On China’s modern-day Communist Party and why foundational myths can never be shed.

When ‘Ceca’, the Madonna of the Balkans, met Arkan, bank robber turned paramilitary leader and war criminal, and how it all came to a tragic end in the lobby of the Belgrade Intercontinental.

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

Nineteenth century Muslim-Christian hero Abd el-Kader, the “Algerian George Washington.”

Are we at war? The U.S. government’s evolving response to cyber security and its impact on privacy.

On the set of Afghanistan’s first soap opera and at home with its cast.

Far outside of Juarez, villagers in rural areas are trapped without supplies or protection as rival cartels attempt to starve each other out of ranch hideouts. A heavily armed convoy attempts to deliver pensions behind siege lines.

Mikhail Kalashnikov’s brainchild, Avtomat Kalashnikovais aka the AK-47, is the most stockpiled firearm in the world and has altered the last century like no other product. C.J. Chivers, author of The Gun, discusses.

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

Inside the conflict that has caused more deaths than any since WWII—with no end in sight.

The world’s population is rapidly getting older. How China and other countries stocked with young workers are taking advantage.

Nicky Louie and the Ghost Shadows.

A profile of Anas Aremeyaw, an investigative journalist in Ghana who’s willing to do anything–and pose as anyone–to get the story.

A report from Camp Hope, the tent city that’s sprung up next to the Chilean mine where 33 men have been trapped since early August.

The narcocorrido-immortalized Pacific coast traditionalists, the kidnap-crazed Gulf coast Zetas, and massacres that no longer seem tied to a discernible purpose; inside the ruins of the Mexican-American border.

The story of a young man killed in Juarez.

If your ex-spouse takes your child and hightails it abroad, the legal system often isn’t on your side. So what can you do? One option: hire a former Army ranger named Gus Zamora to take back your kid.

A behind-the-scenes account of the tense negotiations, involving Gorbachev, Kohl, Bush, and Thatcher, that led from the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall to a reunified Germany. (Translated from German.)

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

An interview with Michael Maren, who spent nearly twenty years working in Africa as an aid worker and then a journalist, on why NGOs and “feed an African child” charities do more harm than good.

How the illegitimate son of Liberian ex-President (and accused cannibal) Charles Taylor went from being a small time Florida hoodlum to one of Africa’s most notorious killers.

The relative prosperity of the Putin-era has thrown Russian bride-introduction tours for a loop, as a group of American bachelors learn in a series of Meet and Greets.

On the golden anniversary of her first trip to study chimps, an ode to Jane Goodall.

In Torreón, north of Mexico City, cartel gunmen are freed from a prison, commit a massacre at a wedding that includes the band, and then return to custody.

Russian serial killer Alexander Pichushkin was so prolific that even he doesn’t know how many he killed.