FRONTLINE/WORLD . Fellows Stories

In an effort to nurture new voices in international reporting, the FRONTLINE/World Fellows Program was initiated in 2003 to provide graduate students in journalism the opportunity to report original stories for the FRONTLINE/World website. The series was completed in 2008. Explore the archive below. And learn more about the program's goals.

The Indian government has been mining low-grade uranium on tribal lands for decades, but it plans to expand production so that nuclear power will eventually meet a quarter of India's energy needs. FRONTLINE/World reporter Sonia Narang travels to this remote area to find out how the mines are affecting the health and traditions of villagers, and forcing thousands off their lands.
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Count Mexico among the many countries worldwide dealing with unrest caused by rising food prices. And as FRONTLINE/World reporter Malia Wollan discovers, the growing cost of its staple food, the tortilla, is a direct result of the increased demand in the United States for corn-based bio-fuel.
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Chile once harbored Nazi fugitives and has a history of racial discrimination, but its predominantly mixed-race population makes in an unexpected home for a new-Nazi movement. Lygia Navarro examines why some brown-skinned working-class kids have bought into Hitler's ideology.
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The village of Huangbaiyu in rural northeast China was supposed to be a model for energy-conscious design. But the joint China-U.S. project to initially build 400 sustainable homes went awry. Timothy Lesle investigates.
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Every family has its secrets. Josef Sawyer found his in a drawer. As a boy living in suburban Massachusetts during the early 1990s, he found a videotape stored among a collection of home movies and photographs. Watching the tape, Sawyer witnessed a murky, chaotic scene: A group of ragged soldiers, drinking beer and shouting, were torturing a man.
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I first heard about China's independent film movement in 2000, when the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis held a special screening of Jia Zhangke's film Platform. I had spent a semester studying in Beijing a few years earlier and was itching to go back to China any way I could. So I bought a ticket and settled into a seat at the back of the theater, hoping to ease my wanderlust with a cinematic journey.
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I have traveled to Russia three times in the past year to investigate the Kremlin's crackdown on independent voices. I first grew interested in the topic in 2006, when I read about a new NGO (non-governmental organization) law that limited the ability of nonprofit organizations to operate freely in Russia. Just as President Vladimir Putin was finalizing the new law, a documentary about a spy scandal linking several prominent NGOs with British embassy officials was released on Russian state television. Almost overnight, public opinion swung dramatically in favor of restricting the work of human rights activists. read more | credits

Sakhalin Island is what international oilmen might call a "hardship post." It is on the very edge of the Russian Far East, the historic equivalent of America's Wild West. The narrow, 600-mile-long island is populated by only half a million people, and its seasons are severe even by Russian standards. But underneath the surface of the island and the surrounding seas is enough oil and gas to power the United States for as much as a decade. read more | credits

I was always fascinated by the Indian traditions my family has preserved, even though my parents -- and grandparents -- have never visited India. They were born in Uganda. In 1972, my parents were expelled from the country by the notorious dictator Idi Amin, along with about 60,000 other Asians who called the East African country home. By traveling to Uganda, I thought it would help me better understand my parents and, more profoundly, myself. I also wanted to investigate the racial dynamics in the country since the expulsion and discover which side -- if any -- I would "side" with: the Asians or the blacks ... or both. read more | credits

Despite a law banning sex selective abortion in force for a decade, as many as half a million female fetuses are aborted each year in India, according to a 2006 study in the British medical journal, The Lancet. Some believe those numbers are high, but it is clear there is an imbalance in the country's population. A 2001 government census revealed that there were 795 women for every 1000 men in Punjab, India's rural heartland. read more | credits

Election season in France this year has provided high drama. As the French head to the polls, they are not simply choosing their next president but choosing an identity. The country is facing deep schisms over economic and social policy, and each candidate represents a very different future for the Gallic nation of 61 million people. read more | credits

On the surface, the small Italian island of Lampedusa, perched off the coast of North Africa, is like any other Mediterranean tourist spot, dotted with colorful fishing villages and glorious stretches of white sand. But as this FRONTLINE/World Fellows report reveals, while the tourists relax, Lampedusa's coast guard is busy patrolling the waters around the island, where hundreds of men, women and children arrive almost daily, crammed inside barely seaworthy boats. Exhausted after days on the open sea, these African migrants hope to find a better life on European soil. read more | credits

All it took was a few sentences in a Japanese history textbook last year to spark the biggest protests China had seen since 1989. Why did a dispute over the history of a World War II era massacre trigger such outrage? Explore the growing rivalry between China and Japan in a new video by FRONTLINE/World Fellows Emily Taguchi and Lee Wang. read more | credits

FRONTLINE/World Fellows Rob Harris and Tovin Lapan traveled to Colombia in August 2005 to investigate charges that the Coca-Cola Company was involved in the violent repression of a union at several of its bottling plants. The soft drink company strenuously denies the allegations of union-busting and murder of union leaders. But there is growing pressure on the Atlanta, Georgia-based multinational from shareholders and U.S. colleges boycotting Coke to approve a full-scale, independent investigation of the charges. read more | credits

Nearly half of Brazil's farmland is owned by 1 percent of the population -- a glaring inequality in a nation known for its stark division between rich and poor. This week on Rough Cut, we travel to a dusty patch of rural Brazil where FRONTLINE/World Fellows Adam Raney and Chad Heeter witness a land occupation by a thousand poor people and activists who take over a strategic corner of a ranch about an eight-hour drive west of Sao Paulo. read more | credits

Meet several extraordinary Mosuo women - an ethnic minority that has one of the world's last matriarchal societies - as we travel to "The Women's Kingdom" in southwest China, not far from the Tibetan Buddhist city the Chinese have renamed Shangri-La. Reporter Xiaoli Zhou, who comes from Shanghai, visits the Mosuo region to see for herself how much freedom a woman might enjoy in China. read more | credits

In this special online video documentary, FRONTLINE/World Fellow Brent McDonald travels to a country still trying to come to terms with its violent past. With anthropologist Beatriz Manz, he visits the village of Santa María Tzejeá which two decades ago had been caught in the crossfire between leftwing guerrillas and the U.S.-supported Guatemalan army. He investigates the lingering impact of a massacre and witnesses a historic apology by the Guatemalan government. read more | credits

FRONTLINE/World Fellows Sachi Cunningham and Jigar Mehta make their way across the beautiful mountain territory of Kashmir, which has been a divided state since 1947 and is torn by Muslim-Hindu conflict. Their road trip tests the willingness of neighboring India and Pakistan to re-open the main highway across Kashmir as a move toward peace. read more | credits

FRONTLINE/World Fellow Roya Aziz, an Afghan American, returns to her homeland to witness the run-up to Afghanistan's historic presidential elections. Visiting relatives, interviewing presidential candidates, and watching voters register, Aziz gauges public sentiment and examines whether democracy is really taking root. read more | credits

Whether beset by devastating floods or stifling drought, the people of Haiti are plagued by the lack of an adequate, reliable water system. More than 60 percent of Haitians do not have access to clean water. The country is ranked last on the International Poverty Index. FRONTLINE/World Fellow Shoshana Guy investigates Haiti's water crisis, traveling from de-forested mountains to teeming Port-au-Prince where businessmen sell water by the truckload and boys hawk plastic bags of water on the streets. read more | credits

FRONTLINE/World Fellow Marton Dunai, a young Hungarian, sets off on a journey by train across Europe, retracing the route of the legendary Orient Express. Along the way, he stops in Istanbul, Budapest, Bucharest and Vienna, among other cities, and meets a surprising cast of characters. Dunai explores what Europe is really thinking -- about itself, the United States, the Middle East and the war in Iraq. read more | credits

FRONTLINE/World Fellow Mary Spicuzza traveled to Sicily to explore the storm building over the Italian government's ambitious plan to build the world's longest suspension bridge linking Sicily to the Italian mainland. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi promises the bridge will at long last bring jobs and prosperity to Sicily while opponents warn it will be an environmental disaster. Can a world-class bridge end Sicily's historic isolation and reduce the influence of the Mafia? Spicuzza finds that even her own relatives can't agree about the promised bridge. read more | credits

FRONTLINE/World Fellow Doug Merlino traveled to East Africa on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide to witness the country's recently established reconciliation process. Read dispatches Merlino emailed from the field to FRONTLINE/World editors. The dispatches reveal the pain and hope of court participants and demonstrate the difficulties faced by reporters covering the ambitious reconciliation process. read more | credits

In the 1960s, Curitiba, Brazil, took a radical approach to solving the problems most cities face: pollution, traffic, unchecked growth, and social and economic inequities. FRONTLINE/World Fellow Tim Gnatek traveled to Curitiba to discover whether this experiment in urban design has kept pace with the city's tenfold population boom. read more | credits

Centuries ago, Egyptians bestowed upon Cairo, Egypt, the title Umm al-Dunya, "Mother of the World." Today Egypt's capital, still known as Umm al-Dunya, is Arabia's most populous city and the region's cultural center. FRONTLINE/World Fellow Scott Squire traveled to Cairo just after President George W. Bush declared the end of major hostilities in Iraq to find out how welcome a photographer from the United States would feel amid the ongoing tension in the Middle East. With camera in hand, he set off along city streets for one of Cairo's 30,000 cafés, around which much of the social life of Egyptian men revolves. read more | credits

For FRONTLINE/World Fellow Angel Gonzalez, a recent journey back to his home country raised bedeviling questions: How could a rich country have fallen into such terrible economic straits? Will the economic disaster destroy what was once the continent's most stable democracy? And how have the forces arrayed for and against populist president Hugo Chavez made things worse -- and better? read more | credits

Beneath a pristine Peruvian rain forest lies South Americas largest natural gas reservoir -- and its being developed by a consortium of energy companies, including Hunt Oil of Texas. FRONTLINE/World Fellows Jason Felch and Chris Raphael travel far up the Urubamba River along the route of a new pipeline to report on the clash between energy needs, environmental protection and the rights of indigenous people. read more | credits

When she visited Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state, last spring, FRONTLINE/World Fellow Garance Burke discovered that the Zapatista uprising of the 1990s has turned into a grinding, low-intensity armed struggle over land and resources -- and the Mexican government seems to have given up on trying to resolve the conflict. read more | credits

Robin Shulman explores life on the shifting borderlines between Israelis and Palestinians, as new fences are built, old walls crumble and changing boundaries redefine two people's sense of home. read more | credits

The FRONTLINE/World Student Fellows Program was developed with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.