The fate of a star 16-year-old pitcher in Japan.

When Manny Ramirez played half a season for the E-DA Rhinos.

On Japan’s Hokkaido, an island the size of Ireland, and its rebel leader of lore, Shakushain.

Why hundreds of Buddhist monks moved from Taiwan to Prince Edward Island, buying up thousands of acres of land in the process.

The odyssey of Kim Jong-il’s personal chef.

A profile of Dennis Rodman today.

On the lives of street kids.

The story of one Tibetan’s protest.

A Javanese shrine where Muslim pilgrims seeking good fortune must peform a ritual: find a stranger, have sex with them.

Separated from his older brother at a train, five-year-old Saroo Munshi Khan found himself lost in the slums of Calcutta. In his 20s, living in Australia, he began his search for his birth home armed with nothing but hazy memories and Google Earth.

On the rise of K-pop.

Exploring remote atolls in the South Pacific.

Why people keep dying on Mount Everest.

An American enrolls in a Beijing ping-pong school. A series of humiliations ensue.

Revealing the murder of 109 Vietnamese civilians during a 1968 search-and-destroy mission on a rumored Viet Gong stronghold, often referred to in military circles as Pinkville, actually the village of My Lai.

Twenty-one-year-old Briton Lucie Blackman came to Tokyo and found work in the Roppongi district hostess bars, where businessmen come to flirt with paid companions, and Western women draw a premium fee. Two months later, she disappeared. She would be found underneath a bathtub in a beachside cave.

Inside the lives of Sri Lanka’s Tamils as they emerge from a multi-decade war that defined and nearly destroyed them.

The author travels to North Korea in the years after Kim Jong Il’s succession. He also gets a haircut:

But suddenly the whole chair starts vibrating and I find myself surrendering to her, as she begins to knead the acupressure points on my forehead and neck. Next it's ginseng unguent all over my face. Gobs of pomade smelling like bubble gum go on my hair. Then, like a true daughter of the revolution, she upholsters her blow dryer and begins combing in the pomade and sculpting my now subdued hair. The pungent aroma of heated pomade, like fat frying in a pan, fills the room. My stylist gives my hair a little twist with the comb. It feels like she's making a Dairy Queen curl on top. Then she fries it in place with the dryer. Another dab of pomade. More mincing motions with the comb. Another blast of hot air. Suddenly I feel a moist breeze around my ears. She's taken out a can of imported aerosol spray and is cementing her creation in place. She's delicately patting my new coiffure now the way a baker taps a loaf of bread to see if it's springy to the touch. She murmurs something. I'm breathless with expectation. I open my eyes and gaze into the mirror. Magnifique! It looks like I have a loofah sponge on my head! I am reborn -- a cross between Elvis and a 1950s Bulgarian hydrology expert! At last I have become a true son of Pyongyang!

What happened when Pakistan shut down the vitally important Karachi to Kabul trucking line.

Alarmingly sophisticated imitations of American currency have turned up all over the world and the false-paper trail leads to North Korea.

On the “horrible weirdness” of Kim Jung Il’s Korea.

On Bangkok’s Khao San Road.

On the occasion of Hamid Karzai’s visit to the White House, a fever dream tour of the Afghanistan war through the eyes of the leaders who gave birth to its narrative.

Inside the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan:

The U.S. government has lied to itself, and to its citizens, about the nature and actions of successive Pakistani governments. Pakistani behavior over the past 20 years has rendered the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism effectively meaningless.