The difficulty of catching a “cocaine trafficker with his hands on the country’s levers of power.”

Ethnicity and primary education in Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Part of Guernica’s ‘Writer’s Bloc’ series.

The story of a young man on the run in the slum he dreams of escaping.

On the difficult challenges faced by an auteur in Nigeria’s burgeoning Nollywood film economy.

On the ever-expanding world of targeted online advertising.

A profile of the Mexican newsweekly, a “lone voice” in reporting on the narcos.

How a group of men with nicknames like “Emperor” and “Spear Carrier” tipped the balance in South Sudan’s fight for independence.

A college president on the bizarre experience of being informed by NBC News that he had hired a war criminal to teach French.

The inside story of how an ABC nature shoot in Africa end up producing  a snuff film.

Both the Chinese government and private matchmakers are laboring to unite people who lost spouses and children in the earthquake.

In the wake of 9/11, terrorist networks moved their recruitment and training efforts online, giving birth to Jihad-geeks like Irhabi_007.

The bloody, often surreal, fight for Kosovo’s independence was led by a man moonlighting as a roofer in Switzerland.

A blow by blow account of the seizure of a French cruise ship by Somali pirates.

Foreign policy as architecture; how embassies went from lavish social hubs to reinforced strongholds.

A group of childhood friends, two of whom had already climbed Everest, finds tragedy on Mont Blanc.

How two Italian teenagers hacked the Soviet space program and may have heard the dying breaths of a lost cosmonaut.

An investigation into Lashkar-i-Taiba, the group behind the 2008 Mumbai massacre, and why Pakistani authorities has not arrested their leaders.

Published on the eve of Iran’s 2009 presidential election and subsequent protests, a look at the booze-fueled, hijab-less underground party scene in the capital.

On the gap between how the world sees Goldman Sachs and how Goldman Sachs sees itself.

The author of True Grit on growing up in Arkansas during World War II.

The fever-dream life and death of Chinese poet Gu Cheng.

“In 2000, Zimbabwe’s dictator began kicking white farmers off their land. One man decided to stay.”

On the illusion of the inevitable and the revolutions that ended the Eastern Bloc.

How a legally dubious FBI sting lured a pair of Russian hackers stateside.

On the Cairo knifing of 82-year-old Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz and its aftermath.