大象传媒

25-year-old Mandla Maseko was born and raised in the townships of Pretoria in South Africa, but he's hoping to become the first black African in space. He has competed with more than a million people all over the world and won a place on the Lynx Mark II Suborbital Vehicle which will take off from the USA early next year, on an hour long trip orbiting the earth at a height of 103 kilometres.

The Paris-based artist Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert makes hand-blown installations out of glass. He's known for creating contemporary pieces of work - from ceiling lights that look like clouds, to the intricate colourful spirit fruit inspired by his West African childhood. Jeremy tells reporter Anna Bailey why he likes the fragile and dangerous nature of glass despite having been in a car accident where he went through a windscreen in his early twenties.

Jennifer Kempton grew up on a trailer park in the American state of Ohio. Neglected in her childhood, she found a boyfriend who turned out to be a pimp. He forced her to have sex with other men, and tattooed his name on her lower stomach to show that he owned her. Jennifer tells Matthew Bannister how she managed to escape from her life of abuse and decided to erase the tattoos of her troubled past. She's now set up a group "survivors Ink" to help other survivors to do the same.

Tudor Lakatos is a schoolteacher in his late forties who comes from a small village in northern Romania. But he's better known as Elvis Romano, an Elvis Presley impersonator and obsessive fan who performs the works of The King in the Roma language, which is widely spoken in the local gypsy community.

(Photo: Mandla Maseko. Credit: Axe Apollo)