ISIS vs. the Kurds.

On the intrigue surrounding Dr. Zhivago’s publication.

On the world’s biggest polluter.

Visiting the site of the Chernobyl meltdown.

Posing for family survival in a society that values boys over girls.

Tony Ma will bet you as much as $600,000 to train your student for college acceptance. If the student gets into their top choice school, Ma takes the cash. Rejected? He gets nothing.

A 15-year-old Russian has a shorter life expectancy than a peer in Bangladesh, Cambodia, or Yemen.

A dispatch from Donetsk.

In 1981, Mauritania became the last country on Earth to abolish slavery. The law had little effect; at least 140,000 people are still enslaved today. Their best hope for freedom is an abolitoinist named Biram Dah Abeid.

The aging action star’s second wind abroad: political maneuvering, many guns and, most importantly, a market for his B movies.

The rise and fall of travel writing.

How a Chinese national, with the help of a suspected spy, disappeared with laptops and hard drives that may have contained sensitive information from the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center.

How Cassandro, who wrestles in drag, became a star Mexican luchadore.

The Wall Street firm that bailed out Robert Mugabe.

On the trail of Austin Tice and the late James Foley, freelance journalists who were kidnapped in Syria in 2012.

In 1984, Jacqui met Bob Lambert at an animal-rights protest. They fell in love, had a son. Then Bob disappeared. It would take 25 years for Jacqui to learn that he had been working undercover.

Catching up with Edward Snowden in Moscow.

On PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and the experience of covering AIDS in Africa.

The story of a naïve fisherman, a boat headed for Spain and 1.5 tons of cocaine.

Following Muammar Qaddafi’s death in 2011, Libya had hundreds of billions of dollars. This is the story of how it was erased.

A profile of Garry Kasparov, who exiled himself from Russia last year and is running for president of FIDE, the governing body of chess. The election has become the dirtiest in FIDE history and a proxy debate over freedom and Russia’s future; Kasparov’s opponent has the full backing of Vladimir Putin.

On the coast of Abu Dhabi, gilded outposts of the Louvre, the Guggenheim and New York University are being built by foreign workers who cannot leave and are paid half of what they were promised.

What U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul has seen in Russia since he arrived two and a half years ago.

Barack Obama on Africa, Putin and the gap between what CEOs tell him over lunch and what they tell their lobbyists.

Hunting people who hunt elephants.