Why do Syrian civilians in a Turkish camp live in relative luxury?

An essay on BR Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi and the battle against caste in India.

A field trip to the video gamey world of the modern trader.

Skyrocketing prices for yarchagumba, a rare fungus prized as an aphrodisiac, has led to Nepali villagers to turf wars—and possibly murder.

How a major American company helped bring Charles Taylor to power in Liberia.

A holiday tradition in the Netherlands involving blackface has sparked a debate about race, the legacy of slavery, and the vestiges of colonialism.

How the China National Tobacco Corp., which manufactures 2.5 trillion cigarettes per year, came to make more money than Apple.

Climate change is giving rise to intermating between previously distinct species. Welcome to a world with “grolar bears.”

The disappointing tenure of Uruguay’s great lefty hope.

The history of a powerful and violent secret society in the islands of southern Chile.

A women’s shelter in Afghanistan protects its inhabitants from their own families.

Coastal erosion is leading more than a few Britons to watch their homes crumble into the sea.

Why do all those rugged coastlines, moors and stone buildings make England seem haunted?

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

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

The French influence in Africa is on the wane, and the Chinese are coming.

Police and scientists investigate an outbreak.

The frenzied few days before the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer.

Welcome to Plasenzuela, whose 500 inhabitants enjoyed no-show jobs, spent millions on phantom projects and defrauded Social Security.

The underground routes by which drugs enter the U.S. from Mexico, and the officials who’ve found it almost impossible to curb their construction.

From Hong Kong to Bangkok to the Golden Triangle, the author searches for something everyone says no longer exists: an opium den.

Seized passports, debtor’s prison, and slave labor prop up a Disneyland in the desert now in decline.

After a racial hazing incident, the first black head of South Africa’s University of Free State confronts the myths of the reconciliation era.

Inside the bleak world of Joe Francis, the man behind the “Girls Gone Wild” franchise.

How PCC, once an inmate soccer team and now Brazil’s most notorious prison gang, coordinated seven days of riots throughout São Paulo using mobile phones.