters, wearing camouflage and body armor, carrying big...
View ArticleOutmanned And Outgunned, Fighters Defend Yazidi Shrine Against ISIS
In Kurdistan today, every fighter knows the name Qasim Shesho. He's been fighting with the Kurdish peshmerga forces in northern Iraq since the 1970s.Shesho is a Yazidi — an ethnic and religious...
View ArticleISIS May Be Gone, But Life Has Yet To Return To Normal In Northern Iraq
The graffiti in Snuny — an Iraqi city at the base of Mount Sinjar that Kurdish peshmerga fighters recently regained control of — provides a kind of shorthand for its recent history.There's black...
View ArticleNot A Group House, Not A Commune: Europe Experiments With Co-Housing
This is the latest story from the NPR Cities Project.In an abandoned building near Spain's Mediterranean coast, someone softly strums a guitar. Chord progressions echo through empty halls.It's an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Just 55 Miles From ISIS Control, American Expats Carry On Life As Usual
Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.Transcript AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Two big cities in northern Iraq are just 55 miles apart - Mosul and Erbil. Mosul is under the control of the...
View ArticleFrom A Mountain, Kurds Keep Watch On ISIS In Mosul
Imagine standing on top of a mountain, looking down at your home in the valley below, and being unable to go there — even for a visit.That's the situation for some Iraqi Kurds from the city of Mosul,...
View ArticleIraqi Kurds: We're Ready To Fight For Mosul
American military officials announced that they are planning an operation in April or May to free Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, from the group that calls itself the Islamic State, or ISIS. The...
View ArticleLamb Dumplings, Lentils And A Bittersweet Taste Of Home
For people living in a new country, a taste of home can be a powerful emotional experience.All the more so when you've left your country because of war.Iraq has taken in about a quarter-million people...
View ArticleBrutal ISIS Tactics Create New Levels Of Trauma Among Iraqis
At a camp for displaced people in northern Iraq, you pass rows of tents to reach the clinic run by the International Medical Corps. They have medicines to treat all kinds of problems: diabetes shots,...
View ArticleAfter 6,000 Years, Time For A Renovation At Iraq's Citadel
A map of the northern Iraqi city of Erbil looks like a dart board: circles, radiating outward from a central core. The bull's-eye sits high on a hill, crowned by ancient walls.The Erbil Citadel has...
View Article