Afghan Cosmonaut Stuck in Orbit

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Abdul Ahad Mohmand is the only Afghan to have gone into space. It was 1988, in the last days of Russia's hold on Afghanistan - the country was at civil war at the time - and Abdul was given the chance to visit the Mir space station with a Russian commander. But their attempts to return to earth didn't go according to plan. Martina Amati is a huge fan of freediving - swimming deep underwater on a single breath, without artificial help. She says she's more at home underwater than on land. She's also an award-winning filmmaker, and for her latest project, Under, she's combined her two passions - creating a multi-screen installation on the art of freediving. What difference does it make to writing a novel if you're deaf? Sara Novic has been thinking a lot about this while writing her first novel, Girl at War. It's set in the early 1990s, and imagines what it was like to be a child during the Balkans conflict. Sara's family is from Croatia, though she was born in the US. She started to lose her hearing as a young child and by the age of eight, couldn't hear anything. She now communicates mainly through American Sign Language, but also lip-reads. She told Jo Fidgen how her hearing loss has affected her relationship with the written word. If you ever catch a train in the Indian capital, Delhi, you may see children selling food on the platforms. A local constable, Dharamvir Singh, hated the idea that they were missing school, so he set up a classroom at one of the railway stations - and told the children that if they studied with him for an hour, he would allow them sell there. Picture: Abdul Ahad Mohmand