In post-Assad Syria, stand-up comedians are re-emerging to challenge taboos, mocking the former president and his regime and even testing the waters with Damascus's new rulers.

Anna Holubtsova was getting ready to sing at the concert organised in Kyiv by the Bakhmut administration, exiled since Russian forces devastated and seized their eastern Ukrainian city.

In his small Freetown workshop, engineering student James Samba tinkered with batteries and electrical parts he hoped could help clean up Sierra Leone's polluting public transport system.